Wired

I spent some time with ERX yesterday and got a few things done that were on my to do list to get the car registered. First, I had to fix the brake light wiring from the brake pedal sensor. The car was previously wired with a switch to disable the brake lights. Guessing some kids raced the car and wanted to go lights out if they had to avoid the fuzz. Did a little continuity testing to find the right ends of the wires and added some terminals. All good. One minor issue lingering which is the 3rd light on the hatch window. I will investigate that one later.

Second, I delved into the wiring for the horn. The horn is not stock and I was not sure if it worked. I don't recall testing that when I bought the car. I found the original wiring, hooked it up and it did not work. Then I took the steering whell off and found the connector to the horn was not attached. Connected it and it worked, so I am now making some good progress.

Next up was the windshield wipers. The switch on the stock does not appear to work so the previous owner wired up a basic on/off switch on the dash with some zip cord and electrical tape. Crude, but it worked. I wanted to fix the wiring and also add a 3 position switch so I at least have low speed and high speed. Found a 3 way switch at Pep Boys and ran some wires into the dash. Luckily the original main power wire with its fuse still worked, so I only needed to wire the switch and lo and high wires to ground. I found a bolt I thought would work and wired it, but was not getting a good ground contact, so I found another bolt and that one worked great. Now I have Wipers.

These were the three main tasks for the day and it took me most of the day to do it due to figuring out what was working and what wasn't and then performing Cirque du Soleil moves under the steering wheel and dashboard to find the right wires and add the terminals. It was 90+ degrees outside and 100+ in the garage, so I sweated off a few pounds. I am definitely sore today from contorting my body in so many different ways.

I had a an hour or so left at the end, so I thought I would hook up the charger and test out that system. It seemed to work until I clicked the garage door opener and tripped the breaker. Apparently the house lights and the garage power are on the same circuit. Not sure how many amps the circuit is since it is a very old style four switch sub-panel. The panel says the entire panel shouldn't exceed 70 amps, so maybe each switch can do 17.5 amps? I reset the switch and tried a couple more times, but I kept tripping it. I know my charger outputs only about 8amps DC at about 158V, but not sure what the AC draw is. The model I purchased originally was a PFC 2000+ which is supposed to be a 2kW charger, but the recent algorithm change I had done, the technician scratched out the 2kW and wrote in 2.5kW, so maybe the hardware can handle the 2.5kW and he just updated the software to that amount. I guess I need to get an ammeter and see what kind of AC current it is drawing. The spec sheet says 15 amps AC maximum, 12 amps RMS.

So, next stop is drilling some mounting holes in the new fiberglass fenders, removing the clutch pedal and cable, and putting the hood and front bezel back on. I should be able to get the car registered after that. Once it is registered, then I will have the rear springs upgraded and start the work on the larger front brakes and the vacuum braking system.