Thread: Meet my 90, and share the adventure.

In my industry Fish oil has been used extensively especially in hard to reach places.
Advantages: It remains clear so you can see whats going on underneath it.
I does protect the metal surfaces and prevent corrosion for a while.
Disadvantages: It stinks.
You have to monitor it.(which is fine if you make it part of your Planed Maintenance Schedule.)
It's sticky, so it retains dirt and grit.

The wiring bug has bitten again.
I've been sitting on a traxide headlight wiring upgrade kit for about a year now (it was quite uncomfortable), but had put off install for a few reasons, those being
1) My lights were still working
2) I've got quite a few other wiring 'side jobs' to tidy up at the same time.

This last week, I've seen the light. Install was GO.

I had a thread with some preliminary questions about the headlight relays, specifically where people have mounted them. You can have a read of it if you wish, >>Here<<

I had some ideas in my head about where to mount the New Era headlight relays (3 off), and I knew I wouldn't really be happy with them in the engine bay, and really didn't want to drill into the guards (exposed screws in the wheel well etc). I also wanted them to be as high as possible for the inevitable mud and grime that finds its way into the engine bay. Relays don't play well with mud.

One idea I took home from that thread I started was Austastar's idea of mounting the relays to a plate that bolts inside the sheel arch.
This also lent itself to a idea where I could make this almost entirely removable, and easily backwards compatible with the existing headlights. It also helps that I'd be able to wire most of it on the bench, rather than on the vehicle. I'm a sucker for being neat.


DodgybracketV2.0 preoject commence.

This project called for rapid prototyping- pizza box engineering at its finest (complete with grease stains)!
Within a solid 15 minutes and a few crude measurements it was cut up and ready for a trial fit.




The arts and crafts eventually gave way to some harder work- 1.6mm (iirc) gal sheet with a few holes to suit.



The holes were drilled to replicate the horn mounting hole, and the hole for the anti-rotation tab on the horn bracket. The horn bracket is the first mounting point for this bracket.

Relays are to mount thusly:


With a bit of the old in-out, in-out, I wang-jangled a few more 9mm holes into the plate to accept M6 nutserts for the relay mounting, as well as adding 2 additional holes in the plate for mounting - making a total of 3 fasteners to hold this bracket steadfast within the headlight recess bucket (It will mount on the face of the headlight bucket on the longitudinal axis of the vehicle). It's surprisingly sturdy in this location.


A bit of scotch brite, and a scrub, followed by paint (etch primer then my favourite matte epoxy enamel) and the world was good!



I sanded 2 of the riv nuts as they are earth points for the whole assembly. There is also another earth cable which runs up to the radiator support bracket (tests OK at 0.05 Ohms resistance... good enough for me I guess)


Stay tuned for part 2...

Excellent work..
Not a fan of the side mounted relay though mate..

Deuce - Wiring it all up
With the bracket complete, I was ready for wiring. So I danced the time warp, and the whole thing magically unpainted itself. How neat is that?!
Must have been a rip in the space-time continuum. Nevertheless the show went on.



Most of the wirng was done on the bench. I was aiming for a compact footprint, with a module that could be easily removed from the vehicle - either for service, or for reverting back to the OE design of full power thru the switch.
Reasoning for this (as good as the traxide kit is), was that if SHTF, I can simply unplug the H4 sockets, and smash 'em back into the globes as needed, then rip the whole lot out of the car for an autposy. Call it pedantic, or obsessive compulsive... you decide.

To make it all the more difficult, I added an additional new era relay to the affray for running the LED light bars on the roof, as well as some future lighting requirements. With LED's these days, the current draw is relatively low compared to halogen or HID, so the whole new twin channel 30A relay was probably overkill, but it doens't hurt to have some tricks up your sleeve.

As I said, wiring for the relays was predominantly done on the bench. Bugger this wiring on the vehicle caper. Most of this was done with pink floyd's greatest hits on the youtube, with an evening snack and wires EVERYWHERE.

(Not really a) BOOZ REVOOZ

Coffee and chocolate. For the win. Also novelty tin cup from eastern europe.




Wiring was done over a few nights, mostly just at a leisurely pace.
Here, the relay earths, OE headlight (signal) feed is wired up the the headlight relay, and headlight and driving light outputs wired up.



Almost there...


Ready for isntall into the vehicle:


The switching is done vie the Orange 3 core cable on the LHS of the bracket. This terminates in a 3 pin deutsch plug, and joins with the vehicle loom that goes to the LED roof lights (black cable with blue bullet connectors- yeah, In know, sue me), and some extra signal wires that go to the switch panel in the cab. The "drv light" relay RHS mounting point also doubles as the earth, and there is a back earth wire danglilng off the side of the above pic.
I went all out and put some pinch seal on the ends of the plate before install. IT was a bit sharp in places, and I don't really dig wires being cut in half if I can help it.

Part, um, three- The horror... The horror

Many posts back - probably september 2016, I installed a 3 gang carling switch panel in the dash. The plan was to have this as the light switches, because the previous owner had these poxy little microswitches taped to the dash which were a pain to use, and a pain to se whether they were on or off. Without visually checking the lights or it being dark enough to see, it was impossible to tell whether all the lights were on, or none at all.
A pox on ye:



I'm led to believe that a big box 4wd accessory store did a lot of the fitout of this car, possibly even the lighting wiring, although I hope not. By the state of affairs, it may as well have been the apprentice, as there were electrical sins everywhere throughout the install. Allow me to demonstrate:

Power feed to the switches in the cab. Who dooesn't love a scotch lock?!


