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Main Light switch.
Click on the link to see the indicators in action controlled by the MoTeC system.
Another Two weeks have passed and may more hours as usual. I fitted the hand break with the cable arriving from FlexibleDrive. Who did a great job making the cables to size. We set up the MoTeC to pull the cable until a low ampage was reached. However my cheap American actuator, that was sold as a hand break actuator, pulled its self to pieces in its first attempt. I have been using linier actuators from Motion Dynamics in the past for all sorts of uses. So one has been ordered and the previous actuator put in the bin. When I get that working I will post a video. Let's hope it works.
With the bulk of the wiring completed, Oh I still have the wing mirrors to do, I have been checking out the programming of the MoTeC and testing, with much help from Glen. You will see a little video of a typical instance with the indicator well on the way to working. You need to be aware that the self canceling stalk operated system will not fit in the GT40, and having experience with toggle switched indicators in a MK I sprite. I found that they were often left on, flashing as I merrily drive straight with an indicator flashing. So the MoTeC's ability to sing and dance was bought into action. The indicator has flashing buttons on the dash and behind the dash small programmable buzzer. I have four behind the dash, one for the indicators and three more that will be programed to suit the warning they will transmit. These can be obtained off eBay "Programmable warning buzzer". I have not set up the steering angle sensor that will work the self canceling of the indicators. I have also programed them to switch off after 3 minutes of flashing.
Two repairs. The light switch had an issue that when I selected O the Drive lights came on, and the two LED's in the hand break selector I burnt out. So both devices needed rearing or modifying.
Tim came over to start to get the Tesla working, but no joy, may be this week.
I said that the bulk of the wiring was done, but the wing mirrors are yet to be installed. There are about 20 wires to come into the doors! The list of things a wing mirror has to do if you use a modern one.
Mirror Up, Down, Left, Right, Fold, (Each requires two wires and information to be sent from the joy stick to the opposite door.) Indicator, Demister, Proximity warning. Door open light, The GT40 also has a large storage area that will need a light. That is about 16 cables and I think there will be more. I have a nice little joy stick, for the mirrors, that has about 10 connection pins. I needed to test each combination to work out which pair send the message for only one function e.g. Left mirror UP. That took some time. I am now building the board that contains a number of mini solenoids to do the job. Let's see if I can get it working.
As we had been in contact with our two grandsons age 3 and 6 months, who had COVID, we had to go into lockdown. This gave me more time to work on the car. Still wiring, wiring and more wiring. To give you an idea it took me all day to wire the map lights in the rear view mirror and the boot light. There were many holes drilled into the body to find a root for the power to reach to the lights and these are in the process of being glassed over then filled. I may be slow, but I have no instructions to follow as much of what I am doing is not standard. I also installed the front headlights. These are Hylux lights and they JUST fit, in the height dimension. One thing with the Hylux is that the beam adjustment is done by turning screws that are located on the front of the lamp. Of course the GT40 I have to adjust from the rear. So the two springs that pull the light in place allowing flexibility of movement when lining up the lights have been changed to push springs. The springs are not in place yet. I will wait for all of that once the car is on the ground and I have some basic idea where they need to move to.
In addition to the headlights I am well on the way to installing the turning lights. These light up when the car makes a tight turn to the right or left. There is a suggestion that I made to Lexus to improve their car, but they were not interested, so my GT40 will have that feature. You will see at the end of the build.
There are two fuel filling points on the right and left of the car, at the back of the bonnet. Obviously I will only have one filling point for electricity, so the drivers side hole is being filled with many layers of glass. To fill the hole I chamfered the edge of the hole on the top and bottom. I then layer up one piece of woven glass to the underside, nice and tight, noting not to use resin on other than the edges. Once the resin had hardened I put resin on the rest of the glass. I then worked on the top, laying down about 6 - 8 layers of glass, then sanding down the edges. The following day, once the resin had been hardened, another 6-8 layers of glass followed by sanding level, followed by a couple of weeks at the Phisyo to get my shoulder fixed.
I also installed the windscreen wiper motor, only to find that the air-conditioning unit needed to be lowered, so off to CadCut to have a new mounting bracket.
