Pete Have a look at Summit Racing in the US ... http://www.summitracing.com/expertadvice/slideshow.aspx?storyid=277e610a-9d1a-479f-890b-9ca6229f9627 These guys sell a bunch of hot-rod and latemodel stuff ... the other alternative is have a chat with PEtewell engineering in Croydon - Peter Sortwell - he does a lot of race car wiring ad he might be able to help you design a loom. I'd keep the engine-bay stuff (anything that connects to the ECU) and re-wire the rest. I ggogled "race car wiring harness" and found a couple of sites that looked interesting. I have owned ny race car since 1986 and have re-wired it twice ... vibration is a wiring loom killer and all race cars vibrate !!! RB
Make sure ALL the lights still work. Marque sports still requires them. Dont BIN the loom. Suggest you use it. Open up the wrap and just remove what you dont want and rewrap. I have 2 complete looms which I intend to cut up to create my race car loom. Try buying 40 different coloured/marked wire. Full rolls in 40 colours are really hard to get and expensive in 100m rolls. best bit is you can use the Z32 wiring diagram as a starter and liquid paper out what you dont need and then you have a wiring diagram for your custom loom with all the colours correct. You can probably dump stuff like parking lights, reversing lights, rear wiper, ABS maybe, interior lights, heater air con controls
I was hoping to hear from you, you did this for your VH45 didn't you? The engine harness is being completely re-done as it's in a pretty poor state and I'm not confident continuing to use it. I'll probably start by stripping it back to just the wires, copying them loosly then deciding if I want to route anything differently to make it a bit more user-friendly. Hopefully once we get started (like Ben said, it's a long way off yet) I think we'll get the hang of it. Thanks Robin, there will be a lot of Googling happenning when we get closer to starting the wiring, thanks for the starting points too. Neglect and abuse are also wiring loom (and everything else) killers and this car has definitely been neglected and probably abused hence making a new loom from scratch rather that trying to salvage the old one. Thanks Graham, I need to go through my Manual Of Motorsport and MSCA regulations pretty carefully to make sure I have everything I need and no unneccessary stuff. I knew I needed brake lights and the headlights are staying, if nothing else if someone ever runs a genuine 24 hour race here I will be in at any cost... The loom is not going straight in the bin, first it will be used as a template for the new loom THEN it will be binned, it's well beyond salvation. Good idea about the wiring diagram and liquid paper, might need to make some photocopies from my service manual or print one of the onlien ones out. If I feel really enthused I could always sunstitute liquid paper with Photoshop too... I was hoping to get away with 20 colours or so, re-using some colours for things that are imposible to confuse, I don't think there is much harm in the tail lights being the same colour as one of the fuel injectors for example. Either way, definitely colour-coding the whole thing carefully.
hyper101 has a large scale scan and print of the car wiring diagram. I had one and used it till it got manky and had to throw it out.
That is excellent news, saves me heaps of time scanning and tidying up the one from my manual or trying to enlarge one of the low res scans on line. Thanks again.
My engine crane n stand come in good use yet? Never used the stand so wasn't sure whether it'd hold things up well...?
Crane worked just fine, have not used the stand yet as I need to get some bolts to attach the engine to it with. Thanks.
if you need help with wiring everything up let me know.. i can come around and help you out on a sunday..
Thanks Billy, it will be a while until we are ready to make a loom but I may just take you up on that. Also, any idea where I can get good quality wiring for it in lots of different colours?
Alternative is to go numbered wiring (all black). I've got some 20 core stuff but probably double the thicknes of the stock loom wires. I''l try and get some details off the cable cover tomorrow.
The advantage of colours is if/when something goes wrong you don't need to trace wires all over the place, you can just look at a wire and know where it comes from and goes to.
Boom, part 2 The pictures can speak for themselves: Also, lots of bits of gasket goop in the pick-up: Out of curiosity, the rod broke into quite a few pieces and tucked itself into the crank out of the way, the hole in the sump was above the oil level, it cranked pretty easily by hand once we freed it up by turing it backwards a little, could this have in theory run on 5 cylinders for a while in this state?
You could probably get it to start, wouldn't reccomend it though... Would be horribly out of balance.
I was not planning on doing it myself, I was just wondering if the guy I got it from may have been driving it around like this. Also, any news on the steering rack?
There-in lies a question! Initially we thought it had been hydrolocked as the for sale ad went from running car to not running over a weekend with lost of flooding here and the car was quite wet inside. However... there was plenty of nasty water inside the intake on one side and exhaust on the other side but the pod filter was dry and dusty and the water bore a strong resemblance to what was in the radiator. Short answer: Not looking after the car very well in some way...
Get us a better photo of the fractured ends of the rod (crank and piston). Fron your first picture of the crank end it appears from a distance that it is a brittle fracture, with possibly a crack propagation from the centre. This would indicated over loading in tension, or over speeding the engine.
It looks like a brittle metal fracture to my untrained eye. I'll take the broken off bits to work tomorrow and take high res images of them, I don't really have a great camera for taking detailed pictures at home but I'll try to take some better ones of the left over ends of the rod on the weekend if the pictures on the bits are not conclusive. Thanks Dave.
