Un-tangle the Snakes - part III

 Taking a while this project - most people will probably do this in a day. But I am trying, for a change, to do a decent job.

I've drawn up a circuit diagram but it's always difficult to translate that to a real set of wires; you can't decide lengths without being in front of the actual kit, for example. Also doesn't help when you have a brain-freeze and suddenly forget how electricity works - but I got there in the end.

I created 2 wires for the positive and negative feeds, spliced wires into them and heatshrunk it all up:

Two of my switches have those horrible 13A plug-type screw terminals which are rubbish in the heavy vibration environment of a car. This is why my horn has been so hit and miss, with my horn failing every time I do anything to the aux panel. 

So I bought a box of shoelace ferrules (never heard of these before) which should work better. As the name suggests, they look like the end of a shoelace, with a small metal cylinder and a plastic boot. The problem is, they're rubbish; my set came with a special tool to crimp the plastic boot onto the wire but it is just nowhere near firm enough - the wire comes out with gentle pressure. However, the cylinder on the end is what I want, so I hacked the boots off and soldered the cylinders onto my wires, tidying up with heatshrink:

Looks pretty neat, I thought, and should hopefully be much better. I now have everything on the aux panel going into 1 DT plug:

Still looks messy but much better than it was and hopefully less prone to bad connections, with all plugs crimped AND soldered. 

Next stage is to do the other side of the DT plug which is going to be a it trickier as I have to do the soldering sitting in my car, rather than on the bench. 

Un-tangle the Snakes - part II

 The camera I bought has a front and rear camera but, unlike my bike version, the 2 cameras look the same and the wonderful Chinese-English translation in the manual neglects to help in suggesting which is which (the front camera is higher resolution). So I took a punt on it and, guess what? Yup, 50/50 chance and I got it wrong! So I'll need a few minutes to swap them round - lucky I tried the thing before fully installing it.

So this is the snakes nest I'm trying to tidy up:

First job is to label everything before I take it all apart. I've drafted up a rough idea of where the wiring currently goes and how I'll need to wire the DT plug - I have 9 inputs, so I'll use the 12-pin plug.

Next stage is to work out an efficient wiring diagram, without the 4 separate positive wires I currently have, for example.

Un-tangle the Snakes - part I

 So time to do something reasonably major; sort out the damn wiring behind the aux panel!

After my quickshift was repaired, which required the aux panel to come off, my horn stopped working - damn wiring AGAIN! 

So I'm going to do 2 things; re-design the circuit to hopefully simplify it and use some more professional plugs and crimping techniques. I've spent some research time on YouTube, investigating good crimping techniques and I've bought some DT-type plugs, which are waterproof (not that I need that) and have an excellent clamping method. But the idea is to rationalise the 3 plugs I currently have to undo to get the aux panel off, down to 1 larger DT plug.

Obviously, with wiring, this could go horribly wrong but I'm sick and tired of something stopping working every time I so much as look at the aux panel.

Included in this rewire, I'm installing a front and rear camera system (same as the one I have on my motorbike). This has a 3-fold purpose; as a dash cam in case I have an accident, as a reversing camera but mostly so I always have my drives recorded, so I can always make a video if something unexpectedly good happens. At the moment, I have to fit my camera and then turn it on at the right time - as the battery only lasts an hour, I regularly find I think I've recorded something but then find out the battery died 5 minutes in and I've got nothing.

First thing tonight, though, was to test out my LP pump. Someone on the forum had a similar starting problem that I have and it turned out his LP pump had died, so the HP pump was having to suck the petrol all the way from the tank. Seemed like a possible cause of my problem but, after pulling the pipe off the swirl pot and turning the pumps on, petrol came out, so the LP pump is working - damn. I spent some time cleaning the filter which had some paper strands in it (like a mouse has made a nest in my tank?!), so maybe that will help? Unlikely...

While I had the rear panel over the diff off, I made a start on the rear camera. After some thought, I decided to attach it to the top of the number plate light, so I drilled a couple of small holes in the top of the unit and then, scarily, a hole in the rear panel for the wire:

A grommet and that's done - not too intrusive:

The wire will go through the tunnel up to the dash and the main 3-inch screen. I have yet to decide where to put the front camera or the display screen - that's for next time. It has to be integrated into my new wiring, as it needs an ignition-switched power supply.