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Another option for parking brake mounting location
I sat in the driver side on the bare aluminum panel and engaged the parking brake over and over again while thinking about other parts of the build. Somewhere along that moment I realized that pulling the parking brake was actually not that comfortable. The handle on my daily driver (a subaru) is on the driver side in such a way that it lined up with my right arm when I engage it; it's much more comfortable. Keeping this in mind, I relocated the parking brake handle to the driver side of the transmission tunnel to see how well it works. I really liked the results:
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I was worried that mounting it too far forward may cause it to hit the dashboard. Turns out there's just the right amount of space for my thumb to press the button as it swings up and down:
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With the brake fully disengaged, the handle portion has a ~1/8" gap.
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I'm seriously loving this setup. Not just for it's ease of use, but also because now I can set up the brake cables in a way that doesn't require a roller. All I have to do is buy one of those wilwood universal parking cable kits and install the cable mount at a location that's inline with the cable's pull direction; no rollers required! Another potential benefit is that the drive train is tilted towards the passenger side, giving the driver side more room around the drive shaft area.
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Finishing up the fuel system.
Spent some time on a lazy Sunday tidying up the garage, installed a new peg board, and put up a new shelf. With only one car-slot worth of space in the garage, I gotta make every cubic feet count! I received the fuel pump harness in the mail earlier this week and now I can finally finish the fuel system main loop.
I used the fuel resistant crimp shrink-wrap recommended by EdwardB. I bought 10 because they don’t sell less than 10 at a time (LOL) so if anyone wants a pair, give me a shout and I’ll send one to you in the mail (Note: I’ll note in the bracket if I still have them. Right now I have 6 left. I’ll edit this post as that number changes).
I didn’t have a heat gun for the shrink wrap, so I took a blow torch to the wraps from a distance. The first one I did was… a little aggressive on my end. Some of the heat-shrink charred into a dark brown colour and I immediately backed off and did the rest with more patience. Luckily it wasn’t too bad.
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I installed the fuel pump back into the tank and locked the seal ring in place. The tank is finished for now!
A note on the LOCTITE thread-sealants I used on the NPT fittings I used to connect my Trickflow fuel filter: I left the thread sealant to cure over a week because every time I went to check on it the sealant was still liquidy. After a while I thought something doesn’t seem right so I read more carefully on how these sealants work. Turns out they cure in the absence of oxygen, so the bit of sealant left open in air isn't supposed to cure. Silly me.
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My Metco driveshaft safety-loop arrived in the mail earlier this week. Next I plan to work on installing the safety loop as well as the transmission mount.
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Transmission Alignment and Safety Loop
Today I spent time aligning my transmission and installing the Metco driveshaft safety loop. The install is straightforward, but I there's good information to be published here, so here we go.
The T56 Magnum transmission likes to swing its tail towards the passenger side, so much that the body of the transmission will contact the trans tunnel frame member when raised to correct mounting height:
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Not shown in the picture is that the tail of the transmission is ALSO too far towards the passenger side for the rear diff as well, so it's not just that the trans is too big. It's misaligned. To solve this, I mounting the transmission as far towards the driver side as possible. This gives a good amount of room from the trans tunnel:
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For mount height, I tried putting the "A-frame" both on top and below the frame mounting tab. When placed above the tab the transmission sits very high. When placed below it's still high, but it looks much better.
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The body of the transmission BARELY makes contact with the A-frame and is easily cleared via a thin washer between the transmission and the A-frame.
The Metco driveshaft safety loop install was also quite straightforward. However, since the T56 mounts rather high, the loop needs to be raised up as well. I achieved this by using washers placed under the loop. Shown in the picture is an assortment of washers I could find around the garage; I have correctly sized ones on the way and will swap them out:
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The end result looks pretty good, with everything aligned and the loop clearing the driveshaft should I install it. Unfortunately I had some trouble installing the driveshaft. Even after lowering the transmission as much as possible, I did not have enough space to maneuver the gear shaft into its respective socket on the transmission. Looks like I'll have to install it on-the-fly when I drop in the engine again at a later date.
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Pulling the engine back out!
Now that I have all the measurements and clearances checked, I can remove the engine and start working on the trans tunnel mounted components! The extra amount of space I had with the engine inside the car was AMAZING and I'm going to miss it, but the faster I get to finishing up the engine bay the earlier I can drop it back in for good!
Here are the list of work items I need to do before dropping it back in permanently:
- Install the parking brake handle
- Route the new parking brake cable
- Install the accelerator pedal (requires coyote install kit. Currently backordered)
- Add head insulation to the portions of engine bay aluminum that will sit close to the headers and exhaust pipes.
- Finish routing engine-bay power harnesses that go under the engine.
- Plan, route, and install hydraulic clutch lines. I'm debating between using one long stainless steel braided line vs using the leftover brake lines I have.
- Fill the transmission with fluid? I get the impression that I should do this before installing the transmission.
- Go over the coyote install manual and make sure everything's on the engine up to installation stage.
If anyone can think of anything to add to that list please do say so. :P
The biggest hurdle when installing the engine was the shifter getting caught on the frame, so I decided to remove it this time beforehand. To do this, I unbolted the transmission A-frame and dropped the transmission as low as I could. I then unbolted the 6 bolts that hold down the red shifter cover, took a dead blow hammer to the side of the red plate and voilą! Came right off.
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I covered the opening up with masking tape to ensure random things don't fall in accidentally.
I also took pictures of the amount of space between the exhaust ports and the firewall to get a sense of what I'm working with when I need to install the header. It's real tight.
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Last time while organizing the surprisingly small amount of boxes I have left I found the steering wheel so I decided to install it. Pretty neat! The gauges will be swapped out for black vintage style gauges from FFR.
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I'm going to uninstall the alternator as well seeing how easy it is to remove before pulling out the engine. The engine should be back out in the next update. Excited!
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I freaking love toggle switches... Pt. 1
Taking the engine back out was a BREEZE after taking off the shifter, alternator, and oil filter. There were so many less potential points of contact that by buddy and I did it in less than 30mins. Woo!
Now I know we were JUST talking about alternator wiring but... hear me out:
I FREAKING LOVE TOGGLE SWITCHES.
I bought this ignition control panel full of toggle switches from Summit Racing and all I could think about was where to put it on the car. So I guess that's what we're doing until my brain is willing to think about something else.
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I like the look of the road-configuration cobra dashboard, so I want to keep it as is. I want to keep the switches and button more frequently used close by on the dashboard and the default FFR configuration already does a great job of that. There are, however, many "hidden" toggle switches and buttons on the bottom of the dashboard. I'm not a big fan of those. With this extra control panel I will relocate a buttons and switches such that they are either on the dashboard or on the panel. The panel will hold switches that don't need to be used frequently while driving.
As for the location of this panel I'm drawing inspiration from the Mk4 Supra stock interior (yes yes I know JDM fanboy blah blah). The Mk4 Supra isn't my favourite car. It doesn't have my favourite engine in any car, nor my favourite exterior design of any car. It does, however, have my favourite interior layout due to its "driver centric" layout. It looks like a cockpit and everything is in service of the driver. Everything's close by: The hand brake is next to the shifter on the drive side (which I already did), and everything else is on a panel that surrounds the driver's hand reachable space. I aim to do something similar. Here's a picture of the Mk4's interior vs a rough sketch of what I have in mind:
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In the rough sketch there is a red perimeter around the driver's seat. That's the "driver reachable area". Ideally, everything the driver needs to touch is located within that perimeter. Immediately to the right of the driver's leg is the parking brake and the emergency battery cut-off switch. Note that the battery cut-off switch isn't where it currently is; it needs to be moved. To the right of the battery cut-off switch will be the control panel mentioned above. That's what we're working on today: Relocating the cut-off switch and installing the control panel.
I started by relocating the battery cut-off switch towards the driver side. This part is easy, just shift everything to the driver-side both front and back of the firewall. I had to relocate the fuse mounting bracket a little, but that was no hassle at all.
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There's a hole where the cut-off switch used to be but that's ok. I'll cut out a piece of aluminum to cover it up.
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I freaking love toggle switches... Pt. 2
To get a sense of what the control panel placement looks like, I make a prototype using cardboard. The idea here is to have the control panel be angled upwards at the same angle as the dashboard itself, but recessed into the firewall. From the side it should have a zig zag profile (similar to the national flag of Nepal if you know what that looks like).
