Body On, Final Wiring, Mini Graduation

   Posted by: kdavis

Man, it’s been a busy few weeks since my last blog entry. I’ve been so busy building and having fun, I didn’t stop to do an update. I also took a trip to Oklahoma to run in the Memorial Marathon, so that was a non-build weekend.

New Horns:

After my wife said something like “that horn would be perfect for my car,” I wasted no time going to amazon and picking out some new horns for the roadster. The other one was very cheap, but was way too european for me, and wimpy. I ended up with some PIAA dual-tone horns. They were pretty inexpensive, easy to mount, and I like the two different tones. You can pick up a set here:

PIAA 85110 115db 400HZ + 500HZ Sports Horn

Here’s a very brief video of the horn sound:


Body On:

Thanks to one of my side kicks, my 12 year old daughter Kenzie, the lift, some ceiling hooks and ropes, we were able to get the body on without much trouble. I was glad that I hadn’t done any paint or body work, as I can see how easy it would be to do some damage. I’ve already said this, but I won’t be doing any paint and body work this summer, I’ll be digging deep into that over the long Winter instead.

For now, I did a quick bit of black primer over the seams, and since I didn’t grind down into the seams at all, it should have no affect at all long term, it’ll just sand/grind out when I do the final prep on the body. I am also electing to not install the remaining aluminum under-body trim pieces for now.

We also managed to get the brakes re-bled, which made for a much needed improvement in braking…amazing what real hydraulic pressure will do!

Pics:

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Final Wiring:

Prior to putting the body on, I mounted all of the headlights, running lights, and brake lights. Once the body was on, I was able to get the final bit of wiring completed and get all of those systems wired and mounted in place. I did have an issue with one of the brake light sets, the bulb fitting has a bit of a short, and won’t seat correctly, which is causing one of the bulb filaments to not work. I emailed FFR, and they are generously sending me a new one, so that will have to be rewired when it arrives. I also wired up the license plate lights, but I decided to tie wrap my door switches for now until final fitting later.

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Roll Bars:

Installing the roll bars is a bit of a challenge, especially since I have 2 of them. I found that leaving the passenger side mount slightly loose (I had to loosen it) helps to get the proper rear leg alignment. The most challenging part of the roll bars was actually drilling the hole (s) for the rear leg on the passenger side. My body came pre-drilled, which some people complain about, but even with a little clean up, it’s way better than measuring and cutting all of those yourself. The way I did my rear leg was to mount the hoop in it’s final position, then use a 2″ OD pipe I had (part of a hitch bike rack actually) to attach it to the hoop, then run it down and mark the entry location. This worked pretty well, and just left a little clean up and some adjustment in the rear leg mount itself to get a perfect fit. I have Mike Everson’s roll bar grommets which are large and make for a very forgiving setup to cover the over drilling.

I’m really glad I decided to go with the FFR stainless bars that I got on sale, they make a big difference in the look of the car. One trick I found for mounting the bars is to use ratcheting nylon straps (protect the chrome with cardboard) to cinch in the 2 legs of the hoop. Both of mine were pushing “out” and were really hard to get over the mounting brackets. I found that I could pull them together with the straps, and along with a little 3in1 oil, they went on with relative ease.

Hood and Trunk Mounting, Hinges:

The parts need some work to get to fit correctly, but I was pleasantly surprised with my hood, it fits pretty well right out of the “box.” The trunk lid fits like crap, but I think this is pretty common. For the short term, they’ll both work well enough, even though the trunk lid isn’t exactly pretty in it’s current state.

I am using Breeze’s hidden trunk mounts, and after discovering and correcting that we mounted the arms on top of the 3/4″ trunk support instead of on the horizontal face (ie: we mismounted them by 90 degrees), they went in pretty easily. For now, I actually just drilled and riveted the lid side mounts, which doesn’t look very pretty, but it’ll do for now. I’m going to be wiring in a linear actuator back there, and I still have a bit of fitting, so I wasn’t in a hurry to break out the HSRF yet. The mounts are sweet though, and will make for a cleaner more “oem” look to the car than the usual outer brackets. I was wishing that I hadn’t been in such a hurry to sell my brackets a while ago, that would have been a way faster short term solution.

