Battery Panel & Fuse Box

This is no less than the third post dedicated to the battery panel but where as the previous two posts, this one actually finishes with a complete job.

This is what the panel looked like prior to last nights work. Looks like it is done but to be honest, the panel is not screwed down to the chassis, the positive power terminal is all wrong (and too long) and the fuse box is just hanging loose. So I set out to rectify all of these minor jobs.

The first step was to remove the battery, drill some holes in the panel and use some self tapping screws secure the panel to the chassis.

Next I shortened the positive power cable to the battery. It did have the bike terminal on which was a right angle connector but in the wrong direction for the orientation of my battery. As I wanted to shorten the cable, I also decided to put on a more suitable terminal.

I finished it with some heat shrink once the solder had cooled. I also added a couple of cable tie mounts to hold the cable in place.

While the solder cooled, I turned my attention to the fuse box. I was not sure how I was going to deal with this as the motorbike fuse box is a very irregular shape (so can not be cable tied down) and the loom cables allow very little movement on the unit.

A few weeks ago, I purchased a small plastic ‘project box’ from Maplin which is a little black plastic box that in this case has a base with mounting lugs and a box that sits on top.

After sitting and thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided that if I mounted the boxes bottom plate to the battery plate, then cut a hole in the front of the box for the fuse box to stick through, and a cutout on the rear for the cables, when all screwed together it should work ok.

The forst stage was to mark out the bit that needed to be cut from the box.

I also cut out the cable access in the rear and lined it with a grommet to protect the cables.

I added some foam tape to the bottom of the project box base and to the inside where the fuse box will sit.

When I put it all together, it worked a treat.

So the fuse box is securely mounted and the cables are nicely protected. The best bit is that the access hatch on the motorbike fuse box still opens so to change a fuse, I just pop the hatch and I am in.

   

So with that completed, I re-connected the batter, bolted the battery carrier down and tidied the cables. Doesn’t look that different but it is another small job completed.

Brake Warning Light Fault

 

This is the circuit for the brake warning light in the dash board. This light will come on if the handbrake is on or if the brake fluid level in the master cylinder reservoir drops too low.

In both cases, it is a simple switch to ground to activate the warning light. So when I connected it up, I expected the light to come on as there is no brake fluid in the reservoir, but nothing.

Next I pulled the handbrake and expected it to some on. Again nothing!

So at first I thought it was the Digi-Dash but shorting either to ground made the light come on so I knew it had to be another problem.

After investigation, I found it was actually two problems. One in the brake reservoir, the other on the hand brake.

In the reservoir level warning sensor, the contacts had corroded to the point where it was no longer able to function.

The sensor works by a washer connected to a plunger. When the level drops too low, the washer drops down on to the contacts and completes the circuit.

After a bit of work with sand paper, it all worked as it should do.

It was a similar case with the handbrake.

The simple switch on the handbrake connects the circuit to ground when the handbrake handle is raised but the contacts were so corroded, nothing happened when the handle was raised. What confused me is that I actually have a spare handbrake and when I tested that, it was the same but I soon found out that both handbrakes had the same fault! So once again, the sandpaper was used to clean up the contacts and get it all working correctly.    

Fog Light

The fog light was the only light not fitted earlier in the week as I needed to make a quick bracket.

This allows the for light to be bolted to the rear back chassis. The wiring was already in place so I just needed to bolt the light on.

Fitting And Wiring The Lights

As I had done a far amount of wiring prior, I was working under the assumption that fitting and wiring the lights would be a quick job but in truth, it took nearly two days!

This is mainly because I had tested the front lights and indicators by lashing the wires up. Once I had proved they worked, I did not give them another thought. The rear was even worse. I wired a multi-core cable to the main airing loom, slung it back through the central tunnel and left it there, so effectively, the entire rear end electrics needed do.

Mounting the rear lights was also a much bigger job than anticipated but the results were worth it as it really transformed the car once they were all up and running.