At last, it was time to fire up the MoTeC to see if the switches would control the lights. Unfortunately, not, so Glen from Auto Sports Electronics came over for a day to check things out. After a day of tracking things down we were no better off, but I am sure that we will get there. It appears that there is a problem with the CANBus, but let's see.
One other development, I collected the hand break cable, that will link to the electrical actuator. That will be fun programming.
Wiring the front of the car, it will get a lot fuller.
Wiring continues With many hours of work, pretty much under the dash board, however about a week ago I reached a point where I could braid the wires. This entailed disconnecting many of the connections, taping them with a note of their original connection point and then braiding the loom. Then of course reconnect all the wires back into place. The next job, once the front lights are wired will be to start testing all of the connections. The last 3 weeks felt as if there was little progress being achieved but in reality wiring does not show up as a big step forward.
The MoTeC steering angle sensor was installed and wired in place with the break pressure sensors, see photo.
There were two items that were installed on Saturday that made me feel as if I made a couple of leaps forward. These being the windscreen wiper motor, that took a bit of juggling about, with the wire harness blocking access. Yes I know it would have been better to have fitted it first but the parts took some time to arrive.
The other item fitted was the rear view mirror. I had a dilemma in that fitting interior lights in such a small cabin was not going to be easy. The first car that resolved this issue by installing the lights as part of the rear view mirror was the original Fiat 500. I obtained my mirror on EBay as a Mustang mirror.
When I work in the garage I usually have the door open not only to cool the environment but also to allow passing friends and visitors to have a chat. Last week I was working with my back to the door I herd a noise, on turning around I saw someone taking my mountain bike. I was too slow to get round the car and stop him. Anyway got some photos.
Dash progressing, the yellow bag is a pillow to lie on.
I have continued the last few weeks wiring the car, and this was only dash board. This may seam not a lot but I have found that a day is put aside to wire up a load of instruments only to find a couple are completed and not even tested. However it is looking as if the dash will be wired up by the end of next week. The next job will be to wire the outputs i.e. front lights, controls to the motor and then Test. Once completed and tested it will all come out and be wrapped into a harness.
Some things just go right. The two yellow buttons, that will be used to operate the indicators, by chance had internal lights that will be set up to flash when the indicators are on. I also found that my Forward, Neutral, Reverse selector had internal lights that light up the D,R,N.
I installed a MoTeC (Duel Half Bridge) whatever that means, but in principle it will send power to the linier actuator that operates the hand break, reversing the polarity where necessary. When I started to wire up the DHC I noted that my crimping tool was too small to crimp the male pins. On the basis that my tool was too small I contacted Glen at Auto Sports Electronics to see if he had a larger tool and sure he did. So I took my male pins and wires to Glen, he got out his stripper then using his larger tool did the job on my male pin.
It is good to know people who have large tools who can help.
In addition to the wiring I have also modified the dash to be able to install the radio, an item that is not standard in a Le Mans car.
Orange Front Battery box in place
The far left photo shows the orange battery box now in place. There had to be a slight modification as it was originally designed to fit tight against the left hand wall. When it was finally ready to fit into place I had an issue that the height voltage cable exited the box on the far left side, so it no longer fitted. A mod to the exit point allowed the original location to work as I bought the cable out of the back of the box. But typically a 2 hour job turned into a 1 day job. My time budget keeps extending. I was hoping to have the box fitted about a month ago!
The front PDM (Power Distribution Module) and two CANBus switch boxes are not in place. As shown in the same photo. The complete CANBus wiring is completed and the dash board's wiring is nicely progressing. I have also been continuing my work on the air-conditioning tubing that runs behind the dashboard, a slow job with glass
There is a great drill extension made by Irwin that allows you to drill into tight spots and around corners. I have found it so useful to get into tight spots. It works on a boden cable system with a flexible drive inside a flexible tube. Great until the drill bites, the whole cable twists and buckles making it useless. I have already been through two of these extensions. My fix is to buy an aluminum tube to go over the drive shaft when it is not critical. Otherwise gradually increase the drill bit size but I will see if the solution works for the future.