The hood hinges are a pain, mainly because they come in about 1000 parts, and it’s very easy to put everything in the wrong configuration. The hinges themselves are a bit of a modern marvel the way they are a down and in or up and out movement. I didn’t have any instructions with mine, so I turned to the ffcars.com forum once again for help, and found some great pictures showing how they go together. Even so, I had to assemble mine like 4 times before I got it right, including taking them apart after I had them right in the first place. Lots of guys talked about switching out the button head screws with carriage bolts, but I didn’t find this necessary. It was a bit of a pain getting those in with the body on (I would put that part of the hinges in before the body and F panels if I had it to do over again,) but they work so far.

Here’s the thread with the info, and I’ll add the pics below (not my pics) in case they get deleted at some point. Forum Thread

Pics:

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You can see in this pic, that the bolts are in “up and down” instead of through the front/back configuration. I fixed this after the body was on, but it required me to cut the bolts to do it. Oops.

Windshield:

If you read any posts at all on the forum, this step will likely scare the heck out of you, and convince you to go ahead and call FFR and order a new windshield. The glass on these cars wasn’t really designed for them, and that, along with a bunch of other issues have caused an alarmingly large number of them to crack in short order. I managed to find an old build school video that showed some key issues to avoid, however, the most important of which I found to be: 1) use a shorty screw driver to prevent over-manning the screws, and 2) do a test fit on each screw and grind them down so they aren’t too long. Thanks to those tips, I managed to at least get the frame assembled without breaking the glass, and as far as I can tell, none of the screws are touching the glass. I took the mk3build site advice and set my windshield at 53 degrees in case I go with a soft top later. The only other issue I ran into, other than just not having much room to get the bolt in, was that my driver’s side foot box interfered with getting that bracket in place. I had to “massage” it out of the way for now, and I’ll fix it better once the body is back off.

Video:

Mini Graduation:

After the windshield install, I proceeded to put in the mirrors, trim plates, hood latches, trunk latches, etc., and it was ready to roll. I took some runs up and down the road a bit, which was simply awesome fun, and the next day called the local sherriff’s department for my Certificate of Origin inspection. In Montana, the process is very confusing, but actually simple to accomplish. Funnily enough, the deputy didn’t really know what he was supposed to do, but he verified my COO number matched the chassis number, and since he didn’t have any forms, he just wrote a note on the back of my application for title. I have yet to make the trip down to the DMV (will do tomorrow at the time of this writing), so we’ll see how that all turns out.

I’m still considering this a little mini graduation, though. Once it’s registered and tagged, I’ll head over to the dyno and get it all dialed in, and I also need to do a bit more work on the ride height and alignment. It’s riding/driving very well with it’s currently eye-balled alignment, and I really am glad I decided to go with the manual 15:1 steering box, it works great.

So, more updates on the registration soon…

Pics:

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More Progress, A Step Back, and Some Steps Forward

   Posted by: kdavis

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks since my last update. I’ve largely been working on the wiring still, and I continue to be too creative with it. A little addition here, another one there, and just when I think “today’s the day I’ll finish up the main wiring”, it really isn’t, and another week rolls by.

Dash – Take II

The big step back this last week was the realization that I definitely put my indicator lights too high on the dash. At first, it wasn’t an insurmountable issue, and I thought I could solve it by just notching the 3/4″ dash hoop. I was quickly reminded by a forum member that the BODY also sits in that same location. After some measurements by other forum members, I quickly discovered that my top left turn signal indicator would sit inside the dash overhang by 1/4″ or more. No good.

All in all, it turned out to be a hidden blessing. I had to remove the original vinyl (see last post) and redo it completely after redrilling new holes for the indicator lights.

When I started removing the vinyl, I quickly realized that it hadn’t adhered nearly as well as I had thought, and would have likely ended up with premature failure, bubbles, etc. Although I’m not entirely sure what caused the issue, I addressed it by simply sanding the dash surface a a lot with rough sand paper (80 grit) and cleaning it very well, plus waiting a little longer to make sure the contact cement cured better and more completely before putting the vinyl on. I was really pleased with how it came out, and I think it’ll be longer lasting. I also moved the indicators into more of a cross configuration, which I like better any way. 4 hours lost or more, but no big deal.

