Wiring

Sorry for the time since my last entry. Work has picked up over the summer and when I have a free evening I spend it on the car.

After spending a few years under the OPM tent a several things become obvious. Most are best not shared here but one is that the crew spends more time trouble-shooting electrical problems than anything other than changing tires. Tom will tell you, radios, data, and cool boxes drive him crazy.

Since I'm starting with scratch on this build I decided to do it the right way. This is a great article on how motorsports wiring is done properly:

http://www.rbracing-...wiring_ecu.html

Budget constraints and the GCR will prevent me from going to those extremes, but I wanted to have something that would not embarrass me when the dash is pulled.

I purchased wire, switches, boots, heat shrink, and connectors from here:

http://www.prowireusa.com/

Wire, connectors and switches are all mil-spec. Raychem heat-shrink boots and DR-25 is as trick as it gets.

My first project was the data cable to the Traqmate. These connections are quite delicate so once connected I built a mold and filled the entire thing with epoxy. A Raychem boot then finished the connector.





The other end is a quick-release connector that was assembled similarly: soldered, epoxy'd, and Raychem boot.






The main switch panel has separate circuits for cool shirt, dash, data, radio, and aux (currently supplying the transponder but available for future stuff). Main power to the board is from the power window circuit off the fuse box (20A). Each individual circuit has a Klixon circuit breaker and a sealed mil-spec toggle. connectors are crimped, soldered, then heat-shrunk. Here's the back of the main panel.





Instrument and sensor wiring was treated similarly.




I think I ended up with 12 wires just for data and warning lights.





Here's the final switch panel.