More Work on the Upper Console

While working on getting those Fog Lights working I came to realize what an Octopus of wires I had going on in that upper console. I mean I had taken precautions and made sure everything was labeled and tucked away neatly but pulling it down to have a look at my lighted rocker switches that the Fog Lights were using it was quite a complex mess of wires. I have added four more lighted rocker switches to the front part of the console, this time I  went with mini-rockers.

My next job to tackle will be to take all of those somewhat chaotic wires and organize them better and make it so they are connected using a multi-pin connector, most likely 2 or 3 Molex Multi-Pin Connectors. I'm figuring at least a 16 pin for the Rocker Switches along the side, a 12 pin for the mini rockers at the front of the console and 6 pin connector for the Push Buttons. One of the other things I am going to do to save on having a lot of wires running around up there is to combine my ground wires from the rockers like in my diagram on the right. I will run the ground wires from the rockers into a slightly larger gauge wire and run that into a terminal on one of my Molex Multi-Pin Connectors and then run the other end into my ground bus I made in the T-Bar on the car. This should hopefully save a lot of unnecessary wire. I did a similar thing on my car Relays for the Fog Lights and it's working out very well so far. One other thing I did was to make the rocker switches for my Fog Lights into green lighted rockers just to give them some more distinction from the others that are unassigned. 

Fog Lights Relays Being Added

OK some of you may recall some of my past posts about my work on the Fog Lights install. Now I was rather surprised that no one chimed in and let me know that the way I had it wired would not work or at the very least be a potential fire hazard.

Now here was the issue. I picked up two sets of Fog Lights from Canadian Tire made by Pilot Automotive, and of course like a good little newbie I followed the wiring instructions to the letter. Well not long after my scanner had arrived and I wired that up, then waited for the Marine Speakers to arrive so I could hook those up before going to all the trouble of re-hooking up the battery to test out what I had done.... well as it was my scanner worked fine but my Fog Lights did not work. What The Heck!! I thought, I followed the damned instructions to the letter, what gives!!?? I thought possibly a bad ground, so I checked my grounds, nope not the grounds. The Rocker switches for the Fog Lights was lighting up, in fact they were on all the time which I thought was a bit odd considering over time they would drain the battery unless I hooked up some kind of battery kill switch. Was it bad switches I thought.? Somehow I could not see two switches going at the same time, brand new switches at that. So I thought OK lets experiment and move my connections to the other Rocker Switches I had added to my upper console....

Well this time the switch remained unlighted but when I flipped the switch my Fog Lights came on!! What The Heck!! This makes no sense I thought. So off to the Internet and the forums to try and find some answers.

YouTube videos were indicating that my Rocker switches were wired up correctly so what the heck is going on here?!?

Much to my surprise I was to learn that what was needed here were "Relays" to be installed! 

Now why the heck would the instructions from Pilot Automotive mention that anywhere?? Especially considering that without Relays you run the risk of melting your switches and causing a fire!!

So anyways, I go out and pick up a couple of Car Relay wiring kits with 40 Amp Relays, my Fog Lights are only 55 W Halogens so I realize it's a little over kill but that's OK in my book. So I have them currently mounted onto my dash in that area where the dash documents pocket used to be mounted. The Knight Rider dash sticks out quite a bit in that area from what I understand so there should be plenty of room to utilize the space and that way my relays are not under the hood in the engine bay where they are subjected to the elements more.

So far I have just the power wire (+) Positive fused line from the battery connected to the number 30 terminals of each Relay. I have my ground wires connected I only need to add a ring terminal to the end of the wire and connect it to the ground on the side of the Fuse Block panel.

Now onto another bit of confusion I was having. In my original diagram that came with my Fog Lights kits it showed the Rocker Switch wired with the power wire ( [+] Positive)  connecting to the first or number 1 terminal on my switch, but yet the wiring diagram I was trying to follow for the relays hookup showed the (+) Positive from the battery connecting to the middle terminal??? What the Frack!! Why are all of the YouTube video stating that the middle terminal goes out to your accessory, Lights, motors.... whatever you are trying to power??? Now this was REALLY beginning to bake my little "Cat-Like" brain. lol

Anyways after much help from some awesome people on the Face Book Knight Rider groups I was to learn that the discrepancy is due to the fact that we now have a relay added into our wiring scenario. Case Solved!! lol at least we hope so. I still need to switch my rocker switch connectors to match the diagram above, and make sure I snip my power wire from the switch and add some wire to make a connection to the Relay's terminal 85 and the other part of the wire connect to terminal 87 of the Relay. Everything else is basically done, the Fog Lights are grounded as are the Rocker Switches so if all goes well it should work.