Rear Stop / Tail & Indicators

This is one of the rear lights. I was originally intending to go for LED type lights but changed to traditional at the last minute as I thing the LED ones would stick too far back in to the wheel arch (plus they were going to cost £250!). But I think these lights look ok.

The problem with these lights  is that the hole you have to cut out for the the light to sit in means that there is no material left to allow you to bolt the light in place. I guess on the Elise (which is where I think they came from), there is a bracket but no such luck here so the solution I used was to cut the holes and then glue the lights in place using a waterproof glue.

I spent ages measuring to ensure the lights were in line with the slope of the wheel arch, centrally placed and evenly spaced. In the end I thing I set them 6" up from the bottom of the arch with each light about 50mm in from the edge. This put around 20mm between the lights which looked about right when I trial fitted them. I wrote down the measurements on the masking tape so I would not forget for the other side!

Once the holes were cut (using an 84mm hole cutter), I sanded them with my brand new Dremel (after the other one died) and then trial fitted the lights.

All looked ok so I used Evo-stick wet grab glue to bond them to the wheel arch. I put a small bead around the light, fitted it in place and then added a larger bead to the inside, smoothing it down for a tight seal.

Top Tip: Use a but of spit on your finger and you can smooth the glue without it sticking to your finger!

I then taped the lights so they would not move and left them to dry.

    

I was fairly pleased with the end result.

Rear License Plate Light

On my car, this is fitted centrally on the back. It is also fairly high because the fuel tank buts right up against the rear tub so this light has to be fitted about that!

I spent a long time trying to measure the exact centre of the rear panel but because all the edges curve, it is not easy to do. Once I was happy, I marked the drill positions, drilled the three holes needed and fitted the light. Forgot to take any pictures!

Side Repeaters

Fitting the side repeaters (indicators) is basically the same procedure as above but with only one hole needed.

On my car, I drilled the hole 310mm from the scuttle chassis rail (the one closest the engine bay) and 85mm down from the top of the side panel. It may be different on other cars as positioning is dictated to a certain degree by the position of the exhaust manifold on the engine.

  

You can see the side repeaters in this shot.

There was no wiring for these so I ran new wires up along the diagonal engine bay chassis rail up to where the front indicators were connected and paralleled of of them at that point.

Front Indicators

The front indicators are attached to the nose cone roughly central the the areo-dynamic ‘bubble’ on the nose (designed to direct air around the wishbones).

They are fitted by drilling a hole on the nose cone and then just bolting them in place.

Obviously, these indicators are powered from the central wiring loom but because the nose cone is detachable, I created a mini wiring loom for the nose cone that would then plug in to the central loom.

  

The indicators need to be level which I did by measuring (several times) from the bottom of the cone and in from the front edge. Incidentally, The car will not pass SVA with these indicators fitted as they are too close together. They will need to be extended prior to the SVA test (and then maybe contracted again after – just don’t tell anyone!).

Main Lights

The main lights were the easiest to fit as there is a bracket on the chassis so you just bolt them down, plug them in and you are done. Plus I had already tested these so I knew they would work!

I just cable tied the cable to the chassis to keep it neat.

I happy to say they worked in all three possible states (side, dipped and main beam).

Fog Light

Actually, I did not get round to fitting this although I did test that it worked correctly with my new rear wiring loom. The light will be fitted to the bottom rear chassis rail halfway along the rear tub on the drivers side. SVA requires that it is at least 250mm from ground level and at least 100mm away from the brake lights. The first may be tricky, the second no problem.

I need to make a  bracket for this so I will tackle that tomorrow!

New Rear Wiring Loom

As I mentioned, I had previously done nothing more with the rear light electrics than wire in a piece of multi-core cable in to the main loom and  then sling it towards the rear of the car. It soon became clear that I needed a separate wiring loom for the rear lights that could be fitted to the car as neatly as possible. So that is what I built

 

It may not look like much but it took an entire morning to solder, but it worked first time which was great.

