<< Fender Louvers next >> Major System Category: Body (Hood/Shell) Task: Clean up all issues on hood through primer Parts: Primer (6 - 8 cans), Primer Sealer ( 4 cans) Prerequisite Tasks: Additional Costs: 150 - $190 Time Requirement: 70 - 90 hours Date Started: July 10, 2013
Date Completed: July 27, 2013
There are no short cuts here. If you don't want to do this part of the build, then farm it out.
This is close to the final version of the hood. It is basically how I spent my summer vacation. I used steel wool as a final stage prior to sealing the primer. This smooths it down close to a glass like surface. It has been a long journey to this point, but I found I kind of liked the body work and I'm glad I didn't panic and farm it out.
The body work is the area that most intimidates me (not that I'm not intimidated about dropping in an engine and hooking up a seven speed transaxle). The hood presents many challenges:
If you peruse the Factory Five Forums, you start hearing that the car vanishes for weeks and months before it come back finally painted and finished. There is a princely sum associated with the work, and if it comes in under $15,000, it probably is a bargain. There is a ton of work that needs to be performed to get the car ready for paint.
This is an early photo from 9/27/2012. I just brought the hood back from my neighbor's garage. This looks deceptively easy. The surface is smooth. At this point, I didn't know the grille opening is not centered or that the hood is off by 3/4" or that the Factory Five hood louvers are really sub standard and that I would end up purchasing the Vraptor hood louvers. Ignorance is bliss.
The seams and the fender louvers present the greatest challenge. You can't simply grind down the excess material on the seams and say good enough. There are the following issues:
I spent more time getting the fender louvers right than anything else on the hood. This is the louver before I did anything to it. I expected the left and right louvers to be identical. They are not. I expected them to line up nicely. They did not. I am happy I have them, but they are very labor intensive. I spent man weeks getting these right.
The pieces connected by the seam are uneven, so grinding everything down to a even plane removes too much material.
The seam needs to have a fiber glass strip to strengthen the area, and this just takes time.
The hood has seams running from edges closest to the cockpit to forward the wheel wells, then down. There is another seam that runs across the front of the car over the grill.
Fender louver add a further complication, because they need to be feathered into the rest of the hood, and there are cuts required to make them functional.
This another early photo (9/29/2012) with the Factory Five hood louvers and fender louvers taped in place. I used a cross hatch laser level to figure things. It is sitting at the bottom center on a small tripod. The best way to describe mounting the hood is that there are 100 ways to put the hood on and I settled on the 101st way. Someone who came by to see the car, asked if I intended to take the hood off when I painted the car. I popped open the hood and showed them how it was mounted, then explained, "It is never coming off again."
If you add DRLs, then these need to be custom cut and smoothed out.
Another non-standard mod are my DRLs. I had to cut into the hood just below the grille. These took some time, but eventually I got them mounted properly. It was only later that I realized I had to make them pretty. I might have to do some more work here before everything is perfect.
I think it is easier to do this work with the hood connected to the car, and the car on a lift. This configuration provides a stable platform for the sanding process (and you will do beaucoup sanding).
This is several months later (6/27/2013). The seams are pretty rough at this point. Someone asked me on the Factory Five forum why I bothered fiber glassing the seams, because other builders just ground them down. Yes, you need to get rid of the extra bonding material, but remember we are talking about the strength of the body here on a high performance car. I applied Bondo, fiber glass, more Bondo and sanded and more Bondo and more sanding... Well you get the idea. I have to say that when the front seam blended into the rest of the body I was amazed. At that point, I knew the only standing between myself and a completed car was me.
I use the following products to get the hood prepped:
This product is phenomenal. The can has two chambers: 1 for primer, 1 for fixer. You shake it up for 2 minutes, then pop a button on the bottom of the car. This opens the barrier between the primer and the fixer. Then you shake it for 2 more minutes. Now you have the perfect mix (every time) withe professional fan spray nozzle.
A friend commented that there was a lot of nasty Bondo to sand down. He wasn't wrong. I bonded the fender louver to the body using 3M's 8115 panel bond. I then fiber glassed the edges of the louver to the hood. I then spent many evenings feathering the louver into the hood. My bride asked me if I had bitten off more than I could handle. I admitted that might be true. I certainly wondered if this would ever look right.
Once I was satisfied with the primed surface, I went over it with steel wool to eliminate any "pebbly" surface distortions, then I sealed the hood. This stuff is pretty caustic, so get a respirator and face shield.
