May 29, 2011 - More wiring!
I could do it faster, but I'm trying to build a car that will survive a week of stressful days without failing - and if it does, it should fail gracefully and be easy to debug. This means a lot of time looking at how I'm going to do something, seeing if there's a better way besides the initial obvious solution. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
I wired up the fans yesterday, for example. I needed a good power supply for the second one, as I've learned in the past that these particular fans can pull over 20A each on startup. The usual way is to run a wire with an inline fuse. But there's a spot in the factory fusebox that isn't used on my car - it's for the ABS system. It also happens to be right beside the fuse for the main fan. So I removed the fusebox and pulled the appropriate connector off the bottom. Turns out the wire I needed simply wasn't there, but there was a spot in the connector plug for a spade connector. I pulled one out of an unusued plug and slotted it into place. Now I had a factory-designed 30A power source! I ran that down to a new relay which is triggered off the main fan. It worked out pretty slick. I even used the same wiring colors used by the main fan so that I know that yellow is a fan power wire, for example.
I also identified a fan override wire that will let me kick on the fans manually without waiting for the engine to get up to temp. I have an idea for that one, we'll see if it works out.
I also wired up the driver's side O2 sensor which needed extended wires and tightened up all the exhaust system connections. The car sounds pretty good. The PCM hasn't figured out how to idle yet so the car won't stay running without a bit of attention to the throttle pedal, but that's normal for the GM computer when it's lost power.
The new shocks ands the driveshaft should both arrive on Tuesday, and it's my goal to have the car ready for them when they arrive. It's looking promising.
tags: Wiring, conversion |
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