Now my last and only concern is that I get some mixed opinion about connecting wired directly to the battery. Some say it's bad and that you should connect from the power distribution centre or Fuse Block and other say it makes no difference so long as your wires have a fuse such as an in-line fuse. I can't see there being a difference outside of it being less wires running around in your engine bay... but I have run my wires along the side and have done my best to keep them as far away from other engine components. I have wire protected them, added extra insulation to any potential area that could come in contact with sharp metal edges and possible ware through due to vibration over time, cable tied them securely so I'm not worried about that happening... I went over kill on that stuff lol

I'll follow all of this up with a nice 2 parter video for all you cool cats and we'll see how this plays out for me once I have this all wired according to that last diagram with the Relays... Wish me luck :)

Scanner Speakers Mounted

I have my Marine speakers that I got from eBay mounted into my custom enclosure made from some PVC drainage pipe. I have the enclosure mounted to under the front nose support plate under where the scanner is mounted. You can see here how I have made some metal straps and brackets using some stock Aluminum that I picked up from Canadian Tire, most hardware shops carry the same selection of metal for various metal work projects.




I used some long 1" wide pieces to uses as metal straps to wrap around the outside of the PVC pipe, I bent an "L" shape onto the ends where the ends of the strap meet up around the middle of the pipe, bolted them together being sure to leave enough on one end to bend another "L" shape to form a tab to be able to bolt onto the underside of the impact bar.






I joined the two straps together with another short piece of the 1" wide Aluminum to help keep them secured into position on the pipe. I took a piece of "U" channel Aluminum and cut a small slit in it to fit nicely onto the support arm of the front nose support plate. I drilled a hole through the one end that attaches to the metal strap on the PVC pipe and attached that with a machine screw.

The PVC pipe is pretty tough so I'm not sure if I will need to or not but I have tentative plans to make some kind of deflector plate that I can mount over top of my speaker assembly just to protect it from stones and other road debris that could get kicked up into the front of the car. If you think that is a potentially good idea let me know and I'll make one and show how I did it and what I come up with.

Fog Lights Need Checking

I have a suspicion that my impact absorption bar is not grounded?

My fog lights rocker switches in my upper console are lighted but the fog lights do not turn on. I'm going to do an experiment by lengthening the ground wires and running them to the (-) Negative of the battery terminal and see if that is the issue.

The other thing I am going to want to do is wire it in such a way that the switches are not lighted all the time as that will drain the battery pretty quick with them on all the time.... maybe a batter kill switch? As it is right now I just disconnect the (-) Negative terminal until I sort that out.

On the plus side I have my Marine speakers all mounted into my PVC elbow enclosure. I picked up a 4 way connector in the trailer section of Canadian Tire so that way I can just plug in my speaker unit when I install it under the front nose support plate. I have the scanner hooked up and tested it yesterday and it's working perfectly. A big thanks to Brenon from Lectric Enterprises for doing an AWESOME job on that for me. I'll post a video soon. Right now I'm using my sweetheart's Surface as my Galaxy Note II is in the shop getting the glass fixed since I dropped it in the garage a few weeks ago. Doh! 

Yesterday I found $4.55 under the seats of the parts car, lol the seats are PMD seats and look to be in awesome condition. They had seat coverings installed on them. My guess is is that they were installed when the car was still fairly new judging by the condition of those seats. What a gold mine that parts car has turned out to be. I paid only $500.00 for it and the Turbo Hood is worth over $1,000.00 and the PMD seats  sometimes go for as high as $2,000.00! Sweet!!

Turbo Hood Waiting

I took the precaution of wrapping up my edged and top with bubble wrap, foam padding and cardboard because the route to the garage is a little precarious and anything can happen between my back room and there. ;)

All I need now is someone to help carry it out and gel me hold it steady while I bolt it onto the car. With a little help it's a 10 minute job at best. I've been waiting out our crappy weather for a nice day to do this little job too.

On another note, my Marine speakers should be arriving today so I'll be able to hook those up to Brenon's LED scanner box after I place them into my custom enclosure that I'm making using some PVC plumbing pipe. That should be fun. Once that's done I should be able to re-hook up my batter and test out the electronics that I have installed into K.I.T.T. so far.... keeping my fingers crossed that I don't turn out to have any dodgy wiring on my hands... :/ I have tried to be a careful as possible and have checking things numerous times to make sure I have done a good job.... but even still, being new to this I can't help but be a little apprehensive about it :/