This is a spare fuse board and relay panel that I got from an identical car (Thanks Garry once again). You can see here I have pruned all the wires back so I can see what I am doing. I will now pull it apart to see what goes on inside.
You can see here what the internals are like. Holy shit!
Nah its not that bad. In essence each of the silver strips you see weaving around on these boards is like a wire. It carries current from one area to another and is separated from all the other silver strips. Kind of a network of circuits taking current from fuses to relays and plugs. The three centre boards you see here are double sided and yes they do all come from inside that one panel! On some of these boards you might see a tab sticking up (remember you can double click on the pictures to make them bigger). These tabs go through one or more of the other boards to connect with components on different levels.
It takes a bit of tracing but it is quite logical if you take your time.
You can see here I have marked one of the circuits in red. Its kinda like those kids games where you have to find your way out of a maze. The difference being this one is three dimensional with multiple layers.
It is quite rewarding to be able to extract more and more circuits that won't be needed and now that I can see where things are going I can determine if they are important to what I am doing or not. Piece of cake really.
WHAT IS A RELAY
It just occurred to me that there might be a few reading this Blog that don't know what a relay does. In essence it is a small box that acts kind of like a switch. You see many of the switches in your car like wipers, headlights, horn, heater etc just aren't designed to carry the amount of power needed to make these components work. They would just burn out. So to get around this, the switch you turn on for these components doesn't actually carry much current at all. It is just enough to activate an electromagnet inside the relay which simply pulls a bridge across in the main power feed to the Headlights for example. That way all your headlight switch has done is provide enough current to activate the electromagnet, which then bridges the circuit for your headlights so that they can draw the power they need straight from the battery.
Take a look at this video on Youtube. It explains it really well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz4X5umfNkQ&feature=related
ENGINE WIRING
Phil sent me a pic during the week to show me where he is up to with the engine wiring. It is looking great I have to say. He does a very neat job, using trailer flex (as this has 7 or so wires all wrapped together). Phil is running the wires with good length on them and mounting all the components on a temporary board to keep it all together until I fit it permanently in the car. Unfortunately I left the picture at work so I can't post it here today, but I will send it home and get it on the blog soon so you can see what it all looks like.
No comments:
Post a Comment