<< Fender LouversHood Preparation >> Major System Category: Body (Hood/Shell) Task: Smooth out seams on fiberglass shell Parts: Bondo, fiberglass Prerequisite Tasks: Additional Costs: $30 Time Requirement: 40 -50 hours Date Started: June 20, 2013 Date Completed: July 9, 2013
When the body arrives on the truck, it appears to be a single body. Reality is much different. There are five main body parts:
Hood,
Rear body shell,
Left and right doors
Hatch
Main hood seam. I have the fiber glass cloth just taped in place.
The hood and body shell are delivered as single pieces, but part of the manufacture process involves bonding different parts together. There is a seam along these joints where the bonding compound has been squeezed and forms an uneven ridge. Also the mated pieces are uneven (i.e. the mated pieces are higher or lower than the other side).
Driver's side seam that has been sanded down. The fiber glass strip is gut and sitting above the seam.
The hood seams run over the top of the wheel wells, down to the grill and across the front. If your build includes fender louvers, then handle those first. The fender louvers will cover a good chunk of the top seam over the wheel wells. Some people choose to rivet the fender louvers in place, I used 3M's 8115 panel bond to attached the louvers. Then I feathered the ridge created by the louvers to blend into the hood (this is a lot more work).
Passenger side A pillar seam. This looks pretty rough here. I haven't sanded anything, just have the bondo and fiber glass applied.
The seams are uneven ridges along the body. If you are working with a GTM or some other Factory Five model you will notice these ridges. This is part of the body work necessary to complete the car. Most guys that can afford to build a GTM farm this out, but some of us either decide not to or don't have the money to spare. Fiber glassing the seam basically hides and smooths out these areas It isn't that hard to do and after a while you might even get good at it.
Major amount of work. The front hood seam is fully sanded. The entire hood has been sanded once using the orbital sander and secondly using the Dura Block kit. The hood louvers are easy as they are bonded from inside the hood. The fender louvers are a major time investment.
Recommended tools:
Orbital sander
Dura-Block sanding kit
Bondo and fiberglass material.
Spreaders.
Glazing compound.
I didn't think these were as good as they are. If you plan to work on the body and sanding yourself, then this is a must must buy!
The first thing you need to do is even out the ridge. Some of these ridges are hard and brittle, others can be a little soft. You can use a hand block or a mechanical tool, you just want to be careful about gouging the hood and body shell. Any gouges will need to be repaired. You won't be able to totally eliminate the ridge, because most likely the two pieces that were bonded are an uneven join. Just do the best you can. When you finish no one will see them anyway.
This is the seam that runs the length of the body shell. This is on the passenger side. This car also has a roof scoop, so you can see some of that work running parallel to the body seam.
Cut a strip of fiber glass cloth for the seam you plan to work on. I would start out short and between 3/4 to 1 inch wide.
This is the passenger side rear quarter panel. The seam runs down and under the car. It is one of those awkward spots to work. It also a little loose, because I have the transaxle bracket currently removed from the frame. This bracket provides much needed bracing to the rear body shell.
Mix up some bondo (this stuff can harden up pretty fast, so get ready). For this I sometimes wore a disposable plastic glove and/or a spreader. I found my finger worked pretty well for some areas where it was awkward to use a spreader. I applied the bondo, evened it out as much as possible then, layered the fiber glass strip over it.
Rear quarter panel on the passenger side. It has bondo and fiberglass applied and still requires sanding in this photo. The body work takes a long long time to do.
I let this set up. Usually, 45 to 60 minutes, then I apply a second layer of bondo over the fiber glass strip.
This is the hardest set of seams to work on. They are curved and in a very enclosed area. This is the big brake vent just behind the drivers side door. I saved this for last.
Once this is hardened up, I go to work with the sanding tools. I use the orbital sander to get rid of the excess, then go to work with a block sander by hand. I work on it until it is fairly smooth. I am using 220 grit, although, I understand you can get away with 180 grit.
To get an idea of the success/failure of my body efforts, I test primed the front seam. For the most part this worked. I still have issues around the fender louvers and the area where the seam goes over the front flare. However, this was a big boost to my efforts, because it showed me that I could get the car to a point where the seams are smooth enough for paint.
I keep working the seam until I'm satisfied. This gets to be pretty messy.
I ordered 2 kinds of primer for my seam test. I only applied the rapid primer filler. The other one is an epoxy primer that I will test once I am happy with the seams. I got these at 66 Auto color. This is pretty caustic stuff, so you need a rudimentary paint booth or real good ventilation and a respirator.
I wipe down everything using a microfiber cloth and water to remove the main layer of dust. Then I inspect for deep gouges or holes, and use the glazing compound to sculpt in fixes. I keep going over this until I'm satisfied. I keep working it until it is smooth to the finger test.