The loom is fitted such that it connects to the main loom via a multi-connector and spurs run to the left and right wings, the license plate light and the fog light. These were fixed in place with a combination of cable ties and where the loom passes through the chassis, suitable protective sleaving and adhesive sealant.

All in all, although the lights have taken longer than expected, the net results are worth it as I think they really make it look like a real car.

More Cable Tidying

With nothing else to do while the side panel glue sets, I spent a little time tidying cables and adding some extra trunking to make it all look neat (and cool).

This is dull work but it all has to be done and it does make it look cooler in my opinion.

Before I did this, it looked like a bowl of noodles, now it looks a lot better.

Dashboard Re-wire

As mentioned in a previous post, the recent work on sorting the wiring loom has thrown up a number of problems with the original dashboard loom I built way back at Christmas time.

Basically, each savage switch on the dashboard has two connectors (pins 1 and 2) and when pressed, these become a closed circuit.

As I did not know how it was going to work, I originally wired two cables to each switch and then terminated them all on multi-connectors. In addition, each savage switch also has an LED to illuminate it when the ignition key is switched on.

Following on from discussions with MAC#1, I realise that because some of the light circuits need to work independently of each other whilst others need to be switched in sequence, the original loom had a number of unnecessary cables. The sequence below shows how the lights need to work ideally.

Side Lights – Powered independently of ignition switch.

Dipped Head Lights – Only work once side lights are on.

Fog Light – Only work when side lights are on.

Main Beams – Work independently of all lights.

So in order to achieve this, I needed to change the wiring so that constant power is fed to pin 1 on the side light switch. Pin 2 of this switch is then connected to Pin 1 of both the dipped light switch and fog light switch (as well as out to the actual side light circuit). The main beam switch is powered by the same constant voltage feed but operates fully independently allowing you to ‘flash’ the main beams when all other lights are off.

In addition, the horn switch needed to be re-wired to switch to ‘earth’.

The diagram below shows roughly how I re-wired it all.

I also needed to re-wire the power as to get it all working last week, I wired all dashboard power to the switched output from the ignition switch which worked ok but meant that nothing was fused so instead, I needed to derive both constant and switched power from elsewhere in the wiring loom, ‘down stream’ of the fuse box.

So I decided to pull the loom apart and remove the wires I did not need, add in some jumper cables at the switches and rationalise the two power inputs and common earth to make it all more compact and easy to work with. I could also then include the Digidash wiring harness at the same time and connect the Digidash signal connects for indicators, brake warning and high beam at the same time.

As you can see, it started as a bit of a mess once all the cable ties had been removed but this allowed me to remove the cables I did not need and add the jumpers that I did.

As ever, the circuit diagram in the haynes manual roved invaluable as did the Digidash diagram and my hand written notes scribbled over the past week or so.

Once the soldering was done, I grouped the cables in to looms for all the different sections of the dash.

Once I was happy with that, I added some split trunking to tidy it all.

Job done!

I am pleased to get this sorted as it will mean I can finish the wiring on the car fairly easily. Just need to hook it up and test the bits that worked still work and that the light circuits work with my 12v bulb tester.

[Update] Spent an hour putting proper labels on the cables which will make future problems easier to fix.

Battery Panel

I have been working on the battery panel on and off for weeks so I thought I would add a few pictures to the blog to see what I have been doing.

I started with a cardboard template for the shape I wanted.

Here we can see the battery holder on the cardboard panel.

I cut out the panel in aluminium and then glued edging strip to it. It was then riveted to the chassis and the battery holder was fitted on top.

And it was rubbish!!!

I made some bad choices. Firstly I made the panel from the thinner grade aluminium and secondly, I attached it to the chassis such that the rivets were the only thing supporting the battery. I was concerned that once the car was bouncing along, eventually the battery panel would be pulled off by the weight of the battery. So back to the drawing board.

