Install InVIRONMENT Circuit 1/3

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Major System Category: ISIS Wiring
Task: Interface ISIS inVIRONMENT module
Parts:

1. ISIS inVIRONMENT kit (controller, wiring harness, wire splices).
2. Vintage Air Power and ECU Harness
3. Vintage Air ECU

Power Cell: 1
Circuit: 3 - LIGHT GREEN
Master cell: WHITE/GREEN
Prerequisite Tasks: Vintage Air Gen IV installed
Additional Costs: $435
Time Requirement: 6 hours (It should only take 2 - 3 hours)
Date Started: April 14, 2013
Date Completed: April 20, 2013

The inVIRONMENT Controller kit is designed to provide absolute control of the Vintage Air Gen IV HVAC system via the inTOUCH MAX touch screen control system. If you have gotten to this page, then you have committed to the following:

1. Microprocessor controlled power system.
2. Jettisoned the Factory Five kit's Painless Wiring Kit.
3. Purchased the optional Air Conditioning Unit.
4. Probably have figured (albeit too late) that the evaporator should be installed first. 
5. Committed to the entire ISIS concept.

inVIRONMENT kit: The green cables are the ISIS data bus cables, other cable pack interface to the Vintage Air ECU, a packet of butt splice and heat shrink wrap, controller module.

I used bolts to secure the top cover above the evaporator unit. When it became obvious I needed to get back into the area, I unbolted the cover and slid the vent hoses through the access slots.I also had to disconnect the front parking sensors.

14 pin Vintage Air connector from the harness to the Vintage Air ECU.

The Vintage Air Gen IV ECU has two ports: a 14 pin port for the Vintage Air harness and a 12 pin port that the ISIS harness can plug into. The first problem is the ECU is secured by a metal bracket and the ports are jammed up against the passenger foot well inner wall. I didn't like this because it forces the wires on both harnesses to be bent in order to fit. I pried off the metal bracket holding the ECU in place and repositioned it at a 45 degree angle. I used automotive goop to secure it to the top of the evaporator unit. This allows the harnesses to easily be plugged in and out.

ISIS Photo. This shows the Vinyage Air ECU with both cables attached. The left cable is the 14 pin  Vintage Air harness. The right cable is the 12 pin ISIS cable. You can see the metal bracket that holds the ECU in place.

The Vintage Air harness is pretty stiff. This harness has two relays: one for the heater control valve and one for the AC compressor.I fabricated a acrylic mounting plate and riveted the relays to the plate. I fed the stiff wires for the ECU harness into the space above the evaporator unit. These are the portion of the harness that plugs into the power and ECU ports. I dug up the Vraptor stereo close out panel and put in place. I needed to ensure there was room to mount the relay blocks below the panel. I mounted using epoxy about an inch below the close out panel on a vertical chassis member.

Modified location of the Vintage Air ECU above the evaporator unit. It is at a 45 degree angle and the bracket is discarded. Orientation: left side is towards front. Top is the passenger side foot well wall. I secured the Vintage Air ECU with Automotive Goop.

The ISIS instructions direct you to do following:

1. Plug the 12 pin connector into the Vintage Air ECU.
2. Plug the 4 pin connector into the power/ground port on the inVIRONMENT controller.
3. Plug the 5 pin connector into the output port on the inVIRONMENT controller.
4. Splice the purple wire from the Vintage Air ECU into the ignition circuit. In my case, this circuit 1/3 from power cell #1.

This is the main data cable for the ISIS system. I have exposed the 7 wires in the cable. The red and white positive and negative terminal cables are running in the blue wire loom. This is hanging loose until a install the battery (sometime in late summer 2014).

This is all straight forward, although, it took me a while to get to this point. The final step is to splice the data bus cable from the inVIRONMENT controller into the main data bus cable that enables the master cell to communicate to the power cells. This is where things got interesting.

These are the relays on the Vintage Air Harness. I riveted them to a clear  acrylic square. This  does two things. It makes it easy to handle the relays, and it ensures I don't have directly attach them, to the chassis. This is a really cheap and easy way to handle things like this.

