Electrical Leap

Well, the new job has this Friday afternoon concept that I'd never heard of before: Summer Hours. Basically, if you're at 40 hours (or pretty close), you can leave early on Friday afternoons - as early as noon, if you can. Now, that's my kind of company, eh? I wasn't able to leave that early, but I was still hitting the door at 3. Compared to a typical 6:PM departure, and add in the late daylight hours in a Northwestern June, I suddenly had a few hours handed to me. They weren't wasted.

Radiator Fan Wiring
First off, I figured I'd hit the radiator fans. I knew that would require the most time, or at least the most time on my back under the bus. Since the weather was accommodating, I got to it. I thought about the New Beetle fan wiring, and the fact that it needed to support an A/C condenser. I decided the heavier wire that powered the higher speed fan setting wasn't necessary, and proceeded to run the wire on the "low" setting circuit. I found that I was able to re-use wire that I had cannibalized from the harnesses for most of the wiring, using the same colored wires and thicknesses. Sweet. That includes the wires for the temperature sensor on the radiator. This picture to the right, here, sort of shows how the wiring routes along the cowling and up under the floor. After the bundling the wires with tape, I've zip-tied them into place and out of the way. In the engine compartment, I was actually able to re-use a couple body mounts for zip-ties from the old harness, so it almost looks like it was done on purpose. Some of the radiator wire zip-tying was done today (rather than yesterday) when I worked on the starter wiring.

Looming
After dawdling over coffee this morning, I dragged myself out to the bus for some more wiring fun. I started with extending a few wires to complete the battery-top fuse-block. This was a pretty simple task, just time consuming. The glow plug and fan relay wires were pretty straightforward. Rather than just extend the main electrical wire that is nestled within the main harness, I just replaced it end-to end with a new 4 AWG wire. I cut off the ends of the original and butt-spliced those ends onto the new wire. Making the splice work required crimping the splice in my vice and then shrink-wrapping with my blowtorch, so it's just as well I didn't try to extend the original.

Most of the rest of the main harness was just hanging across the rear door. I tucked it up under the rear deck where the stock wiring is, and zip-tied it into place. The switch on the starter solenoid to trigger it was extended along the underside of the deck with the main harness. So was the red/black wire at the starter (that came from the bus ignition switch) all the way into the westy closet. Last, the main ground wires were extended and mounted beside the main negative cable on the body. The picture here gives a pretty good idea of how it looks now - very few visible wires. There's just that one black-wrapped bundle hanging from the center down to the fan relay. Once the relay is mounted, it will have more slack in that bundle.

Primarily Wired
The last bit I tackled today was getting the main starter wire (2 AWG) in place. After all the main harness / bundle work above, this wasn't nearly as rough. I simply cut off the battery end about 4" from the end and butt-spliced 2 feet of new wire. The picture to the right, here, was taken before the heat-shrink wrap was torched on. The starter-end has been bolted on. The battery still does not have anything connected to the positive terminal, though. It is probably wise to leave the battery disconnected until I've finished everything.

It was a very productive couple of days. Between Friday afternoon and today, I spent over 8 hours messing with the electrical system. By the end, though, I have the main harness wired, the fuse-block wired, and the starter wired. I have a few open questions I need to resolve before I can complete the electrical.
For example, I intend to retain the stock VW bus ignition switch. To trigger all the things necessary in the new engine, I need to send a signal to the New Beetle ignition switch when the key is turned from "lock" to "run" and from "run" to "start". The New Beetle ignition has lots of wires in it, so isn't simple. I think it is just a matter of wiring a collection of plugs together through a relay to be fired by the bus ignition. While I figure out how to wire the New Beetle side of the relay, I'll dig into the bus ignition for a good spot to dip for a signal for the 2 positions. Before I route the wires, though, I'll need to consider how I'll run the wire for the glow plug and CEL (check engine light) LED's that I plan to integrate into the original VW dashpod.

That's all for now. I plan to spend Father's Day with the family (not the bus), so I probably won't make much headway before next weekend. I should have time this week to dig into the wiring diagram for the bus to spot that signal dip. Maybe I'll have time to look at the glowplug and CEL circuits to get a feel for how thick a wire I'll need to send a good signal to the dash. Happy Father's Day-

pictures:
top - weird up-shot angle of radiator fan wiring along the side of the cowling
upper middle -finished wiring after tucking it away, wrapping the sole hanger and zip-tying it into place
lower middle - battery cable example of butt-splices. 1 w/tape, 1 w/o tape
bottom - wire bundles and battery primary wire mounted with zip-ties - note the wire route along the lip of the engine bay where the compartment seal used to go