Saturday, August 4, 2007

Step 8: Installing the Compartment Wiring (Incomplete)

*This step is still in progress until I get a part from EA, but I want to get it up now so it is in the proper order. I'll add the rest when I get the part.

Description: Attaching various electrical relays (Main Contactor, Potbox relay, battery negative terminal block, guage/fan terminal block, and interface terminal block) and spaghetti wiring utilizing some of the old wiring for the car.

Tools Needed: Drill, rivnut tool, rivnuts, screws provided...

Estimated Time: Pending

Caveats: Make sure you have all the parts. The holes for rivnuts need to be drilled bigger than 1/2" as described in the manual.


Purpose of this: This is a somewhat tedious procedure, with smaller parts and a lot of wiring. The basic idea is to have a relay station and electrical cutoff for ease and safety. It is mounted to the left side of the engine compartment. It will hook up a lot of new stuff, like fans and guages and will also make use of the original wiring of the car. In truth, I'm not all that sure what some of this stuff does, but I'll update as I figure it out.

Here is the workspace. The two metal supports in the picture used to hold up the fuel injection "computer". I tried to remove them, but I broke a needle nose plier and screwdriver and gave up, deciding to work around them. If necessary, I'll take them off later, but I'm hoping not. The colored wires are original and will be hooked up to this stuff. The brown wires attached to the screw I believe are the ground wires.

The first step is to install the Negative battery terminal. This is done using rivnuts and just screws in (I suppose this is obvious, but the negative terminal is the black one - I must admit I put the red one on first by mistake). I don't know whether this will hook up to the standard 12 volt battery or will be for the the other batteries or what.

Next the Main Contactor is mounted (although it might have to be removed to add the other stuff). They describe this is a safety cutoff for the electric engine, so what else it does, if anything, I don't know.










This is mounted with two rivnuts as shown here and the included mounting hardware screws into those. The taped wire in the background was getting in the way, so I taped it against the wall. I don't know what it is for, but it goes to the back trunk, so may be to open the trunk.
Anyway, here is the main contactor mounted. It is slightly off of where they mounted it in the manual due to the previous mentioned metal supports getting in the way, but I think it will be alright as is.


Next up is the guage/fan terminal block. Thi will presumably be a relay station for wiring of some of the guages and fans. It is mounted above the main contactor.
This is the mounted terminal block. The missing part is the other terminal block, but I use it twice to set up the mounting on the right for the other terminal block (the interface terminal block). It is probably a 3 dollar part and I hope it gets here soon (EA is in their usual casual delivery mode).









Next is the potbox relay. I'm not sure how this interacts with the potbox, but I believe it allows a cut off of the potbox if the acceleration needs emergency stopping. I'll update if that turns out to be wrong.

That's it for this step until I get the other part and begin the spaghetti wiring.


I'm back....

The second terminal block arrived in the mail and I begin the spaghetti wiring:

The next step is to remove the multi-plug that used to hook up to the relay board. You are then left with these connectors, which then are clipped off and stripped to add standard connectors.




These are crimped on with a crimp tool (you can't use the big crimp for the larger guage wiring). No glue necessary, but it takes a little practice to figure out where to crimp. These are then attached to the interface terminal block as seen here. Only some of the wires are used from the original loom. They include things like the oil pressure light, so I assume they will have new purposes when all this is done.


I should point out that I skipped a few steps right here involving some of the wiring that I am just not able to understand in the EA instructions. I am hoping that they will make more sense when I do the second part of the wiring later.

You then hook a few more wires to the main contact and potbox relay, before moving on to the new loom provided in the kit.

This loom is inserted into a piece of "flexguard, which is kind of an eerie material. I found that the recommended 54 (or 51) inches is too long for the loom, but I leave it attached for now. this first hooks up to the controller, then the potbox, then to the terminal blocks where you've been doing the rest of the work. I am still not sure which terminal on the controller is the key switch input terminal (I'm assuming the front of the three) and the two potbox input terminals, since they are not marked. I also don't know whether it matters whether you have the black or white potbox wire connected to a specific terminal (I guess I'll find out).


Anyway, this is where I'm at with the wiring to date.

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