The data bus cable runs from power cell #1 to power cell #2 inside the tunnel. Therefore, it goes right past the evaporator unit. I cranked the car up on the lift, find the data bus cable and expose the 7 wires inside. I have 2 white, 2 light blue, 2 light green and a violet wire. The instructions direct you to splice blue to blue, green to green and black to black. Uh-oh - no black. On top of that that, ISIS is a rigidly color coded system. Time for a email to tech support (it was around 10 PM, dark, cold and snowing again!!!). Actually this turned into 3 or 4 emails to tech support. They're probably rolling their eyes, but the inVIRONMENT kit costs $400+ and the entire ISIS set up is going to run north of $5000. I figure I'm entitled to a couple dumb user emails.

Spliced violet wire to the ignition wire  circuit. This how the ECU and controller receive power. 

Jay Harris answered questions, provided a PDF technical document on how the main data bus is wired. I don't think I waited more than four hours for any response. The guy never sleeps! ISIS is worth  every penny when you have that kind of support! The answer is to go back to a power cell, unclip the yellow data bus connector and open her up. The yellow connect is secured by two little ears. Be careful not to snap one of these off. Inside the connector are the 7 wires that are wired into the 8 pin (RJ45 looking connector). Inscribed inside the connector is B1 and B8. The wires are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 on top (the B1 row) and 5, 6, 7, 8 on bottom (the B8 row).

ISIS documentation. This shows the lay out of the wires in the ISIS data cable. 

Decode this as follows:

1. Pin 5 is black (violet on my cable).
2. Pin 6 is green (white on my cable)
3. pin 7 is blue (light green on my cable)
4. pin 8 (light blue on my cable)

These wires are part of the Vintage Air Harness. Blue goes to the AC Compressor and Green runs to the heater control valve/

I am really glad I stopped, because had I blundered ahead, I would have wired this up wrong.

I spliced the data bus cables together. I used wire loom to protect the inVIRONMENT data bus and snaked this down the passenger side between the foot well wall and the evaporator unit, then ran it along side the drain tube until I reached the main data bus cable.

ISIS inVIRONMENT controller mounted with double sided tape above the evaporator unit. There is room in this area to hide things. I also have a 2 inch PVC conduit running between the passenger and driver side for wires. As you can see I use wire loom to protect everything. There is plenty supplied with the kit, but if you are running lots of circuits, you will run out. I found the best deal is at Harbor Freight.

The final touches:

1. The Vintage Air blue and green wires (heater control valve and AC Compressor) are loomed to together and run out the back of the tunnel.
2. The Vintage Air red and white wires (there are 2 white wires) are loomed together and run to the battery (not installed yet). There is a 30 amp fuse block that needs to be mounted, but I want to connect things up to the battery first. 

GTM AC Duct routing

<< GTM AC Evaporator                                                      Next Link >>

Major System Category: AC & Cooling System
Task: Run the ducts
Parts: Duct tubing
Prerequisite Tasks:

• Locate the finished dash.

Additional Costs: N/A
Time Requirement: 60 minutes
Date Started: August 12, 2012
Date Completed: August 12, 2012
This is probably the simplest AC task. It is certainly something that should be done before closing up the evaporator unit. (I did this before descending into the evaporator hard line issue, which ate up the rest of the day!)

Driver's side dash temporarily mounted with clamps. This is so I could measure how far I needed to run the  ducts from the evaporator unit.

Passenger side dash. It is starting to look and feel like a car. Unfortunately, these went back into storage as soon as I had it measured. Dead center in the photo is the back end of the evaporator unit. Those are the heater ducts coming out the back end.

These are all the ducts for the defroster and the AC. The two reached towards the top of the photo are the defroster ducts. The rest of them run to the center and ends of the cockpit. Orientation: Passenger side cockpit looking towards the front of the car.

The fun part is getting the finished dash pieces and fitting them together. This is the easiest way to measure the length of hose needed for each vent. The manual identifies the AC, defroster and heater vents. The evaporator unit has eight vents. I recommend using a small screw driver to ensure the flexible duct sides over the vent opening and over the tabs. I further recommend using zip ties to secure the duct tubing. This goes fairly easily.

