It was a mixed bag today. My family is getting over a cold and this was the first evening I felt human enough to get out there to work.

I got all the signal wires for the gauges wired up with bullet connectors. I also got the battery switch wired up and the cables run into the engine compartment. The switch isn't hooked up yet...that won't happen until after I do the actual battery relocation, which I'm saving for last.

I'm working on hiding the wires in the dash...I'll have to be a bit creative to keep it all out of sight. Also, now the dash doesn't want to bolt up where it used to now that there are a couple battery cables back there, so I'll probably have to drill new holes. :p

The most annoying thing of the evening is that I snapped two sender terminal studs, so now I have to get another new temp sender and oil pressure sender from Speedhut. I didn't realize how fragile those were.

Oh, Merry Christmas btw.

fm

 

Last night, I pulled the old temp sender out and checked it against the Speedhut sender unit. Unfortunately, my sender unit is the straight metric thread version, not the 1/8" BSPT version, so the hole in the iron is a lot smaller than the sender I have to use. Ugh. It's not insurmountable...just an annoyance. I have options, but I just have to figure out which is the best one. Talked to Josh, who wants me to bring the sender in to him...he has some ideas.

fm

 

Good news: I have a plan for what to do about the temp sender. I'm going to remove the temp sensor off the rear of the water pump housing and use an M16 1.5 -> 1/8 NPT reducer and mount the temp sender in there. I don't have a choke anymore anyway.

Bad news: I wired up the battery cutoff switch with the new cables and tried out my new Deltran Battery Tender battery. It barely cranks. There a couple of issues that may be causing this.

• the cables are 4-gauge and not 2-gauge like the factory cables are
• insufficient ground
• battery tender ships with 75% charge. Since it only has about 250 cranking amps fully charged, it may not have had a chance
• the Deltran doesn't have the cranking amps to start this thing up even fully charged
• some combination of the above

I've got the Deltran on a charger now. I'll give it another go tomorrow. If it doesn't work out, I"ll have to return it. It would be too bad too...the thing weighs about 2lbs. Crazy light.

fm

 

Great thread. Thanks for taking the time to do this write up.

 

Thanks Gian!

Well, I tried cranking with a full battery and got no joy. Talked with the guys at Joe's Racing (who made the cutoff switch) and he thinks the Deltran just doesn't have what it takes to crank the engine.

Looks like I'll be going with an Optima or a Total Power battery. The good news is that we think 4-gauge is plenty to allow the car to crank with a good battery. I'm going to re-tip my battery cables with proper post connectors today and test this theory just to be sure. Assuming the car cranks, I'll start looking for a new battery and box.

fm

 

Amazing build, how well does the rolled on interior paint seem to be holding up?

 

I have a battery tender Li-iron battery sitting on my work bench that I haven't installed yet because of some hot start issues... so I can't tell you how well it works haha

I went ahead and got their biggest battery which has 480 CCA... which should be plenty and it still weighs less than 4 lbs...
http://www.batterytender.com/Batteri...t-Battery.html

I'm currently using a civic? sized optima yellow top... and it works, but it's still really heavy, like 20 lbs or something.

 

I used a Deka EX14 in my road race car last year. Worked just fine every time and my car is a bitch to start when it is hot after a run or dead cold in the morning. The Deka only has 220 CCA but is reasonably light for the money -13lbs at $85 shipped from Bohannon Battery. Since these are AGM batteries no box or venting is required.

For battery cable I used USA made 2AWG welding wire I bought off of Ebay and a ground wire of equal size. My battery is mounted in the in right rear passenger area with a master switch located on the left side A pillar tube. So I had to run allot of wire. Also all of the battery terminals are soldered not just crimped on.

The other thing that helps my installation is that all ground points consist of 1/4" or 3/8" stainless bolts that I welded to the chassis. This completely eliminates any ground concerns.

Finally, I used shielded wire for the MSD ignition input and MSD coil out put wiring. The shielding on this wire is grounded to the chassis and it eliminates interference between the Leading, Trailing ignition circuits and the tachometer. I didn't use this kind of wiring initially and experienced a high RPM miss. After I installed it the high RPM issue was resolved and it helped the car start faster.

 

Keep up the great work, car looks amazing!

 

ih8dsm,
The rolled interior is holding up fine. I just need to clean after all the work I've been doing in it lately.

eage8,
I don't know what I was thinking getting a weak battery tender, but I have confirmed that this was the problem. Today I put regular battery terminals on the 4-gauge cables and tested starting with my old battery and it cranked right over. So more CCAs are in order.

mustanghammer, thanks for the tips. Looks like the 4 gauge will be fine for my purposes. Right now I'm using the stock ignition. I'll probably change this sometime in the future. I'll check out the Deka battery in my search for the right battery. My battery will be mounted where the subzero start would normally be, so it's going to have to be small and I'm going to have to figure out a mounting solution for it.

