I do not envy you at this point. I love a well finished wiring job, but it is tedious work!
I do not envy you at this point. I love a well finished wiring job, but it is tedious work!
Awesome plan and great documentation will pay off in spades. Thanks for sharing.
You X1/9 people have me really thinking...
Really productive couple of days on the Fiat. As I've learned from the Nelsons, if I have five minutes, I do five minutes of work on the car. More work travel coming up, so I'm trying to get as far as I can while I'm home. Shifted back to mechanical work because I need the engine in place to layout my wiring harness.
Not a lot of photos to show for the following tasks:
I got the newly balanced flywheel bolted up using some fancypants ARP bolts. Lubed & locktite'd:
Downside to the big 12 point heads: I had to modify a socket to fit. 
Ground the outer edge to fit between the neighboring bolt heads.
Bright spot in the process: the factory flywheel lock for a Classic SAAB 900 or 99 bolts up PERFECTLY to the flywheel of the Fiat engine. A buddy of mine makes these - I already told him the good news, and that he needs to ramp up production. 
Clutch bolted up:
The nice clean tin that keeps crap from falling into the clutch from a 4 speed does NOT fit on a 5 speed. Didn't know that. It fits fine everywhere but the starter. So I cut the starter part off.
Then I needed to make a retainer clip to hold the throwout bearing in place on the arm.
Mated up the trans. Way easier to put together than to take apart as it turns out.
Seems like every threaded hole in this engine is at least a little buggered. But I am picky about my threads...The top rear transmission bolt hole in the block had a chunk of bolt sheared off deep inside. There's plenty of threads left in the block for me to still bolt up, but I had to use a short stack of washers. 
Then this happened:
Engine is in, and wiring layout continues.
sick
Looking good. Those throttle bodies are the sex 
Back on the road this week, so progress comes to a screeching halt. I had a few minutes before I left earlier in the week, so I did a few minutes worth of work.
Mocked up coil locations. I posted a pic of a coil mount bracket I'd made earlier in the thread, but it wasn't going to serve my purpose here with the Fiat. $25 on eBay later, I got this slick bracket for well under what it would cost me to make in materials alone. It'll fit nicely on the firewall here. 
Need to make some spacers so I don't squish the firewall insulation and then punch more holes in the sheet metal to mount it. Second, the wire harness I've got won't work well. It'll work, but not well. I might make a new one, but I need to order four more connectors.
The five speed shifter that came in the box of spares included in the original car purchase had a ton of rust pitting. I chucked it up in the drill press and smoothed it out. Thoroughly cleaned the mechanism, lubed and reassembled. Here it is painted and polished:
Going to leave the stock four speed knob on for now. But I'll be on the lookout for a classic black ball knob like this labeled as a five speed.
Stock four speed shifter was chrome, and frankly the chrome looks better than black. But I'm not buying another shifter just to stay chrome.
Nice. I'd be tempted to put it in the lathe again to sand and polish it until it is a mirror finish. Clear coat it and you're good to go.
So you're saying you're not a fan of the "beer tap" shift knob on the later 5-speed cars?
Its so 70's it hurts. Literally. What a terrible solution for the shift knob.
Example of the terrible knob:
BTW, there's a nice 5-speed option available from VickAuto:
http://www.vickauto.com/newstore/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5_7_65
Shifter looks good.
Chucked it up in the drill press... Dang it if you machinist types have a broader view of things. Makes me feel spatially inadequate.
VWguyBruce said:Shifter looks good.
Chucked it up in the drill press... Dang it if you machinist types have a broader view of things. Makes me feel spatially inadequate.
I have no idea how people get anything done without machine tools, even simple ones. All of my machine tools are War era, but effective.
Managed to steal a few hours away from mom this weekend. I'm in Canada all week for work again, so I made the most of the little time I had.
Started with making a list of what wires need to be in each run, and a breakdown of all the terminations expected at each bus. People more comfortable with wiring probably wouldn't have to do all these steps, but since this is something I'm using as a "growth opportunity", I need to put extra effort into careful planning.
Stuff like this doesn't win many internet points because it doesn't make very visible progress in the photos. But I'm ecstatic with how much I got done. Painted up my bus bars to color code them for purpose. I'll have a ground bus, sensor +5v bus, and a sensor ground bus. I started cutting wire and laying it into runs.
