Oh dear gentle peoples of GRM,
I'm looking at removing the factory Ford wiring completely from project D2D. It is 30 yrs old, not brittle yet, and with what my plan is snowballing into, I can't afford chasing down electrical gremlins on the side of the road.
So that all being said, who has installed and ran a pdm? I don't want to but if I have to spend the $3k on something like a racepak, I will. I want simple, doesn't have to be the lightest either, must play nice with an aftermarket ECU, operate normal street car functions minus heat/ac, etc..
Impart some knowledge on me, please.
I adapted the harness for my 6.0 LQ4 powered 67 Camaro, from the Express van donor. I'm a 40 plus year automotive technician, and it took me at least 40 hours...I would never do it again, especially for a customer.
However, Ford generally doesn't have the same aftermarket support, so it might be the only way.
I made my own...with ease of wiring in mind, able to easily swap from a ground switched relay to power switched in a couple minutes:
I don't have a picture of it under its cover though.
I don't know Ford's well but have the standard wiring harness in my 50 year old Datsun. The only issue I've ever had is the rubber grommet in the firewall split and chased a wire to chaff. I've owned it for 36 years and raced it for 33.
Unless the car is known to have issues I wouldn't create more work for yourself.
No, I want something that is new. Slicing and dicing existing wiring is more time than it's worth not to mention ugly. The above "plate" is what I want to stay away from because it's hard to manage. I want to have programmable inputs to outputs.
These are what I'm talking out, simple one power wire, chassis grounded, simple harness out.
These then allow a simple keypad for most functions or easy reuse of the factory switches.
The aim ones I am liking so far. Make sure you have a master mechanical relay on the power feed that goes to your cutoff and ignition switch. Solid state electronics fail closed.
Ranger50 said:
No, I want something that is new. Slicing and dicing existing wiring is more time than it's worth not to mention ugly. The above "plate" is what I want to stay away from because it's hard to manage. I want to have programmable inputs to outputs.
These are what I'm talking out, simple one power wire, chassis grounded, simple harness out.
These then allow a simple keypad for most functions or easy reuse of the factory switches.
You do realize that is not any different at all from my "plate" right?(I just laid it out on the plate, its inside a box now). My engine bay PDC has a single power in, a single ground to the chassis. The only way its any different is that each wire connects to the "input" and "output" terminal blocks individually rather than through a single connector....no programming needed. It is a PDC after all, once set the circuits generally don't change very often. You are complicating a piece that doesn't need to be complicated. The OEMs hardwire PDCs because they never have to change any circuits. All my wires feed through a grommet in the side of box, nothing is exposed.
Anyway a programmable PDC is going to be expensive and consume a lot of real estate under the hood(though I guess they all do). Also, something you should be aware of is that regardless of your engine bay power distribution you will still have to have a cabin fuse box for circuits such as interior lighting, cigarette lighter, etc etc. There are just a ton of circuits to account for when wiring the car from scratch and using a modern engine.
This is what I have. For $38 (plus fuses and relays) is has spots for 10 fuses and 5 relays.
Then, for a couple higher amp controlled relays with fuses (IGN On power and started solenoid) I have two of these. $30/ea.
All in with out wire was somewhere around $150 and has been very reliable. I can find better ways to spend $3k in my book.
Google Waytek.
In reply to Scott_H :
Got any pics of your setup installed? I'm collecting ideas for next winter when I re-wire the race car.
In reply to Wicked93gs :
there are a few more budget options like hardwire,micropdm, creative werks etc. im looking at investing in one as my first project will teach me how to tune and a pdm with canbus can receive a message to kill all functions in any error for somebody like me just shooting in the dark on a really budget build and so simple to implement those safeties seems like a godsend in my opinion.