GTM A/C Evaporator Kit

<< Coolant lines                                  Install InVIRONMENT - Circuit 1/3  >>

Major System Category: AC & Cooling System
Task: Mount the evaporator unit
Parts: Vintage Air Evaporator unit. (It is the big thing with a bunch of ducts coming off it)
Prerequisite Tasks:

• Dismantle the passenger foot well
• Disconnect the passenger side front brake line

Additional Costs: N/A
Time Requirement: 60 minutes to bolt this into place. Longer if dismantling is required.
Date Started: August 4, 2012
Date Completed: August 4, 2012
Consideration: This needs to be done before the passenger foot well is installed, and probably, before the front passenger brake is run. However, it is good to have the hard and soft coolant lines run in order judge clearance.

Vintage Air Evaporator unit. SOmehow I need to get this mounted in the GTM.

I didn't know about this handy little item until it came time to unpack the Vintage AC system. This is a big box, and I sat there staring at everything, wondering where and how it was going to fit inside the GTM. This is definitely a time to plug Vraptor Speedworks. One of the items I purchased last December was the AC Plenum relocation part. I knew it made sense at the time, but I really didn't have an appreciation for how much sense it made! This item relocates the blower motor to the passenger footwell and recycles inside air instead of outside. It also eliminates this HUGE cowl.

I removed the panels common to the tunnel, but this did not give me the clearance I needed to swing the evaporator unit in  and out. I removed triangular piece (this has to be modified for the plenum) and the three fold piece. With these removed I could easily swing the unit in and out. Orientation: passenger foot well.

I ended up drilling out the rivets on four panels connected to the passenger side footwell. I have to say (shameless plug here) that my panels were really solidly installed. It took work to get them off the car! Once the footwell is dismantled, it is an easy thing to swing the evaporator in and out of the tunnel. It sits above the hard coolant lines, and there needs to be some clearance.

This is the rear of the evaporator unit. The hard coolant lines are running under neath. I used the clamp to get an idea of where it should rest. Orientation: Passenger side front third of the tunnel.

This is the Factory Five replacement bracket. I bolted the bracket onto the evaporator unit (not seen) and  slid the  bracket upwards until it was flush with the tunnel cross member. orientation: Passenger side front third of tunnel. 

Front bracket on the evaporator unit.  It is too wide for the GTM chassis. I drilled new holes and installed rivnuts. The excess needs to be cut off.

The front bracket for the evaporator is wider than the cross member it rests on. The excess will need to be trimmed. I plan to do that later. The rear bracket is replaced with the Factory Five bracket. The trick I discovered here was to bolt the end of the bracket in place, and slide it up until outside of the becomes flush with the tunnel cross member. Once I had that position, I put a clamp under the bracket, and riveted the bracket in place.

Rear bracket riveted in place. Unit installed. The passenger side footwell remains dismantled.

I marked the front bracket for rivnuts. The slots for attachment do not work since they drop into open space on the other side of the chassis cross member. I drilled new holes and bolted the unit into place.

Consideration: before you even think about the AC Plenum or buttoning things up, go find the hard lines for the AC. Once everything is tight, there is ABSOLUTELY NO ROOM TO WORK ON THESE.

Hard lines off the Evaporator. You can see the accumulator bolted above the steering rack. I think this is easier to do from below, because you don't have to fight the cross member where the evaporator bracket is bolted.  In both cases there are two nuts that need to be tightened.  In this photo they are hidden by the cross member. Orientation: Taken from above. Left side is towards the front of car. Right side is towards cockpit.

Unfortunately, I learned the hard way about the coolant lines. I installed the AC plenum relocation and bolted down the evaporator unit. The cross member that the evaporator unit is attached to interferes with connecting the hard coolant lines. BTW: The instructions at this point are vague (that's putting it kindly). I ended up drilling out the rivets on the AC Plenum, unbolting the evaporator unit and standing under the car to get the hard lines installed. This is a major pain. I plan to leave everything loose until this beast is in place.

Issue: Remember to put the O rings in and grease them with refrigerant oil.

This the O ring for one of the hard lines (and my thumb).

Issue: If the evaporator ever needs maintenance or replacement, this is going to be a major job. I think the footwell needs to be as solid as possible. Therefore, it needs to be riveted back into place.

With the evaporator in place, I depart from the manual's instructions. This is when I install the AC Plenum Relocation pieece, and change the location of the motor.