The fender louvers continue to cause me issues, but I am confident I came make these blend into the car.
The body work can be pretty intimidating, but wow, a little success can be a real confidence builder. I now see nothing that can prevent me from completing this project.
Prerequisite Tasks: N/A Additional Costs: $205 Power Cell: 1 Circuit: 10 - TAN Master cell: BLUE/GREEN Time Requirement: 3 hours Date Started: April 27, 2013 Date Completed: April 27, 2013
inRESERVE is a battery monitor and kill switch. It monitors battery charge when the car is turned off. Should the battery discharge below a certain point, a solenoid pops and all taps to the battery are killed. As an added level of protection, there is a kill switch that shuts down all power to the car. It seems to me this is also a security feature, because the car can be completely turned off.
This is everything you need for the kit. I found oput I could purchase the cables I needed at Napa Auto Parts, and this proved much easier than fabricating the cable myself.
I mounted the solenoid switch at the center of the front fire wall above the tunnel entrance. Surprisingly, there is plenty of space to work with right here. There are four terminals on the solenoid:
Ground
Kill Switch
Starter/battery
Power cells
This is a nice flat spot about dead on the car's center line to install the inRESERVE module. It allows me to service this from either side of the car.
I ran the ground to the passenger next to where I mounted the horn. I sanded down to bare metal and established a ground point between the horn and the wiper motor. I plan to use this ground point for the horn, wiper motor and inRESERVE solenoid.
This is the driver's side wall next tot he master cylinders and above the steering column. I drilled my hole for the kill switch here. I can access it by reaching over the front tire.
I ran the kill switch lead to the drivers side. I ran the wire around the corner next to the master cylinders and over to the fender wall. I drilled a hole, mounted the kill switch. I put it here, because it allows me to reach through the wheel well over the front tire and toggle the solenoid. The second lead off the switch goes to an inline fuse holder (supplied with the kit). I installed this fuse and ran thee other lead back to the battery terminal.
This is the momentary switch installed. This worked pretty well. You can tighten it down and she should stay put.
The starter/battery terminal handles the following:
Runs the main battery cable from the solenoid to the starter. This takes the battery cable and runs it through the tunnel. There are a lot of things in the tunnel, but I think I am getting to the end.
Runs the battery cable to the battery via a mega fuse,
I remembered I had this piece in the Northern Man Cave. It is pictured here with out the top plate that encloses the evaporator unit or the am from the wiper motor. It is just placed here so I could mount the mega fuse.
The final line sends power to the power and master cells. It does this by running a lead to the mega fuse block for all power cells. It also provides a convenient terminal for taps that go directly to the positive terminal on the battery (e.g. the fused Vintage Air power lead).
This is a top down view of the mega fuse. This sits right behind the master cylinders. For build purposes, i can disconnect the cables form the mega fuse and remove this part.
The lead from the solenoid to the battery is fuses with a mega fuse block. The biggest problem I had was finding some place to put this that could actually be reached in the event it needed maintenance. The main issue is I am running out of flat surfaces to mount stuff like this. It occurred to me that there is a piece that sits above the master cylinder that has a nice flat surface, I mounted the mega fuse here, and I can easily disconnect the cable leads from the mega fuse to remove this piece to get access.
This is the inline fuse that leads to the positive battery terminal. This is a 10 amp fuse between the momentary switch and the battery.
I mounted the inRESERVE module on the center of the panel that is common to the Vintage Air Evaporator unit.
<< Intellitronix Create-A-DashHorn - Circuit 1/9 >> Major System Category: Electronics Task: Wire terminal blocks Parts: Terminal Blocks Prerequisite Tasks: N/A Additional Costs: $12 Time Requirement: 3 hours Date Started: May 19, 2013 Date Completed: May 19, 2013
There are close to 30 wires coming out of the back of the instrument cluster. I had focused exclusively on getting the cluster built that I did not consider what came next. Obviously there is some order to all these wires, I just need to read the instructions that come with the kit to figure where everything goes.
Lots of wires in a bunch of different colors, but they all mean something. Once you understand the meanings, then the pattern becomes clear and the solution is obvious.
Fortunately for me, this is not Intellitronix first shot at wiring instrument clusters together. There are basically five groups of wires:
Ground (black)
Power (red)
Dimmer circuit (purple)
Indicators (various colors)
Sending units (various colors)
The solution is something called daisy chaining (at least that's what it was called 30 years ago). I purchased this terminal block from Radio Shack. I then wired each terminal to the next terminal. This means that a single lead can be run to a grounding point for all wires running in the bottom side of this terminal block. Since these are grounds, i wasn't worried about something arcing over.
