Wiring Part 3

I'm happy to say that I'm done with the wiring!  However, I did change some things since the last blog.  The more I thought about the terminal blocks, the more I didn't like them because I think they would be too exposed to moisture.  So, I decided to run everything through the Weather Pack connectors.  For the ground connections, I just connected 6 pins together and then plugged them all into the plastic housing.

I did the same thing for a couple of the power connections (like for the data acquisition switch) but the other connections were signals coming through the HPD wiring harness so I just had to make sure that they matched up to the appropriate dash wires.  I also had to include a couple of two pin connectors using this approach.  Here is a pic of the finished dash.

You may have also noticed that the indicator lights on the dash have changed.  The LED lights were protruding a little too much from the dash for my liking and I was concerned that my fingers would hit them.  Plus, I had dropped the rain light indicator LED light and that stopped working so I used a blue light that I had already for that and went to radio shack and bought a couple of flush mounted green LED lights.  One being for ignition and one being for the fuel pump.

The other thing that I ended up changing was the location of the wiring harness.  I did have it going through the inside of the car next to my left knee but I discovered that it would fit between the chassis and the bodywork so that saves me some room inside.  Here is a pic of the wiring with the dash mounted.  The only thing that I did after this shot was to wrap electrical tape around the ignition and fuel pump switches.

Btw, in order to check the wiring, I did as many continuity checks as I could think of to make sure everything would work when power was supplied.  I didn't take pictures of this but the connection to the data acquisition system uses very small pins that plug into a HPD supplied connector.  The pins are very similar to the Weather Pack pins except they are much smaller.  My crimper didn't work with those so I crimped as best as I could with needle nose pliers and then soldered the wires to the pins.  I made sure that I plugged them into the right spots because they are apparently very hard to remove once they are plugged in.  I was able to install my AIM EV04 Data Acquisition System hardware (minus all the non HPD sensors) and test a few things as a result.  I could see that the ECU was talking to the data acquisition system because I was able to see things like oil temp, water temp, throttle position, etc.  So, that tells me that I have probably wired it correctly!  Here is a teaser photo of the AIM EV04 system with a separate data hub and a channel expansion unit -- there is lots more on this to come!