Pro tip: use velcro cable ties to layout your harness. They aren't suitable for a finished harness, but they make life really easy as you're constantly adding and subtracting wires from bundles. Cheap pro tip: ask an IT guy for his stash of velcro cable ties - they've usually got a whole roll of them, and the cut-to-length flavor is the best for this work.
After another two hours of laying wires into runs, I got to here:
Slack for service loops and careful routing with abrasion and service in mind. I'm almost ready to loom up for real. I ran out of brown wire for sensor grounds, so more on order this week.
I need to add vacuum ports to my intake manifold, but I couldn't find any threaded fittings that were small enough for what I wanted to do. So I bought some brass tube and I'm planning to just press/epoxy them into holes I'll drill in the manifold.
Needed to make sure I could put a little bead on the tube end to retain the hose. I don't have a bubble flare tool, so I gave it a light 37* AN flare and then did a little hammer work to roll the edge. That'll work.
I'll drill up the manifold this coming weekend and see how it works.
Mezzanine said:Pro tip: use velcro cable ties to layout your harness. They aren't suitable for a finished harness, but they make life really easy as you're constantly adding and subtracting wires from bundles.
That would have been useful a couple years ago while I was wiring up the racetruck....so much time peeling and relooping electrical tape...
In reply to gumby :
I think you might have just made me set a goal to avoid the use of ANY electrical tape on this job. After stripping away some of the factory tape and getting that sticky goo on me, I'm soundly in the "no thanks" camp.
Mezzanine said:In reply to gumby :
I think you might have just made me set a goal to avoid the use of ANY electrical tape on this job. After stripping away some of the factory tape and getting that sticky goo on me, I'm soundly in the "no thanks" camp.
Harness wrap will be your friend when you are done. It's not sticky, but will cover up everything you have. Or you can use some kind of braided cover- which is what I did on my race car. Nice, and easy to find wires when I need it.
Since I'm stuck a million miles away from my car, I'm doing work that will make things go more quickly when I'm home. With all the wires and sensors and stuff to deal with, I'm making some very simple visual guides to help me make my terminations go smoothly.
Images for above drawings all shamelessly stolen from the internet. Cooper Bussmann illustrations and photo credit goes to the excellent guides created at http://www.bodenzord.com/archives/579.
Holy E36 M3, wiring a car takes soooo many hours of work. Or maybe I'm just slow. I put a lot of time into the car this weekend and last. I'm home for a few days, so I should be able to get some stuff completed. My daughter has been hanging out in the car as I work. She sits in the driver's seat while I work on wiring in the spare tire well behind the passenger seat.
Rivnuts installed to secure the bus bars. These things are great. The tool needs a lot of space to work, but so far it has been very useful.
Here is what has been taking up most of the time: looming the wires. Here's how I did it.
Start with a bundle of wires.
I'm spot tying, aircraft style. A friend in the aerospace industry slipped me a very detailed manual that isn't for public eyes...I've put those lessons to good use. Tying with lacing tape (essentially heavy waxed string) takes longer than using zip ties, but it makes a slightly smaller lump in your harness and there's no risk of blood sacrifice when you brush your arms against a string tie unlike a zip tie with the end cut slightly longer than flush. Other advantage is that tying with string makes a MUCH tighter bundle than zip ties. Here's the knot I use:
I actually wrap the string around the bundle twice before feeding it through the sheet bend shown in the photo.
Next, snug the string up. I wrap the ends around these Allen wrenches in order to pull really tight.
Pull really hard. Then tie off with a square knot and trim the ends. Keep the wires trained really nicely so it's pretty. Repeat:
Or don't worry as much about making it pretty because it doesn't matter:
Once a run is tied up, now you can start covering it up to protect the wires. Slide braided loom over all the runs and branches, starting at the biggest cluster of wires and working your way out. At each branch, I used double wall adhesive lined heat shrink for the junctions. One on each leg thusly:
Then cover the braid AND the junction tubes with a bigger sleeve of heat shrink:
Don't shrink the tubes until you've got the downstream braided loom slid into place on each leg. Repeat eleventy-billion times.
To take a break from loom activities, I started making some terminations. I used some Deutsch connectors in the spare tire well - these allow me to break the main harness from the car without de-pinning my power distribution center. The whole loom is designed to be removable. I'd say tool-less, but I have all the ring terminals at the Bus. Those and all the adel clamps holding the wires in place. 
I guess the removability part is somewhat moot.
