mndsm's new... (toy)olla!

In reply to T.J.:

I'm sure we can work something out.

Cool. How about Tuesday early lunch-ish time-frame? Otherwise, Tuesday evening works for me as well. I'll shoot you a text, but I just need a handful of posts to reach a dorkdom milestone.

If i can get it done by then, I am free all of tuesday. All depends on Mo's schedule.

Ok, sounds good. I'll text you Tuesday and we'll see.

You have no idea how much it saddens me to see no updates :/

James, hesh up you, its winter.

Update! So, miyuki hit 200k, and started acting, strange. Electrical strange. One morning she starts fine, go to an appt. Come back. Car sits for four hours, open door, get in, close door, electrical dead. No chimes, no lights, no nothing. Dead as a doorknob. Figure I left a door ajar, and it was cold, so grab the wife's car, jump it. Car fires right up. OK, let it run, confirm will restart, go on as usual. Next morning, car dead as a doornail again. I suspect its not the battery. Fiddle with it a bit, a shift brings it to life. Hit the key, dead as berkeley. Wtf? Short somewhere causing a drain? Its a 22 year old corolla in sub-zero temps, maybe I have a bad ground. Jump it again, fires again. Take it to Walmart. Come out, dead. Left my cell at home. berkeley. At this point I suspect the battery- alternator is known good after I drove on it from pa to Indy. Buy another battery at Walmart. No tools in the trunk, jump car with battery. Disconnect battery, drive home. Car fires for drive to work. Can't be battery, Walmart is a 3min drive, Toyota alternators aren't that good. Battery good. Were back to electrical. I haaaaaate electrical. Next morning, car, dead. Of course. Jump with Walmart battery. Back out, car dies. What. The. berkeley. Get out to jump it again, connect cables. Connect positive cable to terminal, car awakens.

Goddammit.

I know what it is.

Motherberkeleying positive battery terminal is fried. Wedge it on as best I can without tools, in subzero temps with no gloves, again. Car fires right up. Get it home, grab my trusty 1/4" 10mm socket/ratchet combo that I carry for E36 M3 like this, and refix terminal.

Fresh as a berkeleying daisy.

So. I will be ordering car audio level battery terminals soon. And I am looking to add in probably a 6 port fused distro block for auxiliary lighting and a couple small amplifiers (3-4000 watts ought to be good). Looks like I get to go back to stereo install school and electrical school at the same time. I hate electrical.

I know you already fixed it, but check your grounds. When it's warmer. Cars are always happier with good grounds.

mazdeuce wrote: I know you already fixed it, but check your grounds. When it's warmer. Cars are always happier with good grounds.

Those were the first things I went after. Theres a bunch of aux wiring on the cold side of the battery and I thought it was arcing the ground or some crazy E36 M3, because whenever I shifted them away from the battery, which as it turned out shifted the positive terminal just enough to give it aux power, it lit up. So I suspected a faulty ground the whole time. I even ripped out all the wiring for the fogs that sky render had done a good job of because I was angry trying to chase what turned out to he a red herring in my own car. The reason it kept dying when I'd hit the key was it didn't have enough juice transfer to engage the starter and instead killed the whole car because why not. So far so good, but I'm gonna order bigass gold motherberkeleyers just to be sure. Plus I like shiny objects.

TWO UPDATES IN 12 HOURS!

So, I got out the colored pencils this morning. I'm ashamed to admit, I know more about these pencils than I do electrical. Fortunately, I didn't pay retail on them, or they would have cost me as much as the wheels I have in storage for this car. Gotta love rich kids getting out of art school.

ANYHOW- I hate electrical. BUT, I need to do electrical. And so, I am only doing it ONCE. My goal is to only have to rip apart the dash one time, at least before the 7ag goes in. (yeah..... about that....)

AFAIK, this is what my electrical looks like currently. Not shown is the switch to the fogs, but that's sort of irrelevant for this. Other than I think I'm going to switch it out for a lit toggle, it's not changing. It's basic. BUT- the terminal clamps on the battery are shot, and the power wires for the fogs are done with c clip terminals. I aim to change this, especially since I broke all the c clips in a fit of rage two days ago. Step 1- Acquire giant berkeleying battery terminal clamps. Something like-

I'd prefer gold because I like shiny objects, but seems all the really nasty audio grade ones aren't gold. Shame, really. In that same time frame, I intend on putting the biggest goddamn battery cables I can through the car. Buddy of mine used some sort of ridiculous welding cable for his setup, it's actually pretty hilarious. I may or may not replicate this.

