General Progress and Engine Harness
The last couple weeks have largely been spent organizing, cleaning, and selling parts from the old black car. That took an unexpected amount of time, though I’ve been pleased with the results. I’ve recouped around 1800$ from parts selling, the frame is gone from my possession, and I still have a couple shelves of stuff left to sell. The time setback is annoying, as it’s going to be 2012 before I even get into the new car, but everything always goes slow in a car build. I keep reading Jason Rhoades’ STX build blog and seeing how much worse it could really be. I’m still waiting on any word back from the Oregon DMV, so the new car’s now just sitting untouched in my garage, waiting for some sign that I do legally own it.
At least some things are still moving forward. I dropped all of the motor parts off at the machine shop a week ago, so I’ll have a built 99 motor ready to go sometime relatively soon. I also managed to stumble upon a great deal for Quaife gearsets, so I’ve ordered a set of the wide ratio Quaife gears, which are going to go straight to Advanced Autosports, who will rebuild a 94-97 tranny with them, and I should only be out around 2700$ for what should be a brand new bulletproof gearbox when all is said and done. The 1.8 rear end is at Chase Race getting the OS Giken differential installed onto a 4.3 ring and pinion and he’s pressing the ABS rings installed onto the axles as well. So, the non-supercharger-related portions of the drivetrain are coming together nicely.
While waiting for some long-running SQL queries today, I decided to dig into the wiring harnesses a bit. I have the 93 LE California front harness spread out on the floor, I’ve bought an 05 MSM front harness (for a number of useful connectors), and the 93 LE engine harness is also there. The front harness is going to be a giant hassle, as I need to tear apart both front harnesses, remove a bunch of wiring from the 93 harness, add a bunch of wiring from the 05 harness, and add more custom wires yet for the coil on plug conversion I’m doing. I’m still waiting on a shop manual that I ordered to know what the 05 wiring harness consists of, but I thought I should get the ball rolling on the engine harness.
The engine harness usually runs along the intake side of the engine, all the way down the transmission/PPF, into the trunk, where the battery is. In the factory configuration, there’s a big cable (~6 gauge) that runs the whole length (~10 feet) to connect the battery from the trunk to the electronics in the engine bay. I’ve picked up a tiny 2.5 lb lithium battery to use for the car, so it seemed silly to bother running a cable that weighs more than that just to run it to the trunk. So, I tore into the harness, removed all the various clips and such, the one airbag sensor wire, and cut off most of the battery wire to the trunk.
I’m not positive where I’m going to mount the battery yet in the engine bay, so I wanted to leave myself a little wiggle room. There’s probably another half pound that can come off it if I put the battery where I suspect I will (near the fusebox), but that’ll be easy down the line anyway. The harness went from 5.22 lb down to 2.46 lb. Easy weight reduction, and simplifying the electrical system while I’m at it.
The next two projects are the front harness and finalizing the radiator/intercooler/intake manifold setup so I can get BEGi started on the fabrication.
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