By all accounts, wiring a car is a daunting task. We left off last month as Painless Performance's Dennis Overholser and our tech center wizard Jason Scudellari routed the wires up to the dash and connected the gauges. For what it's worth, this is the final stretch and the really technical stuff is already behind us. Now it's just a matter of routing and connecting. And yes, it's really as easy as it sounds, but it takes quite a bit of time.
Last month we detailed Painless' PN 30204 remote-mount battery switch. This month we're getting around to installing it. It includes a 250-amp continuous-power solenoid and a remote-mount switch to engage it.
This time 'round Painless also equipped our little buggy with one of their Fan-Thom fixed-temperature electric cooling fan relays. In lieu of unsightly radiator probes, the Fan-Thom uses a 3/8-18 NPTF threaded thermostat that screws into most engine blocks or manifolds. The PN 30102 kit operates the fan when the coolant reaches 200 degrees, yet kills it when the coolant drops to 185 degrees.
When finished, Painless advocates a rather ingenious way to test the system without needlessly burning fuses. They recommend activating the system with a low-amperage (under 10 amps) battery charger in lieu of a full-amperage battery. That way bad circuits will expose themselves with poor operation without needlessly blowing the fuse or melting anything down. Keep in mind that the charger will only test one circuit at a time, so methodically run through the system looking for shorts.
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When we left off last month, Jason Scudellari had just finished up wiring the dash. As he completed that, Dennis Overholser routed the remaining harness through the firewall and split it into two bundles. |
Dennis harnessed one bundle in split loom and passed it back under the bucket body. |
That bundle feeds one thing and one thing only: the brake light switch. As you'll recall, we installed this Total-supplied switch and tee in the first feature way back in the Mar. '04 issue. |
Jason pulled Dennis' harnesses' second leg forward and wired a fan-control relay into the harness. He also trimmed a slice of aluminum to bolt the relay to. That aluminum slice mounts the relay to one of the engine-crossmember bolts. One of the relay's wires passes over to the Fan-Thom thermostatic sender that Painless Performance supplied us with. |
Back in the Jun. '04 issue, we installed a Cooling Components fan on the Walker radiator. The relay and thermostat Jason wired in earlier ties directly to the Cooling Components fan, however, Dennis attached the components with a two-pin Weatherpack connector in the event we remove the radiator. |
The Powermaster Motorsport high-output alternator requires only a main power feed by virtue of its one-wire operation. Jason terminated that last high-tension lead to the alternator and capped it with a rubber shield. |
Dennis routed the headlight wires in groups of three: one high beam, another low beam, and a third for the turn signal. He ran the high/low wires through Total-supplied headlight conduits that hide the wires in the headlight stands. |
Dennis then crimped the Painless headlight pigtails to the wires that run up the stands. We avoided running a ground wire through the conduits by grounding the headlight pigtail right to the headlight bucket. Jason drilled one of the bucket's rivets out and replaced it with a panhead screw for the ground connection. |
Jason routed the remaining running light and turn signal wires into the Total Performance-supplied turn signals. Like we did in the rear, Jason wired the lights up with bullet connectors so we can easily remove the wires if the situation calls for it. |
On the chassis other side, Jason pulled the passenger-side wire loom through the firewall. He finalized the starter install by plugging the purple wire into the solenoid trigger and the 10-gauge red wire to the solenoid main power feed. The solenoid's main power feed supplies power to the ignition switch and the fuse panel via the Maxi fuse. |
Jason hoisted the car back up on the rack and bolted the battery tray in place with the supplied hardware. Early on we sent this tray out to Embee Performance Coatings. |
Painless included one of their PN 30204 remote-mount battery disconnect kits. The solenoid itself mounted directly to the frame with the supplied bracket. |
Jason spanned the area between the battery and the solenoid with a two-gauge power supply cable. He cut the cable to the right length and removed it from the car. Keep in mind that the solenoid is direction-specific; it works with current flow in one way only. |
Jason stripped the cable ends and crimped copper lugs to the wire with a lug crimper... |
...all the power he could muster from a ball-peen hammer. |
Jason then slid polyolefin shrink tubing over the lugs and heated the tubing until it tightened over the cable and lug. It's details like this that keep wires in tip-top shape. The shrink tubing will keep water from working into the crimped joints and weakening them. Properly prepared wiring should last a car's lifetime. |
The finished cable looks sharp and due to the shrink tubing's sealing properties, these cables should last the car's lifetime. |
The solenoid's output side connects to the starter solenoid the same way that a battery would connect to the solenoid. |
An electrical system doesn't work without a proper ground, so Jason completed the circuit by fabricating another cable. Actually, Jason fabricated two cables: one from the battery's negative pole to the transmission tail shaft and a second from the engine block to the chassis. |
The tailshaft cable grounds the drivetrain directly to the battery for efficient starts. The chassis-to-engine cable grounds the chassis and grounding wires to the battery via the drivetrain. |
Jason then installed the remote-mount toggle switch to the solenoid. We're illustrating that without exposing our clever and ingenious location. We know a scoundrel or two would like to know where we located it, but we ain't tellin' nobody. |
Dennis suggested that we test our electrical system in a unique way: with a low-amperage battery charger. He has a point: the charger will energize the system so we can check for faulty circuits, but it won't supply enough amperage to fry any fuses if faulty circuits exist. Faulty circuits should deliver poor or no results, but alas, we had none! At first blush it seemed amazing, but we soon came to terms with the fact that our amazing outcome resulted from Painless Performance's comprehensive instructions. It took some time and patience, but it really was a painless install. |