Pics of the new dash:

The speedometer is en route back home, all repaired from Auto Meter. Great service from those guys. I also found that the clock I had traded for had some fading on the hands. I sent it in for service, which they said would be $25. They ended up not being able to replace the hands, but because they quoted me that, they are replacing it with a brand new gauge for the $25, which saves me $50 at least on the gauge. What a deal!

More Wiring Progress:

It really does feel like I’m making some final progress on the wiring. This weekend was some work on the dash gauges, getting them pre-wired in before the dash goes in, the clutch safety switch rewire, and headlight switch wiring. The gauges are a little easier to wire before the dash goes in.

Door Switches, Accessory Lights, Headlight Switch Mod:

I did a full write up of the process for wiring the cockpit lights and door switches. I’ll include it here too:

I spent a bunch of time head scratching to get this all to work the way I wanted, and thought I’d possibly save someone else the time/trouble if they wanted to do the same thing.

This is a long, detailed write up of how I did it. I’m sure there are several other ways to do the same thing.

There is an underlying methodilogical debate with switching, whether to switch the HOT side or GND side. I’m on the HOT side of the coin, and have simply always switched this side. I think there are merits both ways, and probably the GND is actually better/safer. This procedure assumes the HOT side is switched, which did present an issue with the AA switch as you’ll see.

Purpose/Background:

I thought it would be great to have some door actuated interior lights, much like a production car, but also have manually operated lights for each foot box, and for the bulkhead area for the seat/cockpit (I’m doing a rear shelf and the light will light that up and spill in).

I have an LED under the middle front of each footbox (on Everson’s dash panel) and then the flexible strip is on the ¾” tube behind it and wires run in a hidden fashion. The headlight switch has a dome light setting (must be modified so it’s not GND driven), and then each footbox has a rocker switch to activate it. The headlight dome switch also controls the footbox lights, so I can turn on all interior lights light a production car. Another manual switch could be added for the bulkhead, but I didn’t need it.

Parts:

I bought a lot of this stuff over time, you could probably get all of the stuff from 1-2 vendors.

LED Accessory Lights

LED Flexible Light Strip

Standard Automotive Rocker Switches

Diodes

American Autowire Headlight Switch (modified)

Door Switches (push button normally ON switches)

Bosch Relay

Relay Harness (with all 5 pins – 87a)

Misc Connectors

Issues to be Addressed:

Backfeeding – this was the biggest challenge for me, and took a couple of hours of head scratching and testing to get it right. The system wants to backfeed between the 2 footbox lights, and also between the rear light and the footbox lights. The way I addressed it was by using 3 separate diodes (essentially a one-way valve for electricity) at each light so that the power will flow TO the light, but not feed the others. I put the diode on the 12v lead for each light, so it’s the last part of the system.

Headlight Switch Dome Switch – This switch is handy in that it already has a built in mechanism for controlling a dome light. However, the switch uses the GROUND circuit to do the switching, and the rest of the way that I wired the system uses the 12V side. This required me to modify that switch to use the 12v side instead. It’s possible that you could change the rest of the switches to switch the ground instead, but this wasn’t a preferred option for me since I had already wired everything else in and the headlight switch was the last item.

I had some plastic washers left from a metal shed install around, so I basically made another leg for the switch by drilling a hole in the switch bottom, and using a small metal bolt as the leg. I isolated the bolt by shrink tubing it except the screw end and head, and then put a plastic washer between it and the switch surface. I tested for continuity before I applied power to make sure it wouldn’t short.

I’m no DV/DT kind of fabricator, so keep that in mind, but it’ll work for me. It’s very solid, and I’m fairly confident the switch will wear out before I have any issues with this part of the system.

Hooking it All Up:

There are many ways to go about wiring everything, here’s how I did it.