I've heard from people that Deutsch connectors are where it's at, and now I can see why. Of all the connectors I've terminated, the differences aren't all that significant except in one area: on the Deutsch, the pins are round and don't need to be clocked at all. This makes it a good deal easier to get the wires in the loom lay nicely and it saves you from adding stress to the wires before you've even put them into service. Also, a common seal allows you to easily organize which wire goes to which cavity. You can see that I've got the braided loom pulled back while I terminate here.
First set of terminations done...just 142 left to go.
The "wire bay" as I've taken to calling my spare tire well is coming together:
Spare tire still fits and doesn't actually touch any of the wiring. Tons of room.
Moved on to my power distribution module. I started putting in all the jumpers to feed switched power to relays and main feeds across from the fuses.
Then I took it all back out because I forgot to put the seals on the wires. Rookie.
I had to "customize" my panel in one area. I needed the fuel pump relay ground to be fed from the ECU - this is how the ECU controls the fuel pump. That would be fine, except that I'm using the internal bus on the relay side as a ground. So I opened up the box and snipped the ground from the last relay slot. That meant that I had to pot the terminal pin in place with epoxy since there was no provision for manually adding pins in that slot. I'm pretty confident in the finished product, but I hope to install the relay and not mess with it. Don't want to push my luck by pushing a relay on and off of those pins.
There's a rubber grommet on the steel at the firewall penetration. No photo of the wires loomed and strain relieved, but here is everything wired at least:
Service loop on the spare tire well side will be secured with adel clamps. The loop is long enough to allow you to pull the power distribution module out a little and service it easily.
Really cool stuff! I'm trying to get my head to accept the string tying as better; it might take a little while. Similarly, trying to really accept that cranking down super-tight is good. I guess unless it was something soft like the silicon insulated wires I used to use on R/C cars, cutting through isn't as much a concern as wearing through from motion allowed by not being tight enough...
When I need a break from wires, there's plenty of other stuff to work on. Brackets for example. Let's get the coils mounted, yes?
Turned down some aluminum stock to make spacers for the mount. Can't be smashing all that nice firewall insulation with the coil bracket. I also cut all the tape off of the GM coil harness I'm using and repositioned everything to fit my installation better. It's a giant wad of wires, but it's cleaned up with a little friction tape, some split braided loom, and some heat shrink.
Installed:
Time to make the sync sensor bracket. This will read a tiny little tooth I'll be adding to my cam sprocket. Needed to clearance the cam carrier a little to make room:
I used two pieces of aluminum to save some time. Side bonus: if I skim too much metal off of the spacer to get the sensor clearance just right, I can make another more easily than making the whole bracket over again. Or I could just use some shims. 
All mounted up. The pictures are a little deceiving - there's plenty of room around the sensor and connector. I can remove both without interfering with anything around it.
In reply to Ransom :
Maybe string tying isn't better? I like it, but it's not for everyone. Silicon insulation will definitely deform if you squeeze the crap out of it. The TXL stuff I'm using takes it well, and with the string double wrapped, the load is distributed evenly. Once tied, they definitely won't be chafing against each other.
Here's one way to do it: http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles/cable_lace/cable_lace.html
My method is similar to his.
The string method is fine, your work looks good although I normally see it with a continuous string running between loops, like the examples shown on this page: http://okigihan.blogspot.com/p/lacingand-tying-wire-bundles-wire.html Are there some sort of covers for those bus bars? I assume one of them is +12 volts, so it would be good to prevent it from touching anything metal.
Spectacular documentation of what I'm sure will be a sanitary installation. Thank you for sharing.
In reply to stuart in mn :
Yes, covers on the +5v sensor bus (orange) and the sensor ground (brown).
And thanks for the link on continuous loops - I tried a few continuous loop samples, but I just wasn't coordinated enough to make it happen. The main distinction is that I planned to cover mine in braided loom, so it didn't really matter. Add to that, the heat shrink at all the junctions is serving as strain relief and constraint, so it's really belt and suspenders time.
Thanks so much for the comments everyone - I keep this thread for my own records, but it's also so nice to know it might provide some value to others.
I'll be in my bunk
Does your daughter still draw you pictures while you work?
If so, please tell me you've kept all the pictures from beginning to end so we can have an epic slide show to watch when the car turns its first wheel in anger.
(*Was going to say "when the project is finished" but who would I be kidding?)
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