Testing the Electricals

We plugged in a small 12V battery and started testing some of the circuits this weekend. As of now, the blinkers, hazards, brake lights, horn and ignition are all working. We can't actually start the car until some needed fuel line connectors arrive, but we were able to turn the motor over with the starter. Success!

We have a few more circuits to test, but since we haven't built the front lighting harness yet those will have to wait.

We need to fit some aluminum pieces around the radiator and get those painted. They're supposed to be in place before the radiator is filled. A brief test fit last night shows us this will take a little time to finish.

My assistant builder took the surface rust off of our steel side exhaust, and we gave them a couple coats of high-heat paint. They're looking great!

We should be starting the engine this coming week. We have a number of small tasks to tackle as well. The next major step is to put the body back on and start fitting the doors, the hood and the rear hatch. I'd like to get as much done as I can before then.

Grounding Ourselves

Lots of progress this week. We mocked up the gauges in the dash so we could build wiring assemblies. You'll have to take our word for that, as we pulled it back apart without taking any pictures.

We installed the battery in its tray and ran the main battery cables. We're not ready to connect the battery just yet, so the leads are still loose.

Our decision to use electrical relays complicated our wiring job a little, but will pay dividends. Relays allow us to use the cool switches we want to use without worrying about burning them out by running high-amperage current through them. A relay allows us to use a low-amp signal current to close a switch on a much more powerful circuit. We used them to power the blinkers, brake lights, ignition, and headlights. We will also have them for the engine fan, wipers, and remote door openers.

We also want to be able to remove the dash later if needed to troubleshoot any problems, and that means installing some extra connectors. You can see nine black cube-shaped relays and four white conectors in this picture.

This picture shows a small tray we made to mount four of the relays. We didn't want to drill any extra holes in the firewall, so we came up with the tray idea.

My assistant builder spent much of our time today installing grounds for our electrical system. This involves drilling a hole in the steel frame, sanding off the powdercoating to get a good ground, then installing the ground wire and hitting it with some paint to protect the steel from rusting.

If the weather holds, we're hoping to start the engine during the long Thanksgiving Day weekend. Our to-do list for starting the car didn't get much shorter this week, but the tasks on it are much smaller than they used to be.

So many wires...

Our progress on the electricals is far from finished, but at least you can now see our progress in pictures. You can tell by the number of fuses that we've removed from the fuse panel that we've been whittling down the wiring.

Our big accomplishment this weekend was to get the rear wiring harness finished! You can see it in the picture below as a dark line emerging to the left of the silver differential cover and working its way around to the fuel tank.


We had to redo the circuits for the brake lights, running lights and blinkers since we have fewer lamps than the original car had. We're planning to buy a license plate frame that contains white LEDs acting as a reverse light.

We turned our attention to the dash area and whittled away there as well. We pulled wires for the stereo and airbag system, as well as for the old instrument cluster.

before:

after:

Most of the wires are accumulating in a pile. We're not throwing anything away until we've proven the wires in the car actually work!

We're ready to start building the ignition circuits. Stay tuned!