Feed – I have a separate fuse panel that has both constant ON and keyed on power. I chose to use the constant side for the interior lights, this is how a production car would be wired. I have a 20A fuse for this feed, but probably 10A or less would be more than adequate, especially with LED’s.
Relay – To get this to work, I used a bosch type relay, which has a switched power source inside. The 87 lead is powered when the relay is OFF, and the 87a lead is powered when it’s ON. This gives you 2 separate sides for the door switch side and the manual switch side. When the doors are closed, the manual switches are fed by the 87a side of the relay. When you open the door, the lights get fed from the 87 side.
Footbox SwitchesEverson’s Dash Filler Panel) makes a great foundation for switches. I have a bunch of switches, audio input, and 12v power ports. I put a switch to the side of the tranny tunnel for easy access to turn these on.
Rear Bulkhead – My LED strip was an easy decision for me since I am adding a rear shelf. This gave me a perfect hiding place for the light, so the strip and lighting is invisible behind the ¾” hoop. I ran the wires along the hoop and simply added electrical tape to hide the wires (the wires are very thin.) In a non-shelf setup, a nicer looking light would be needed, but same implementation. I ran a single power wire from the dash to the light area, and grounded right there.
Dome Switch Mechanism – Already described above, but more detail. I grabbed power from the main headlight feed coming into the switch via one of the taps that came with the kit. I added a bullet-type connector so I can easily pull out the whole switch assembly.

Caution – due to the nature of these builds, there is ALL SORTS of conductive metal where you’re working. I had a stray wire that blew out the fuse 2x before I figured out it was resting on the upper column. Use a meter to test as much as possible before hooking up the battery, and if you can, maybe layout a towel under your work space to keep this from happening.

Pictures:

Relay Diagram:

Headlight Switch- Labeled

Footbox Lights and Switches

Bulkhead Light and Footbox Lights (note, one led is out on the left side, pending replacement)

Headlight ON Warning Chime:

This probably wasn’t ultimately necessary, but it’s more along the lines of a production car, and with running a pretty small battery, it made sense to do it.

I just posted this for niceguyeddie in PM, and I thought someone else might find it useful. I’ll get some pics later, but they probably aren’t even really needed.

Both of my daily cars have automatic headlights, so I was concerned that I’d turn these on in the evening and forget them, so I figured wiring in a chime will help me remember.

I bought a $10 door bell type chime from Radio Shack, and wired it in. Works fine, and it’s annoying enough, I’ll never forget the lights. I’m going to be adding a turn signal reminder buzzer the same way, RS sells the piezo buzzer for $7 think.

Here’s what I did:

Mount…I mounted it facing down in the Everson under dash panel, but it could be moutned anywhere that you can hear it (it’s loud.) This worked well for me.

There are 3 wires on the chime, blue, black, and red. The blue and black go to ground. When the black and red are hooked up, and 12v at red, and you take the blue to ground, it chimes.

So, I wired the blue and black to ground together.

I took a bosch relay and wired it this way:

SWITCH (black on my harnesses) to the KEYED ignition circuit.
GND (white) – ground
THROUGH (87a) to the RED wire on the chime.
SWITCHED POWER (Activated side – yellow) – Cut off and capped.
12V IN (blue) – I used a tap to grab power from the dash light circuit – you could also use the tail lights or parking lights.

Basically, no power to the relay at all with just the key on…so, the relay won’t fire. When the KEY ON and headlights ON, the relay has power, and it’s fired, so power moves from the 87A side to the 87 side, and no power to chime.

Turn the key off, and the relay is not firing, but has power from the headlight switch, so the power is at 87a to the chime, and DING DING DING!

Took me a while staring at it, but it works just fine.

Video:

Holy Crap Bar:

I love that name. ;-> Basically, it’s a grab bar for the dash that the passenger can use if you get a little over zealous with the go pedal, plus for getting in and out of the car.

Since the dash is not to support the bar on it’s own, a support mechanism had to be built to support it. I used some steel angle I had around, and made it in such a way that it can be adjusted upward as the dash gets installed into the body. The bar is a marine-application grab bar, and should also help with the relatively empty space on the passenger side of the dash.

Pics: