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Bronzit E30 - OBDII S52 shaved bay - weekend/autox toy - Journey
Wow, not that I didn't trust you or anything, but I had to check the manual to see for myself - and you're absolutely right.
It's advertised as having "8 Ignition Drivers" and I always taken "ignition driver" to be a built-in IGBT that drives a dumb coil, but I guess that becomes false somewhere between MS and Link. I had no idea
Yes that's correct. Not sure why exactly they do it this way. I suppose probably maximum flexibility of application? If I ran a smart coil I wouldn't have needed the external igniters.
What a crazy undertaking! Excellent work in execution.
Do you plan on swapping out your dash and that wart/growth of a gauge pod on top?
Thanks!
hahahahahaha gave me a laugh there... yes I do plan to go for a digital dash sooner than later but no I don't plan on ditching the gauge pods. I like them. What I'd really like to do is strip a spare dash down to metal and fabricate it to smoothly integrate the extra gauges. I really like the style of the Lancia delta integrale gauges and I also like classic aero bomber style gauges. I'll aim for some combination of both in a future project.
Work begins on harness construction. Slow and gradual process to ensure a good fit and no mistakes. I’m also a noob with this project so I’m moving extra slow ensuring I understand what/why I’m doing each crimp, splice and termination.
This will be the first harness test fit out of probably 50+ times it went in and out of the car
Refreshing my memory on C101 functionality so we can interface the new harness with existing chassis electronics and fuse box where necessary.
OCD
My intern is watching and learning
Restored that drill press
Doing my best to do the fancy service loops
Pieces starting to come together
Laid out and labeled the harness. This helps visualize its geometry while off the car, and mark critical dimensions. Also makes it easy to check that each termination got the correct wires leading into it.
Here's a splice for 5v power to some sensors. We’re not doing the full blown concentric twisting, but we’re doing our best to carefully twist the harness for maximum flexibility and visual appearance after heat shrink.
This one came out nice
Crisp crimps are satisfying
Starting to look like something. DR-25 heat shrink. This is becoming permanent. Now I’m sweating because any mistakes will be very tough to correct without painful undoing of hard work.
Lots of tools and supplies needed to do this right.
Now it’s starting to look really neat
I also took the opportunity to replace the heater hoses. I purchased a bunch of silicone hoses of specific diameters and bends from Pegasus and used splices where necessary (larger to smaller diameter change) and these gates powergrip heat shrink clamps to seal them. I was slightly worried this would leak. At this point I can confirm they don’t.
Very big fan of that wiring table/labelling/velcro setup. I would love to try to make a nice engine harness someday. If I ever graduate from grafting jank additions onto the factory harness, I hope I remember this setup
Originally posted by priapism
My girl don't know shit, but she bakes a mean cupcake.
Originally posted by shameson
Usually it's best not to know how much money you have into your e30
What a project! I would never have the patience for that.
I wonder if I'd have even gone through with it to begin with if I actuallly knew then what I know now both on cost and timeline. It's taken me a year to finish (granted there were many distractions along the way). Of course as it is with all things I could do this again in about 1/4 the time. Maybe less.
Very big fan of that wiring table/labelling/velcro setup. I would love to try to make a nice engine harness someday. If I ever graduate from grafting jank additions onto the factory harness, I hope I remember this setup
I tried a few different approaches until I settled on this. Velcro straps + ziptie mounts + gorilla double sided tape + painters tape for labels. This way you don't destroy a perfectly good fold up table, you can rearrange the layout easily, and remove/install on/off table in/out of car easily. So much easier to work on the harness when its fixed to the table instead of flopping all over the place.
It wouldn’t be a “milspec” wiring harness without some milspec connectors
And DTM connectors
Had to open up the fusebox to hook up the aux fan and fuel pump wiring
The intern is back. This time sun bathing in her favorite spot
Marking up some metal for brackets
Rough mounting locations
Every change has consequences… I quickly noticed that I’d run out of space behind the firewall cover to mount all of the hardware and connectors. So I had to clearance the cover to gain a bit of extra space.
Clever use of aluminum blocks to make the tight bends
Getting tidier and tidier above the glove box
Setting up canbus for the two wideband controllers
Started to work on the intake manifold sub harness. The idea is that the manifold will be able to be removed with wiring, fuel rail, and accessories still attached to make future maintenance easier.
I am able to retain use of the OEM fuel rail wiring cover to route all of the extra wiring through, and use the original downward exiting boot to direct the wiring for the throttle body, TMAP sensor, and intake air temp sensor.
Here it is finished with labels and all
These big Raychem boots are a real pain to heat shrink into position.
Trusty Bentley manual helped clarify some wiring a few times
Workbench is always full of stuff through this project
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