Sunday, September 28, 2008

Wire Tuck EG Project ... 56k or DIE loading it...

The project is to clean up my engine bay. I have been thinking of doing this for a while already but I just don't have the time and most importantly the confidence to hack up all the original wirings and tuck it all into the bay. The target is to make sure the engine looks like this:


So here goes. Since i'll be retaining the A/C, it will still be messy I guess but its better than the current engine bay condition. Here's the before picture shots of the engine bay. It'll probably take atleast 2 weeks to finish until after Raya but i'll be working on it everyday since time is a concern for me.





Started with removing the intake pipe and filter box away. Always have a box where you keep all your parts so you don't start losing them.. All nuts and bolts are kept in another plastic...


Then moved on with removing the battery. I have plans on relocating the battery towards the back bonnet so i'll be shopping later for new sets of wires and cables for relocating it.

Then went away and removed the fusebox and all the battery frame holder. I'm still thinking on where to relocate the fusebox. Maybe it'll go behind the middle console if the wires is long enough. If not it'll be on the passenger side. I try to minimize as much wire cuts as possible to make things easier..


Then I start working on the signal wires, A/C wires and etc....



Here's all the wiring from the left side of the car. The headlight wirings, A/C wirings, fusebox wiring and etc. The trick to it is to take one side at a time and finish tucking it in and then redirecting wherever necessary. Trying to take both side at a time will be a pain..


Pretty clean after the wires are taken off. If the A/C lines weren't there, it'll be pretty naked but i tend to keep the A/C unless Brunei sees snow anytime soon... By the way, the body frame will get a respray with black paint once the wires are taken out just to make things look a little bit better.




So day2 starts. In the afternoon I had a help from my brother to help me put some plus into the firewall so I can pull everthing from the inside. Here's how messy it is from the inside after pulling the wires from the left side of the car.


Then i started re-routing all the A/C wires and headlight wires through the side of the car panel and it goes through the used to be water tank for the wiper. I took it out because I didn't like having it plus, i never used the item in any of my cars so far.


Here's the finished (left side only - easiet amongst all) product.


So then i started with the left side of the car. This is hardest part to tackle because I have to measure the length or atleast guesstimate whether the length is enough or needs to be extended. So far I have no need to extend the wires. So i start taking off the headlight, radiator fan, fog light, connectors for the main engine harness on the right side of the car.



I had to open up a lot of wires this time and make sure i get the right ones in the car. I got that one sorted out and pulled it to the side and start working on the engine harness. Opening up the wires, checking the sensor grounds. Apparently I had to do some de-pin of some sensor grounds and injector grounds coz the length is not enough to reach it. Here's how messy it looks like...



Injector wires are seperated from the main harness so it'll get connected inside the cockpit .. phew... Here's the pic of how it looks like. Initially it was part of the main engine harness but after a few magic tricks, its now seperated.




Ok today i did some more work with the main engine harness. I had to hack up the whole wiring to check whether I theres some wires that i can extend cause the current stock tucking is short. As I opened the wires up, to my despair, the wires ain't enough and I have to do intensive rewiring and repinning if I were to split everything into individuals. So I tucked everything back but re-positioned some connectors because some of them will be going into the passenger side.


So here you can see that the main engine harness has disappeared. Tucked it all to the back at the firewall. It looks messy right now because its not repainted black yet and I still need to do a lot of housekeeping. But all in all, the amount of space is excellent...

Since mine is still with A/C and run a Clutch cable, i won't be able to make it as tidy as I targetted but hopefully it'll still look nice for DIY job.







Sorry for the late update. I've been busy and its only the last 3 days i've been using the car without finishing the whole thing. Basically the project is 90% completed. I'm yet to relocate the battery to the trunk and finish up my fog light wiring. The car is in running condition already though but my interior is in a mess coz i still need to tidy it up.

Today, i repainted the engine bay to clear out the scratches and make it clearer for the spaces.



Sorry for the orange peeling, the paint was still yet when i took the photo, there you can see the main engine harness going into the firewall. If i were to extend those wires, it could've been more better for looks but I just didn't have the time but nothing an electrical tape and wire tubes won't fix. When i have time, then i'll fix it up again.. Its not as bad as it looks though.




I will be updating on the interior wiring soon. Didn't manage to really play around with the wire harness in the car because i was really limited with space in the car. Unless i do a lot of soldering and extending wires, then probably i'll get a lot of space. Since i'm daily driving the car and time is a concern, i won't be touching it until the holidays. So i'll keep on updating again for the interior wirings. Hopefully the before and after wire tuck is noticeable though coz in real life, it is spacious.

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