Rear Hatch Popper Button Relocation

Yesterday I took on the job of relocating my Rear Hatch Popper switch to somewhere a lot more accessible. One of the Switch Pod buttons seemed a logical choice. I decided to use the Switch Pod button on the Drivers window side of the Pod bottom right side button. (left)

The original location for the Rear Hatch Popper was located just above the car stereo next to the AC and Heater buttons. You can see a good example of this in this shot taken very early on last year near the beginning of my K.I.T.T. build. (right) With the Knight Rider dash design this area although not impossible is a little more difficult to get to. So my guess is that a lot of what is there will get relocated or hooked up to some sort of remote access. For now my Rear Hatch was my main concern as with the Taillight Blackouts I got from Knight Designs there is no key access anymore, K.I.T.T. does not have one. So in my case I was able to use the remote solenoid that was hooked up to the button under the dash.

In order to make this work I needed too take out the Rear Hatch button from the stock OEM dash and do a little work on it. I could have simply removed the button and used a couple of spade connectors with wires soldered onto them but I liked the idea of still having the original switch in place as a backup. So I drilled a couple of small holes into each of the switch pins near the base of the switch in order to thread my wires through. I then soldered on the wires to each of the pins and then drilled a couple of holes into the plastic ridge around the switch base. I then thread each of the wires through these holes, this way when the switch gets put back in the wires will not be "pinched."

I then wired the two switch wires I soldered onto the pins up to the Switch pins of a small NAIS SPST Relay that I installed into my Relay board under the stock OEM dash where the original gauge cluster used to sit. (right) This Relay was hooked up to to the Switch Pod Button which uses a positive pulse for the Relay as the ground connection is made on the Switch Pod Switch Side.

Now from what I understand the stock OEM Rear Hatch Popper switch already has a Relay in behind the dash so I may not have even need the Relay but when in doubt, I use one as it's sure not going to hurt, so basically I probably have one Relay on the Switch Pod activating the Relay for the Rear Hatch Popper, kinda funny but no big deal. It works very well as you can see in my Video from my last post ;)

Alternate Space Matt Buttons Wiring Scheme

I was having some issues trying to work out a way to utilize each of my Space Matt buttons that I had made out of an old Texas Instruments Calculator. The problem was that the V.B. (Voice Box) random DTMF tone generator needs a ground pulse to activate a random tone, but with this type of button configuration where all of the buttons are connected to one wire (in this case ground) and the other buttons individual connections to that ground it was difficult coming up with a way to activate both a device and generate a tone through the V.B. So I came up with this idea. Seen here in my diagram I have two buttons wired to show a way in which they can all be wired in the same way to do just that, activate a device and generate a tone. In my diagram the ground connection through any one chosen Space Matt buttons will activate the relay's magnetic coil causing it's internal switch to close, in this case the needed ground connection from the V.B.'s DTMF tone generator to ground. It's a bit daunting having to use all of those relays but I can't think of another way off hand how to do this. Maybe those small "Songle" I think is the name of them relays would do the trick for this?

Example Image of "Songle" relay.

Installing The Molex Connectors For The Switch Pod Buttons

To help make installing the Knight Rider 2 TV Dash a lot easier I started adding in a 12 Pin Molex Connector for connecting my Switch Pod Button wires to the Mini Relays board that will be installed under the OEM plastic dash in the car.


This Molex Connector will be for the left hand Switch Pod Buttons, the right hand buttons will be on a separate Molex Connector depending on what is being hooked up to them. Whatever it may be I can still see them needing to go through a Relay so another Molex Connector will be the logical choice. I still need to add the wires to the connector for the other buttons but I'll do that tomorrow sometime. I'll need to pick up another Molex Connector just to have on hand for when I get around to adding a little extra length to the right hand Switch pod Buttons wires and running them to the Relay board when I figure out what I want them to activate.

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 :)