Wiring harness attached to the glass boot
A little bit of work was done on the dashboard, with the air con vents on the far right and left completed. The light switch mounted. This however I could foresee an issue of making a neat finish on the switch surround. Most of the circular instruments have a chrome ring that hides the gap between the instrument and its locating hole. After some Googling a chrome ring could not be found so I went to the solution of what I am most happy building, by starting to make a Carbon Fiber ring. This started with laying up a number of sheets of Carbon between polyester sheet, that gives a nice finish. Note don't use polyester resin as it is not colorless. Find a good supplier of epoxy and purchase clear resin. Let's see how I progress.
I had purchased a second hand Commodore electronic hand break actuator, but unlike other switches and wing mirrors I was unable to figure out how the wiring worked, so I set to work using a standard actuator that would be mounted between the drivers seat and the batteries in the right sill. Drawings were made and sent to CadCut to make some steel mounting brackets. I guess I will start on that in a couple of working weeks.
Many jobs like the above don't get a tick of "Done" against them but I finished wiring the rear lights, making sure that I maintained details of wire colours, pin numbers from light to plugs and finally the PDM (Power Distribution Module.) A good feeling of satisfaction to see that job completed. I little bit of luck as the evening before I started the wiring and braiding I got an email stating that my Mini Cooper reversing lights were on the way. I had completely forgotten the reversing lights! So with that little reminder I was able to add a wire to accommodate the reversing lights. (I believe there has to be a lot of checking that everything is in place before the harness is completed.)
Dash cut to make way for the MoTeC display.
Now it is time for a new phase of the build, that being mounting of the dash board's switches. This has mentally taken a long time, with lists of what has to be mounted to look good and ends up being practical. In the days of the GT40 and similar cars like Jags, my dad had many Jaguars, there would be a line of identical switches. It looked like an aircraft cockpit but had a fundamental problem being that, as each switch was the same you had to take your eyes off the road to work out what switch did which function. This caused many accidents. I believe that the new Tesla electronic screen will have the same issues. This in mind I am trying to make all the switches have obvious functions, look different, but not cluttered. So there was lots of mental planning over the past few months, and more recently, just sitting in the car working out where to locate everything. Let's hope that I am right as once the switches are in place and the upholstery fitted, there is a level of permanence.
In addition to the face of the dash board I have been making a couple of glass fiber ducts for the air-conditioning vents on the far right and left of the dash. There is a very tight gap to the vents so some modifications are required, but as I have worked with glass since my early teens this is a job I feel comfortable with. No the photo is not the finished job, just their state as of Jan 1.
High voltage cable
Some weeks you feel that you have made much more progress than others, despite the hours input into the project. This felt like a good week.
The second battery box was placed over the bottom box, filled with batteries and copper connectors bolted in. Tim from EV Works spent a day measuring up the high voltage cable to link up the different boxes, Back Bottom, Back Top, Right and left sill and front. However at the early stage of the build we will only use the Top back box and keep the voltage down whilst we get used to the system. Much better to play with 30 volts rather than 300!
I spend quite some hours making a wiring harness for the Battery Management System (BMS). This connects each copper connector in the bottom box and measures the voltage difference. 48 individual wires! This harness will feed into the top box where the brains of the system are located. So there needed to be a solution to number each wire 1 to 48 so that they can be connected correctly. My solution. Get some masking tape, wrap it over (not round) the end of the wire and then tear it off. This will leave a tiny bit of tape on the wire. This can then be marked with Dots and Dashes, a dash being 5 a dot being 1 so - - ... is 5 +5+1+1+1 = 13. When things get too tight i.e. 20 change the colour of the tape.
I purchased a throttle sensor from Smiths Racing Services and mount from Motor Sport Parts. Easy enough to mount other than the Tilton pedals are USA made and use imperial Alan keys!
Although two weeks have passed there are not so many photos to show progress. The two side battery boxes have had their BMS wiring completed. I have then stripped the batteries and wiring out in preparation for powder coating. In addition the battery box that houses an additional 12 batteries in the front of the car was completed, the BMS harness made and then stripped down ready for powder coating. I have found that so many times components, just fit, the grommets for the BMS and high voltage just squeeze next to each other in the box, with no room to spare.
I was hoping to be completed the Tesla wiring before Christmas but time will often run faster than I can work. Always double the time you expect. Tim fromEV Works spent a few days connecting the Tesla's wiring. Initially I have a temporary switches that will be replaced as the MoTeC system is installed. The MoTeC has already been partially programmed on the desk, but switching across to the real thing will be done step by step.
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