As of tonight the overhead dome light is completely operable. Last week I was able to get the light turning “on” via the switch on the light. Turned out that some of the fuse and wire connectons were corroded and were failing at doing their job. Cleaned up the contact points (some by dumb luck by disconnecting and reconnecting, even). After all that I got the emergency flashers and the “on” switch for the light working. The door activation mode for the dome light still wasn’t working.

Tonight I go to get the open door activation mode of the dome light working and what-do-you-know? It “just works”. I’m not sure what happened, but I’ll take it.

As I was in the trunk (front of the car) I noticed there was a rigid metal cable running from toward the cabin to the front. After tracing it I realized it was a trunk release. It looked like when the glove box was replaced the trunk release lever wasn’t put back in. I just thought the trunk didn’t lock. I removed the glove box and disconnected the cable from the release latch. Then I ran the cable through the hole in the glove box and back in to the trunk. The lever got reattached to the glove box and I reattached the glove box to the car. Then the cable was reconnected to the latch.

Almost done now, I had to re-adjust the hook from the trunk lid since it had been made short to prevent latching (since you were unable to release the latch). Took me a couple of tries to get the right length on the hook – but it works now.

So far this car is exactly what I wanted. A project with lots to do and lots to learn.