Step 2- acquire gigantic distro block. I'm going back to my car audio days- again because I only want to do this once. I highly doubt I will ever need as many ports as I intend on putting in, but I'm going to shoot for 6. This ought to give me ample outs for aux lighting, amplifiers, toasters, sex dol... I mean what? Yeah..... Something along these lines- I'm gonna need two of these, because one will act as a ground as well. BUT, I should never ever ever need to pull wiring again. I may even throw a smaller one in the back of the car to make sure I have room for amplifiers in the long run... but I'm REALLY trying to resist going back to the well... I don't need 140db anymore.

Last but not least, a signal block. This one... I may have to build custom. The idea would be I take the one signal that's already there, split it down into a block, and distribute it from there. There's a sick part of me that wants to inline switch the whole sumbitch so I can control the signal before it even gets to the accessory, but that might be a bit nuts. though the ability to shut down an amplifier individually without killing the entire stereo would be nice. We'll see. in the end, I want it to look roughly like this-

I feel like I'm missing something, but I think if I do this, I'll never need to do it again.

<img src="" />

Also, this.

Not really sure where I'm going with it, and I kinda berkeleyed it up, but I can marble dip badges now. Wheels may be next.

I'd just like to point out that under car LED's are hilariously cheap. I'm not sure if you've noticed. I have.

So are handfuls of individual singles, waffle boards, and arduino controllers. Just saying. I may or or may not have a spare netbook paying around for nefarious deeds.

Not gonna lie I want to run vip style puddle lights on the 5 when its lowered.

I like where all this electrical stuff is going. I have a stockpile of car audio stuff from years ago. I need to snag a small sealed pickup style 10" box so I can have a little thump once again.

And see that's just it. My LAST system, was perfect. Boston Pro 10" tiny little cube, Alpine v12 4+1, Alpine head, Infinity doors and by9's. Amp and sub were stolen, replaced with a 4 channel v12. Parted out when the DSM was crushed. Other than wanting true components this time around, I want to replicate that as much as possible for both portability (wagon ain't a wagon if it can't haul E36 M3) and price.

The system BEFORE that one....yeah. I can't do that again. I blew up WAAAAAY too many sets of speakers in that car.

So.... I may have traded my dead grandmothers old computer to my sticker guy along with a drift RC car for a 4ag head and a bare block........

this is what happens when the wife is slow loading the kid and you.have a dirty car.

Haha, awesome. As cool as the sticker making is, I'm glad to see the actual car is back in the thread. I saw an old Corolla wagon the other day and I stared for quite a while (it was the generation right before yours). Cool stuff.

Bored and cold, the sticker was a distraction. Its getting close to spring. I got some summer rims for the winter whip I need to get on. Might even wash it!

I recommend completely replacing and/or supplementing all of her grounds. Take a gander at this:

http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/1787/Electrical-Basics-and-Automotive-Grounding-Systems.aspx

I was partway reading through your problem and allready knew what it was.

Lessons learned from GM side terminal batteries in my case.

If I ever own another chevy, the first thing I am doing to converting to a conventional top terminal battery.

wife's thunderturd did that in college.

three trips to advance to figure out wtf was going on and a dealer visit (all with new batteries supplied then returned.) I grabbed the cables to check if the last guy had done his job and the cable pulled away from the connector... only one strand had been holding the connector on and three sperate stooges had just reconnected it. Couldnt be the fact that the connector was barely on.

(we were just dating and her father still refuses to let me fix his cars.)

Apexcarver wrote: I was partway reading through your problem and allready knew what it was. Lessons learned from GM side terminal batteries in my case. If I ever own another chevy, the first thing I am doing to converting to a conventional top terminal battery.

Yeah, if it had been someone elses car, I would have checked that first. But since I was the last one anywhere NEAR the connectors, I figured I'd done it right. Live and learn.

Sky_Render wrote: I recommend completely replacing and/or supplementing all of her grounds. Take a gander at this: http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/1787/Electrical-Basics-and-Automotive-Grounding-Systems.aspx

This is good stuff right here.

It's amazing how many people really don't get electricity. Or even worse, don't try to get it. One of the coolest things I learned in college was that the flow of water in pipes and the flow of electricity in wires is governed by the same basic equations. What this means is that you can use water as an analogy (as long as the systems are simple) and it works. People can visualize water flowing much easier than electricity, and suddenly they understand.

yeah but pipe flow doesnt go all imaginary on you!