I am in the process of doing a restoration on a 1979 F250 and decided to do a body swap instead of fixing the rust problems on the 1979.

My questions run in with the 77 vs the 79 steering column and the neutral safety switch. Knowing that I have to swap columns since the 79 is a 4x4 and the 77 is a 4x2. Has anyone ran into this and have some advice on the best way to wire the transmission NSS on the 79 into the the 77 wiring harness and vise versa? Both trucks have the C6 automatic transmission

I am hoping to be able to have two usable trucks when this project is completed.

 

I was just wondering if anyone had some advise?

 

I'd actually swap out wiring harnesses. Keep the 77 with the 77 and 79 with the 79. If you are doing a restoration, I'd also think about upgrading the wire harness with new wiring, but not really necessary. Also, by swapping out harnesses, you can go over the harness to see if any repairs might need to be made. You don't want to go to the trouble of a restoration and then find out later you wish you would have done something different with the wiring. Also, are each gauge cluster the same in each truck. Do both have guages or just lights? If the same than wiring don't matter, but if one is different than the other, than you'll have to swap clusters. Best thing IMO is just to swap harnesses and keep the years together vs trying to graft "old into new". I have the trouble of having a 79 column, but an older C6 and haven't found a way to use a column NSS with my 79 column. Right now I don't have a NSS which I hate. I'm thinking about just getting a whole different later C6.

 

I have been trying to go thru the pro's and con's. The 77 has more bells and whistles like the intermittent wipers and air conditioning. Both trucks have the gauges instead of the lights.

The 79 has basically been a work truck all its life and the salt corrosion on the wiring harness shows. While the 77 has been a southern no salt carport vehicle.

I have found online some of the wiring diagrams on both the pre-77 and the 79 schematic. At the same time I know the headaches that will arise with butchering the harnesses if one is not careful.

The question came about trying to get a feel for what others have done or would recommend with my situation.

 

My NSS on my tranny went out back in the 80's playing in the mud so much, just bypassed it. When on the trails it comes in handy just being able to hit the key with it in gear. I always wanted to run the NSS wires through a series of toggle switchs making a theft switch out of them. Needing to have certain switchs turned on and certain ones turned off to get it to start, never got around to it. Will probably happen when I start putting it back together.