Wiring Part 1

I have called this post Wiring Part 1 but I probably should have called it Fabrication because that is how I spent most of my time the last three days.  Fabrication and trying to figure out where to put the ECU, the wiring harness, and all the wires! 

I finally decided on mounting the ECU in front of the front roll hoop where the dash was installed.  I don't need the old dash because I'm going to have a data system and will have a display on the steering wheel.  So, the first thing I had to do was make a plate to mount it on and I needed to make some brackets to secure it to the plate.  I had some thin 1/2" steel so I bent that so that it was a bit larger than the ECU with the plan of filling the gaps with some rubber strips which will minimize some of the vibration and also hold the ECU very securely. 

I installed some 10-32 nutcerts into the aluminum plate so that I could use 10-32 screws to hold the ECU in place.  There are 4 posts that the dash mounted to but unfortunately they were a little too long for this application because I wanted to use rubber standoffs to minimize vibration.  The standoffs were 3/4" long and unfortunately that length was about 1/2" too long so I cut off 1/2" of the posts.  I also had to trim the screw portion of two standoffs a little bit.  I trimmed the plate down and used countersunk screws to mount it to the standoffs.

Here is a pic of the ECU mounted.

And another pic to show the standoffs.

Here is a pic of the switch panel that came with the car which has an ignition switch, a rain light switch, and a starter button.

This is fine but I also need to install a fuel pump switch and I personally like to have a few lights installed to tell me when the ignition is on, the rain light is on, and I might even put one in to tell me when the fuel pump is on.  In order to get all that in, I needed a dash again!  So it was time to start fabricating again.  I wanted to mount this dash on the cockpit side of the front roll hoop.  This turned out to be a little tricky because the cross member above my legs is actually set back about 1/2" from the top of the roll hoop.  The first thing I did was make it out of poster board.

And here is the finished dash.

I again installed nutcerts in the frame so I could mount it with 10-32 screws.  I'm also going to paint it black.
All the fabrication really took a lot of time!  Even though I had three days to work on the car, it doesn't seem like I got much done but I should be able to get a lot more wiring done next weekend.