So a second cardboard template was made. This was a little bigger to allow me to fit the battery cut-off switch to the same panel.

I then cut the panel out of the thicker grade aluminium.

  

This design called for the the edge closest to the engine to be bent at 90 degrees. This way the panel is supported by the chassis cross member and not just rivets as before.

As before, I finished it with edging strip and then fitted it to the chassis.

The battery holder is attached to the panel via some M6 bolts going in to rivnuts sunk into the panel. This allows me to bolt the battery holder down keeping the battery firmly in place but also allows the battery to be easily removed by loosening four bolts.

I also fitted the battery cut-off switch to the panel. This performs two roles. Firstly, it provides a convenient way of turning power on and off while testing the wiring. Secondly, because it has a removable key, it doubles as a security device which when combined with the ignition key, provide the two independent security devices required by SVA.

Most of the heavy electric cables and relays are mounted below the battery panel which should keep the engine bay looking neat. The main fuse box will also need to be mounted on this panel but I have not worked out how I am going to do that yet.

Battery Mount Panel

Mounting the battery is a little bit of a problem for me as without any bodywork to reference (yes, I still have no bodywork!) it is difficult to know where to mount the battery where is it accessible, safe and most importantly, to fit with the wiring loom.

After some thought, I decided to make a panel to sit the battery on. I have purchased the actual battery holder so that is a nice light weight aluminium bracket to actually hold the battery. I just needed to make the panel the whole things sits on.

So I decided to make a panel to sit on the top of the passenger side between where the firewall will eventually go and the engine cradle.

The first stage was to make cardboard template.

Because the panel will need to fit around the chassis, fuel pipes, electrical cables etc, it needs to be this odd shape with several cutouts.

Once I was happy with the shape, I used this cardboard as a template for cutting the aluminium.

I finished the edges with some glued on ‘U’ rubber trim. The panel was riveted to the chassis and the bottom of the engine cradle.

So with the battery in place it looks line this.

Great, but now that it is all in place, I realise that this is not going to work as the battery is not supported enough so I have decided to re-do this panel with a different design. But I did have my hands full this week so it will have to wait. 

Indicator Circuit

Here is the indicator circuit that drives both the indicators and the hazard warning lights.

I have posted this diagram before but I left off a small but vital detail last time, namely the constant 12v feed to pin 49 on the flasher relay. This is the voltage that drives the entire circuit so it was not a great one to leave off!

Anyway, this week I took the diagram above and turned it in to a real circuit.

 

And here it is.

Soldering it all together was no problem and once tidied up, it looked ok.

However, I decided to test the circuit using a couple of 12v LEDs connected where the indicators will go but when I did, it did not work.

At first I thought that either the flasher unit or maybe my interpretation of the circuit was incorrect but a quick call to Mark at MAC#1 explained why it did not work. It turns out the flasher unit is current sensitive which means that the speed at which the relay flashes is determined by the current load on the circuit.

The higher the load, the slower the relay flashes which is why when an indicator bulb blows on an older car, the indicator lamp on the dash blinks more quickly.

In the case of my LED test lamps, they had virtually no resistance so there was not enough current drain for the flasher to work at all. So I came up with an alternative solution.

I got a couple of 12v lamps from Halfords. Soldered cables on to them directly and then connected them to the indicator circuit, and it all worked a treat. So now the indicator and hazard switches are finished and only the ignition barrel remains to be done to complete the dash wiring.

Just as a side note, the LED in the Savage Hazard switch did not initially work but it turned out to just not seated in the switch correctly. It is worth popping the lid off of one of these switches to just see how tiny the LED’s inside are. There are four tiny LED’s not more than 1mm in diameter and yet they are so bright!

Well I am off to Africa now for a week so there will be no more progress now until April by which time, hopefully, the bodywork will be just about ready.

Until then.