This evening, I got my M16-1/8" NPT adapter and Speedhut temp sensor installed in the water pump housing.

fm

 

This evening I hooked up the alternator wires to my battery cutoff switch and tested them. Then I ran a wire from the headlight terminal on the fuseable link block to the switched port of the battery cutoff switch so the headlights will be killed when the switch is thrown. That worked as well.

I ordered a Total Power TP-1200 battery and battery box today as well...it should arrive this weekend.

Tasks to do:

• hook up temp sender
• install battery and box in new location
• fire up the car and test all gauges
• clean up wiring behind dash and bolt it in

fm

 

Temp sender hooked up. Battery will arrive Tuesday of next week. I have little to do until then. I could remove the old battery cables from the stock locations, but meh...it's cold in the garage. I'll do it tomorrow.

fm

 

Heh, didn't remove the old battery cables, but I did hook up the hatch release and the gas door release to my switch panel.

fm

 

Amazing build, really love the gauges!
Also where did you get that Mazda banner on your front winshield

 

Thanks! That banner is a home-made thing. I just got some blue vinyl from a sign shop, cut it to size, and then put the Mazda logo on it (courtesy of Mazda Comp). It's not perfect, and it bugged me for awhile. Then I saw the factory Daytona car in person and it looks a lot more ghetto than mine, so I'm good with it now.

fm

 

I got the Total Power battery and battery box today. I got the battery box that is for mounting the battery sideways due to poor hood clearance. I figured out how the box is going to mount in the spot where the sub-zero start mech isn't. It's partially mounted now, but I still need a couple of L-brackets. I'll pick some up tomorrow and hopefully will wrap the battery relocation tomorrow.

fm

 

I got the battery installed and everything wired up and tested. I need to dress the wires and button the dash up, which I will do in the next couple of days. I've had to take a short break and devote my evenings to non car-related project. As soon as I'm done with that, I'll post pics and a vid of everything working.

fm

 

I got the wires dressed and the dash bolted in. I had 2 more switches to deal with...the headlight retractor and the hazard lights. I figured out a solution for the headlight retractor...it needs a DPDT switch (on-off-on) to work like factory, but I decided to wire them to two on/off toggle switches. So now when I want to raise the lamps, I turn on one toggle and then off again. When I want to retract them, I turn on the other switch and then off again. Anyone want to guess what happens if I turn both on at the same time?

Pics/vid to come soon.

fm

 

They stay put.

ps. Interest in LED bumper lights (see the text her under)

 

Nope, they don't. They both go up. And down and up and down and up and down. The best part is they get out of sync so the car starts winking. It's like Chief Inspector Dreyfuss' nervous tick from the Pink Panther films. Pretty funny!

fm

 

Sweet! Another badass local build! I'll see about making the next Auto-X in my DD

 

I hope I get my wheels in from Japan soon, otherwise I won't be making the next one myself. :/

This evening I removed the now useless ignition key cylinder from the steering column, which cleaned up the wiring nicely. That was a little trickier than I expected due to the security screws that hold it on. I had to slot the heads with a dremel and use a screwdriver to get them off.

That out of the way, I removed the now-defunct factory battery cables from the engine compartment as well as the battery tray. I think I may have also found (and hopefully fixed) an annoying oil leak I've been dealing with. The old oil pressure sender wasn't on tight and I noticed oil on the bottom of the mushroom. We'll see if tightening that up made any difference.

fm

 

I mentioned earlier in this thread the sweet air box that I got from Japan that would have worked well if it weren't for the fact that the hood wouldn't close. :/ Well, I took it to Josh in mid-December and he modified it so it will fit. He's finishing it up now and should have a base coat on it by tomorrow.

So in preparation for my air box installation, I relocated the coolant overflow reservoir from the passenger side to the driver's side of the radiator. To do this, I had to remove the top of the radiator shroud and use a lock washer and nut on the back side of the side shroud to install the reservoir bracket as that side didn't have any nuts welded on.

Now I have room to run the air box, a tube toward the passenger headlight, and a box w/a snorkel that will descend in the opening accessible now that the coolant reservoir has been moved.

fm

 

Must be a pretty weird view :p

 

Pics of installed dash. The lighting isn't nearly as pale as the second pic indicates. It's a darker blue, but the lighting was throwing off the light meter on the camera. Vid of start-up since surgery was completed coming soon.





fm