It should be a short post today. Its been raining quite a bit here, so there have been few opportunities to get out under the bus. Add to that the oppressing darkness and its a recipe for why this project grinds to a halt every Winter. When I was doing bus stuff this week, it was researching the huge pile of cables that I got with the engine.
Dark = no Hal
Rain + Dark = no welding + no crawling under the bus + no Hal. Pretty simple math, actually. Hal and I talked about not getting together on Sunday nights now that the dark has arrived. We're talking about a Friday afternoon, but we need a solid attack plan if I'm going to take an afternoon off from work (no work = no pay). We don't have a plan for this Friday, so it doesn't look too promising. Its possible, but we need to sketch a plan for the radiator and the dog bone if we're going to make any hay.
Tracing Pasta
I lost my Thursday night, but I still had my Sunday afternoon, even without Hal. It was wet, so I hid in the garage with my radio, my laptop, some home-made toe-tags and a huge pile of cables. I was fortunate enough to have found a copy of the ETKA (parts counter database program) a while back. This application on the laptop has proven very helpful at tracing the spaghetti. I spent 3 hours Sunday afternoon just identifying the sockets or plugs in this main harness that came with the engine. Just trying to figure out which end of the harness you had in your hand was a challenge. Then, I had to figure out why the drawing has 3 plugs in a certain spot while your harness has 4. I still have a few open questions like that.
The scrapper that sold the engine to me made 2 large cuts in the harness, and so far, they appear to have been harmless. The first big cut went to all of the interior cabin controls like the automatic door locks and power windows. On the ETKA drawing, that is one big trunk line. On the harness on my garage floor, it is a bundle of cables over 2 inches thick. I'm not sure what the other cut was for. I am most of the way through the plug/socket identification, so I should find that out soon. Once I've identified as much as I can, I'll separate out the ones that I need from the ones that I don't and start planning how I will emulate those that I need, but don't have a means of faking. The cables for the engine are complete. The cables immediately going in/out of the computer are complete. So, I think the cuts were for peripheral systems that won't concern me anyway (like taillight controls).
next
I need to do the following things in this order of importance. Since dark and rain are getting in the way, I'll probably revert to #4 again unless design can happen over the 'net with Hal. If I can get one block of time at home without rain, I could slide under the bus and think about coolant routing. Times like this I really wish we had a larger garage.
1) design dog bone mount - completes the physical mounting
2) design radiator solution - next major system to complete
3) plan coolant route to radiator
4) finish harness identification
More in a few days.
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