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I haven't been able to get much done on this due to all the sema **** I had going on for work, but now that the shows done I want to get cracking. I set a personal goal to have the car off to the tuners for the first start by the end of the year, but we'll see what happens once the holidays kick in and all my money's gone.
I could not for the life of me find the female mating metripack connector to match the one that comes on my SPAL fans. They sell a patch harness with it ($28 each) that has to be crimped in (shitty), but instead I opted to cut the existing connector off and go with a different metripack connector, thus eliminating and unnecessary crimps on the female side that could potentially fail in the future. While doing this I decided to shorten the wires by about 4" because they seemed a little long.
Next I wanted to revisit my battery box. This had been something that was in the back of my mind for a while now. Just as a refresher, here is the way the fabricator made the box with the top piece securing lengthwise:
While this is a neat design, its a no-no because the terminals could easily come in contact with the metal and arc causing a fire or possibly damage the car's electronics. I whipped up a simple solution to change the way the battery was secured. Not quite as fancy, but proper and functional. Pics coming soon of it mounted.
Oh man I really had to dig for it because I bought them years ago but I came up with part #30102800. I think they're like 11" or something like that. They're also one of the most powerful fans Spal makes and they each pull like 32 amps of power peak so if you plan on running them make sure you have the electrical system to support it haha.
Battery box installed. Overall pretty satisfied with it. Might build something new later on down the line but not anytime soon.
Last weekend I hit a roadblock working on the car. That nice wire loom that took me days to make and wrap perfectly is not fitting in the car the way I had planned. I wanted to route it cleanly inside the rear interior plastics like the stock wiring and then under the carpet along the driver side door sill but it's looking like it's much too thick to do any of that. Got annoyed and had to quit working on the car for this week. Currently trying to think of some ideas of how I can route it cleanly to the front of the car without having the loom in plain sight. I could probably get it to fit in the door sill part if I make a new cover to replace the particle board thing, but that still leaves the trunk portion...
Had to stock up on some more wiring supplies and was able to knock out the chassis ground cables. I believe too many people overthink the grounding of the car and end up making things cluttered with wires daisy chained everywhere instead of focusing on a few quality points that are done right. I chose to use 2 connection points to the chassis: one from the bellhousing to the firewall using 4awg and one from the starter to the frame rail using 1/0 awg. The contact points were sanded down to bare metal and the entire connection was coated using dielectric grease to protect from corrosion.
Bought a neat RE banner I can use in my future garage one day
I got everything from the factory wiring diagram. Please don't trust me on this because I havent tried it yet but IIRC
Q - ground
R - ignition switched ACC power through cigar fuse 10A -OR- you can use
G - IGN switched power through meter fuse 10A. (think this is what i did)
P - should be the dimmer signal
Yes both factory crash beams will be removed but I will be fabbing up some bash bars to protect the car and bumpers if i happen to contact anything. The story behind the thumb was he was forming my catch cans into the triangle by pushing them through a die with a press. Some part of the tube had to be supported by hand and well... you know what happens when something slips.
Ayyyy youre still alive. That's not a bad idea. I may be able to fashion something that attaches to the frame rail and protects the rearward section of the batt cable. That whole setup has me a little doubtful, but time will tell.
Been working on the vacuum line setup for the car. Luckily all my emissions and other bs have been removed so there isn't too many things to connect. The wastegates were the most tedious so I knocked them out first and surprisingly came out looking pretty nice. Im satisfied. Waiting on a few more fitting and then i'll be able to knock the rest out relatively easy.
What size are those lines you are using for the Vac setup?
What size are those lines you are using for the Vac setup?
All my vacuum lines are -4AN
Originally Posted by dandoe
looking good. Had to scroll back and peep that $$$ aero. Post more pics of the URAS kit if you have any.
Unfortunately those are the only pics I have atm. Right now the aeros in my backyard with 1000 spiders living in it, otherwise id take some more pics for you.
Where did you get that bash bar from? Does it fit under factory bumper (not that I intend for that to be an issue for long)
I got it from street faction, who im no huge fan of as a company, but it is a quality piece and I got it on a black friday special. I haven't got around to testing it with my bumper yet, but im hoping it doesn't require any major modification. I remember they built the prototype off an FC john vargas had and it seemed to fit decent.
Where did you get that bash bar from? Does it fit under factory bumper (not that I intend for that to be an issue for long)
I am running the same street faction bashbar on a stock bumper without any fitment issues. Fit well under my knock off BN bumper too. *edit-just realized that you were talking about the rear, im running the front sorry*
Really haven't been able to do much on this due to it raining pretty much every weekend for the past month. Not having a garage is killing me.
We got a little bit of sun yesterday giving me enough time to knock out the e-fan wiring and a few other misc things. These are the big boi Metripack 630 series that are rated up to 46 amps for the crazy amount of draw these fans have.
Hoping the weather is better next weekend to make some actual progress.
Just as a quick back story on the wiring: I had been working on it for a while and liking less and less. The trunk-mounted relay panel seemed like a cool idea in theory, but just ended up complicating the system and adding about 25lbs of extra weight. The wiring trunk turned out much thicker than I expected, making it impossible to tuck behind the interior plastic trim as I had originally planned. I hit a crossroads and had to make a decision on what to do. After weighing out the different options, I chose to scrap the relay panel and upgrade to a Motec solid state power distribution module. While it was a huge blow to my bank account, it simplifies everything, small enough to mount in the factory ECU location and cuts 75% of the wire length I need to run.
I had a bunch of side jobs lately taking up my time but I got started on wiring up the new Motec box. Of course, its made to be used with tefzel wire and a very specific type of open barrel crimp, aka more $$$$.
The superseal connectors are pretty neat. No annoying push-to-seat style pins that require a special tool and struggle to remove. All the pins in the connector can be locked/unlocked by pushing down the white tab.
For the sake of some pics in the thread, here's why I haven't done anything on my car in over a month. This was originally a Greddy kit for the stock twins but ended up modifying pretty much every component.
11-12-18, 11:17 AM
