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 ;)