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I taped the prototype to its marked location in the sketch:
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The good:
- It's not hard to reach but also not in the way when I don't need it.
- The top of the prototype is at the same plane as the bottom of the dashboard space. This was intentional as I wanted easy routing between the control panel and the rest of the wires behind the dashboard.
- It looks pretty sweet.
The not yet good:
- It's a little too wide. The tans tunnel is a trapezoidal shape and narrows towards the rear of the car. The prototype is a square box. I'll modify it to conform to the profile of the trans tunnel on the passenger side of the box.
- It needs a big chunk of aluminum panel that I don't have. I'll see if I can break it down and piece it together.
The control panel is currently floating. I have not decided whether or not I want to fill the bottom. I could turn it into a small drawer, or leave the space there for a wireless phone charger where you slip your cellphone into that space and it starts charging automatically.
Stay tuned!
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Heat Insulation, Finalizing Firewall Electrical Layout
With the ignition control panel prototype in place, I now have a good idea about what I want my harnesses to look like around the firewall region. The key cylinder will be discarded, and the wires that's currently on the key will route to the ignition control panel. In post #148 I talked about connecting the starter, alternator, and RF power feed to the switched post of the battery cut-off switch. Now it's time to turn these thoughts into action.
Side note: While giving my brain a breather from all the wiring I decided to add some heat insulation to the areas of the firewall that will sit close to the exhaust headers and exhaust pipes. I used some 3M VHB foam tape to secure the heat insulation material to the engine bay aluminum. I used 3M VHB tape because It's supposed to withstand high temperatures without giving out. Some of the panels aren't finalized yet; for those I used masking tape to temporarily secure it in place. The brake and fuel lines are still exposed. I plan to wrap them in heat insulation as well.
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Back to the main topic at hand: Wiring.
According the RF wiring diagram in the manual, the multiple thick red wires at the end of the alternator and starter harnesses are really just the same wires interconnected. I completely unsleeved the alternator and starter harnesses and found this is indeed the case.
The 3 red wires from the alternator harness is connected as follows:
- 1 goes to power the key cylinder BATT terminal, providing power to on-with-acc, on-with-ign, and starter relay components depending on key position.
- 1 goes to power the RF fuse panel, providing power to on-with-battery (or always on) components. In my build these components can be cut-off using the master battery cutoff switch.
- 1 goes to the alternator, connecting the alternator's positive terminal with the battery and rest of the harness.
The alternator has just one red wire. It comes from the last red wire mentioned in the list above. This wire is actually just one long wire arranged in a "V" fashion, where the bottom angle of the "V" is the RF harness main branching point. Since I'm connecting the alternator to the switched post of the battery cutoff switch, I don't need this harness. After I completely removed this wire from the harness I realized that it's quite literally the perfect wire to run from switched post to the alternator. The ring terminals are JUST the right size, and it's length is perfect for running from the post to the alternator. I sleeved this wire with one of the harness tube sleeves I tore off the RF harness and ran it from post to alternator location. Worked out super well. Here's a labeled picture of major harnesses (the alternator wire is on the right):
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(please also use the picture above when referencing major harness locations).
Here's a close up of the battery cut-off switch area:
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Here you can see the two posts of the battery cut off switch. The bottom post is always connected to the battery. The top post is only hot when the cut-off switch is in the "ON" position. The bottom post has just one component connected to it (aside from battery) and that's the coyote ECU memory power. It needs to be always on so the ECU doesn't forget what it learned. The top post has the starter, RF power, and alternator power connected to it; they all lose power as soon as the battery cut-off switch turns to OFF position.
How here's the fun picture, the inner firewall layout:
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Once again I've labeled all the major branches coming out of the fuse box. In this picture the key switch wires are still connected to the key; this will be changed soon as I get the ignition panel in place. The "2 red wires from the starter harness" is what connects to the top post at a 45 degree angle in the previous picture. If you look closely you can see how one of them powers the fusebox and the other powers the key cylinder.
And that's it! As of this moment I can finally and confidently say that I've tamed the harness. It's not tucked away all nice yet, but at least everything makes sense. I hope these labeled pictures are helpful to y'all. :)