There are 9 ground wires, 9 power wires (these can segregated into two groups) and 6 dimmer wires. The ground wires are obvious. They need to be ground to the chassis, but ganging 9 ground wires to a single grounding point is unmanageable. Similarly there are 9 power wires. The six attached to the gauge cluster need to be run to the ignition. There is not enough room on the ignition terminal to run another 6 wires. Finally, the dimmer wires need to be spliced into the head light switch (oops).
This is an insulated terminal block. I used this type of block for everything except the grounds. I daisy chained this block and the one for the dimmer circuit. That way I only had to run 1 lead to each source. This is a much more manageable arrangement.
I purchased three terminal blocks from Radio Shack. For the grounds I could go with an open terminal block. For anything related to positive current, I opted for an insulated terminal block. I discovered I could cut apart the insulated terminal blocks. So I fabricated 2 six wire, 1 five wire and 1 three wire blocks.
From left to right, the dimmer, ground and power terminal blocks. The leads coming in from the top come from each gauge. Plus the ground terminal block also received leads from the signal and high beam indicators. Before I mounted these for real, I clamped everything to my test battery. As long as the gauges lit up, it means my terminal blocks are working properly.
The Factory Five carbon fiber back board curves in. this provides a shelf where the terminal blocks can be mounted. I mounted the terminal blocks using 3M double side tape. I had wire for the power and ground leads, but nothing for the dimmer block. I know I have some wire at the Northern Man Cave, so I'll take care of that when I get back.
The top three wires are leads from the GTM kit supplied indicator lights. The bottom wires are leads from the speedo gauge. Since I have a terminal block, it should be fairly easy to run these leads into the steering column circuit. I probably am going to need another terminal block to handle signals coming from the front and rear of the car.
The speedo gauge has two white wires and a brown wire. The instructions says that the white wires are labeled on the gauge printed circuit board as left and right. In agate-agate you can barely make out something that looks like right. The left and right white wires are connected to the respective turn signals. The brown wire is connected to the high beam indicator. Somewhere along the line these have to be wired into the switch on the steering column.
Sending unit terminal block.
The final terminal block is for sending units. These connect as follows:
Green - Connects to the ignition coil or the direct tach output lead.
Blue - Connects to the water temperature sending unit.
Gray - Connects to the mechanical speedometer cable.
Yellow - Connects to the fuel sending unit.
Orange - Connects to the oil pressure sending unit.
Terminal block set up on the back side of the instrumentation cluster. This certainly makes a lot more sense.
Prerequisite Tasks: N/A Additional Costs: $434 Time Requirement: 8 hours Date Started: May 10, 2013 Date Completed: May 18, 2013
The instrument cluster has been something that has bugged me about the car from the beginning. I wrote a post in January 2012, discussing this issue. Basically, the GTM is a WOW car. The lines, the performance, the handling all combine to create something special. Then you get in the car, look at the gauges and go, "Huh?" One of the major complaints about the C5 and C6 Corvette generations is that the interior does not match the exterior. One of the knocks on the GTM is that some people don't bother to finish the car. GTM 402 will be finished, and part of that, includes the WOW factor.
This is a task best done on a bench. This multi angle Stanley vice is fantastic for this job. I have one at both the Southern and Northern Man Caves. In this photo it is holding the Factory Five carbon fiber backboard used to mount gauges. I taped it to protect the surface. I have also used this vice to help crimp connectors, and I can mount almost anywhere on the car or the lift.
In the January 2012 post, I looked at Intellitronix, Speed Hut and Dakota Digital. I also considered the all in one dash consoles with data recorders, but these were running over a $1000 and I just didn't like the look. This entire task is about the look. Around January 2013, I decided to take another look at the the instrumentation puzzle. I came across Intellitronix's Create-A-Dash kit. At first I rejected the idea, then I came to realize this was exactly what I was looking for. Then I saw it on Stacey David's Gearz program (for a car builder this is a good show for ideas).
I planned to work on the instrumentation gauges on my current hiatus at the Southern Man Cave. I drop shipped the Create-A-Dash kit via Amazon and packed the tools I needed for the task. The gauges are available in white, green, blue or red. I watched a fair number of videos. I didn't want white (it just seems blah to me). I thought I was going to order blue, but it turns out red worked for my eye sight better.
The kit includes everything pictured here: Speedo, tach, volts, water, oil and fuel, smoked Plexiglas cover, backboard mounting hardware and sending units.
Each gauge requires eight spacers. You place the short ones against the base board and the longer ones between the gauge and the Plexiglas cover. There are a bunch of little bolts, nuts and plastic spacers for mounting. I poured them into a magnetic parts bowl. It is very easy to lose one of these small parts. Intellitronix recognizes that most of us drop things into to distant corners and includes extras!
To protect the backboard I cover it in blue painter's tape. The locations of each gauge is marked on the tape.
I super glued the spacers to the printed circuit boards. I know from experience that I don't do well with little parts, and anything I can do to make them easier to handle is worth the extra time.
I used the packing Styrofoam panels to support the gauges as I glued the spacers to the printed circuit boards.
My first idea was to drill a hole behind each gauge, install a grommet and run the wires to the rear of the panel. This doesn't work. The wires are too stiff to be bent so they can fit through a hole hidden by the gauge. I ended up drilling a hole for individual wires and cutting a slot for groups of wires.Once the smoked cover is mounted, these details are obscured.
The back side of the fuel gauge. The four wires coming off the end can not easily be bent to go through a hole, so I just let them go straight to the back board, where there is more room and slack on the other side.
I did a fair number of measurements to make sure I had things lining up properly. The bigger gauges measure 3.25 x 3.25 inches. They are smaller than the round five inch gauges and they use space more efficiently. The smaller gauges are 1.625 x 1.625 inches versus a two inch round gauge. This allows me to easily deploy six gauges on the back board with space to spare.
Gauge set set in place on the back board. You can see the lines I drew to help me get things set up. I worked off a center line. The center line is approximate, because the Factory Five back board is already cut and it seemed like the curve is slightly different from side to side.
There is some wiggle room for mistakes, but I tried to keep those to a minimum. Prior to drilling and holes and cranking bolts, you can get a good idea how things line up. The wires are stiff enough to support the gauges. I used a 5/64 bit to drill through the holes on the printed circuit board and into the back board. then I widen the holes on the back board with a 7/64 bit. I rifled through my Allen wrenches until I found one that fit into the head of the supplied bolts. The 1/4 inch nuts on the back side are easily handled with a ratchet.
Gauge set bolted in place.
The multi angle vice really came in handy. I could turn, spin and position the back board all different ways. There is no specific torque spec here, so just use common sense.
I couldn't resist. I hooked everything up to my 12v test battery. Note: If you get confused on the little gauges, just hook it up to a 12v source and they will tell you what they are.
The next part involves cutting the smoked Plexiglas cover. The kit provides a generous piece. You could almost get 2 covers out of a single piece. I positioned the Plexiglas sheet behind the factory Five back board, and held it in place with duct tape. I traced the curve. I discovered things here are not perfect either. I used a jig saw to cut the piece, then steel wool to smooth out the edge.
Cut Plexiglas piece.
I decided to use three bolts to attach the cover to the back board. I made a quick trip to Home Depot and picked up bolts, nuts and spacers. I trimmed the spacer to 5/8 inch. This way did not put any pressure on the gauges or the bolts holding them in place. I installed the connecting bolts on each side and on the center line between the speedo and tach gauges.
Hardware to connect the screen cover to the back board.
There remains the problem of the little toggle switches on the tach and speedo gauges. I hit on the idea of looking at the switches sideways. I used a straight edge to run two lines and plot the intersection point. Then I drilled a large enough (5/16 inch) so the switches could go up, down, left, right.
The circle is where the toggle switches come in contact with the cover. I was able to eyeball the location of the toggles with the aide of a straight edge. Once I had an intersecting point, I just had to drill a hole.
The final step is to install the high beam and signal indicators from the Factory Five kit. I decided these needed to be mounted on the surface of the cover, because they are not as bright as the Intellitronix gauges. I wrapped the wires in electrical tape (I should have brought some black from the Northern man cave) and ran the wires from the cover through the back board. I super glued the indicators for extra security.
The wires are wrapped in green electrical tape. The signal indicator is surface mounted on the cover.
Next steps involve adding a wire block to the back of the back board to handle all the wires and fabricating a gasket to run along the edge of the between the cover and the back board.
Not the greatest photo, but you can see the high beam and right signal indicators.
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:
Microprocessor controlled power system.
Jettisoned the Factory Five kit's Painless Wiring Kit.
Purchased the optional Air Conditioning Unit.
Probably have figured (albeit too late) that the evaporator should be installed first.
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:
Plug the 12 pin connector into the Vintage Air ECU.
Plug the 4 pin connector into the power/ground port on the inVIRONMENT controller.
Plug the 5 pin connector into the output port on the inVIRONMENT controller.
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:
Pin 5 is black (violet on my cable).
Pin 6 is green (white on my cable)
pin 7 is blue (light green on my cable)
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:
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.
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.