The yellow wire from the scotch lock was conveniently zip tied to the radiator overflow tube. Neatly stowed in the engine bay.


Inside the cab, the switch wiring was equally amateur. Too much wire? Just zip tie it and stuff it somewhere where the owner won't find it!

I was surprised it was even fused. Probably because there were fuses in the kit that they threw at the car, hoping that the parts might stick...

From the switches in the cab, the wired sent back out the firewall, and across the firewall to the Passenger side guard. More bundles of wires here. Oh Joy.

The relay is near the windshield water reservoir, to its left, is a big bundle of wires from the battery box.
To its right, it the ubiquitous bundle of yellow wires zip tied to the AC piping. Thanks. Just thanks.
...at least I have some nice scraps of wire to use for other little projects.

Another relay... this one for the roof lights... was stashed on the radiator support mount. I promptly removed this, and its bundle of wire, and made it my new earth point for the driving lights and headlights (this was the one that I ohm checked as being ok).


So yeah, needless to say, the wiring which was either comissioned or done by the previous owner was overdue for removal.
The same flavour of wiring was seen in the rear of the vehicle with the aftermarket speakers which were installed. If you can't remember, I removed approx 6m of speaker wire in a neat little zip tied bundle from behind the rear speaker panel.


In any case, I'm not sad to see it all gone. It probably should have been done properly the first time.

Nothing wrong with Bullet Connectors Mitch. They hardly ever fail except when you need them most. Anyway a bit of a fight and a twist usually puts 'em right. All good fun eh?

Part quattro. A few more tweaks of my own.

Part of the headlight relay kit was a 50A auto reset circuit breakers.
I applied the 'the more the merrier' principle with this, as I was running another relay, I sourced another equivalent part- Narva p/n54850- Circuit breaker, 50A automatic reset.

I'm getting sick of drilling holes in the battery box, as it's getting rather full. So I opted for this- aniother great product from 3M. VHB tape.
If anyone out there has heard the expression 'sticks like **** to a blanket', then this stuff is stickier. It's uses in the 'real world' include sticking architectural glass into skyscrapers, sign installs etc. It's incredibly tough.
I did some science last year, and stuck two pieces of aluminium together with approx 18cm2 of VHB tape. I could not pull it apart. And believe me, I tried. I froze it down to negative 80 celsius, and only then could it be removed, but not without a fight. But I digress...

From this:


To this:


Seamless segue!
Introducing the negative bus bar.
I had earth cables stacked on earth cables, and this should relieve this.
Now, all earths in the battery box (winch negative, body earth, safetyhub fuse block earth) all mount to this bus, and then I have a link between the starting and min battery, and one link between the main battery and the negative bus. It's a much neater way to do it.

You can see how it looked before:


This also has the benefit of allowing battery disconnect with 1 cable as opposed to 3. The puma can be a bit cantakerous with the battery disconnect sequence, and I haven't had problems with it, but this will mean I can easily hit that 17s disconnect window after unlocking the car.



As for the remaining wiring for the headlight upgrade, this was done on the car.

From the circuit breakers, the 2x 6bs traxide supplied battery power cables were fed into split conduit. The cable run goes like this:
Thru the front grommet, and zip tied to the starter motor cable.
It parts off just after the front chassis outrigger (under firewall) and ducks behind the bracket which supports the passenger footwell.
It then runs up the wheel arch, fitting between the AC blower motor and the wing panel, where it is zip tied to the existing wiring loom.
I made new 6mm holes in the (puma Plastic) wheel arch, and used these nifty fir tree zip ties to secure the loom over the wheel arch (it's way easier to run this with the wheel falre removed- trust me, I tried).

From there, the cables are where they are needed in the passenger wing area, behind the headlight.
I also added some 7-core wire from here to go back to the battery box. This will be able to tie accessories into the safetyhub fuse box in the battery box. I should never have to run a wire again! How good is that?!



The power gets tapped into the B pins on the relays, and the roof light and relay coil switching cables go back to the roof / cab respectively. It traces the power supply loom from the battery box, but diverges at the top of the wheel arch and goes along the fron of the firewall.

Roof light power output from the relay is just bullet connectors. Allows easy disconnect without too much faffing about. Total amp draw would be about 5A for the roof lights, so should not be a huge problem.
Earth for the roof lights is this nifty earth point in the middle of the firewall, beside the ECM, on the passenger side.


And here it all all pretty much installed:





Can be removed via the headlight hole:
1) Disconenct battery
2) Remove headlight trim and headlight (takes about 3 minutes)
3) Remove 3 bolts for the headlight relay bracket, also undo bullet connectors for roof lights, undo 3 pin deutsch plug for the switch signal wires to the relay coils
4) Remove via headlight hole. Once it's out, undo the 2x power feed from the battery.
5) The OE headlight loom can be reconnected as required.


Some time thru the week I'll make the final 3 connections for the carling switches to get the roof lights and driving lights operational.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Excellent work..
Not a fan of the side mounted relay though mate..

Hmmm I see.
Are your concerns aesthetic or technical?