Saturday, 18 February 2017

The Big Thaw

Well,  my loyal fans (!),  it's been a while. To coincide with the coldest spell of the  coldest winter I can recall,  our boiler decided to take the opportunity to die - our house has been freezing and while I don't mind too much being in the garage in that temperature, coming in to a house which is almost as cold is not enjoyable. These are my pathetic reasons for doing no work for the last 2 weeks.

But boiler now fixed,  heat restored and warmer weather here as well,  I surged ahead.... er... sort of.

The wiring for the headlights is being a pain - the original wires just weren't long enough,  resulting in the plug to the loom ending up right in the space where the suspension mount sits,  which didn't seem like a good idea. So,  I tried to extend them but I ran out of butt connectors and loom tape. One side done but the other waiting on a delivery.

I've decided to add an ECU map switch to the aux panel,  so I can swap between an emission-friendly map and a normal road use map (bit like VW have been caught doing) on the fly,  without having to connect the PC up.

It's a very simple setup; toggle switch connected between an earth and one of the pins on the ECU. The ECU can store 3 maps; with the switch in the off position,  an internal pull-up resistor gives a 5V signal that tells the ECU to use map 3 and with the switch on,  the ECU sees the earth (0V) and uses map 1 - nice. Just need to actually create some maps...

I've bought a simple toggle switch and a couple of guard hoops and started fitting - I'll get a pic next time.

Also ordered a Carling wiper switch to replace the rubbish CBS one.

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