XR7-4.6’s disjointed build thread 2 Electric Boogaloo

KevinVarnes said:
So if I'm following at home you need a manual blend door actuator, blower motor resistor, and I'm guessing the vacuum operated mode selector (in addition to the manual control panel of course) and the rest should be plug and play?
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Actually the mode selector switch is the same, the only thing you’ll need to do is unpin two of the terminals from its red connector and run new wire from it to the blower PWM’s connector for the power source and the other wire to the blower itself. I’ll lay it out in more detail once I get the resistor in

But yeah that’s basically all there is to it. Ideally try to get the connectors with the panel(a lot of salvage places just leave the pigtails on them) the blower resistor connector can be bought brand new, I have one on order
 
KevinVarnes said:
What are all of the vacuum tubes for?
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Floor/vent/mix door, defrost door and outside/recirculate door. SATC also has a solenoid inline of the latter as part of the cold engine lockout function.

All of the vacuum system can stay as is including the solenoid, the manual setup functions identically.
 
So this isn’t probably strictly necessary in the conversion (or I should say deconversion in my case) but the SATC uses an extra smaller vent tube to draw air past the interior temp sensor and that tube is connected to a little chimney like piece bolted to the upper corner of the heater box. This area of the airbox is simply blanked off on manual climate control cars and I actually had to make a hole for it, which is quite hideous as time/space was limited to do a quality job when I did it but it worked, and when the SATC piece was installed it wasn’t visible…

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So rather than leave it open for air to escape or have a pointless tube to a nonfunctional sensor left in place, I decided to make a simple block off plate out of some ABS and double sided tape

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New blower resistor arrived, I know ooh ahh 😱

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But the install does have a piece of info relevant to the conversion I heretofore had forgotten about, the factory blower motor is clocked 180° apart from the auto one.

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I do now remember doing this for the connector to clear the bulky PWM mounted below it, but what jarred my memory was simultaneously realizing it should be remounted for the manual conversion as well as there is a flat spot cut into it to allow for install/removal of the manual blower resistor

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It’s not strictly necessary as the flange can sit on top of the resistor with some wiggle room, but if/when you’d ever need to replace the resistor down the road you’d need to remove the blower motor first AND you need to remove the blower motor to get the resistor in anyway

Side benefit the wiring will actually be quite a bit cleaner with all these contact points pointing within a few inches as each other, I’m glad I waited on preemptively adding terminals
 
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The pic is valuable; if this ever goes unavailable, The size of tne Nichrome wire can be determined, #turns and all can be derived from it if we need to. Wire like that has to be mechanically connected. solder/welding wont hold. usually steel is wrapped and crimped to it.
 
Grog6 said:
The pic is valuable; if this ever goes unavailable, The size of tne Nichrome wire can be determined, #turns and all can be derived from it if we need to. Wire like that has to be mechanically connected. solder/welding wont hold. usually steel is wrapped and crimped to it.
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If it ever went unavailable it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to make an adapter base and use one for a different more popular car (eg mustang). The resistances are the same

 
It won't matter in the long term; first nuke goes off, we'll be figuring out point ignitions and carb adapters, lol.
 
I used 50 cal cans and copper gauze. :)

I wouldn't ignore the possibility of 'someone' nuking Democrat cities for kicks. Probably about deposition time.
 
We should put together a guide for running an mn12 after the apocalypse
More than the eec is going to be toast.
The boxes will all be shorted; airbags will blow.
Alternator's regulator and diode bridge will be on fire, as will any box with an unfused power wire. most fuses will be toast.
The drag is all the parts on shelves, in jy's, all are dead.
 
Grog6 said:
I used 50 cal cans and copper gauze. :)

I wouldn't ignore the possibility of 'someone' nuking Democrat cities for kicks. Probably about deposition time.
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I’m in the western burbs, inverse square law should leave me relatively unscathed 😝
 
The house I grew up in was in walking distance of 3 different first strike targets. X-10,Y-12 and K-25. (Pu reactor, and U235 separation facilities.)
 
Grog6 said:
The house I grew up in was in walking distance of 3 different first strike targets. X-10,Y-12 and K-25. (Pu reactor, and U235 separation facilities.)
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I don’t live far from the rare earths facility that supplied uranium for the Manhattan project, but it’s long since been demolished and as far as I’m aware still is a superfund site, I don’t think there’s many other targets in my specific neck of the woods unless they want to hit Fermilab for shits and giggles
 
I worked with people from university of Chicago, and got their physics degree there.
Manhattan project was everywhere.
My dad attended Northwestern U's traffic institute for 2 years to become a traffic engineer.
I actually got to run around Evanston for a week in '71, at 8yo. We went to his graduation.
 
So close to done! Got the blower speed harness fully routed and completed.

So where to start, well I WAS intending to have it follow the path of the existing harness as I did the blend door harness but this is a more cumbersome harness with 6 12 and 14 gauge wires and as it happened as I was trying to maneuver it it put itself into a convenient position over the vent plenum that is an almost direct shot near the blend door down. I forgot how much dead space is in the 94-97 dash; look at that! It’s surprising drug mules didn’t favor these!

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With routing figured out it was just a matter of trimming length and soldering on terminals. I’d been waiting all week for a new blower resistor connector that finally arrived yesterday and it uses the same big current interior terminals like these, which comprises the entirety of this harness(minus two)

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If I knew that earlier I’d have been done already as it turns out I only needed the plastic connector! But sally forth…

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The yellow and green wires are intermediate speeds, which is to say the way I’m wiring this they are single purpose terminals. With these set I was able to basically determine all other lengths of the remaining wires from them, starting with the orange(full power off the blower motor) and black(ground, naturally)

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The latter two as you can see are doubled, spliced at the terminal for convenience.

From here I can simply measure the distances of the remaining wires to their next destinations…


Brown is the power source for the fan, it’s the same circuit in a SATC car as a manual other than this point of origin from this green connector. Fan ground can also be found in this connector

Blue is the output from the climate controller selector and the input to the blower motor. Orange is the “ground side” of the blower motor, which first goes to the resistor but also continues to the climate selector switch

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And that’s basically that for the internal dash. I was hoping to get it fully finished today but next will be A. Showing where to connect these brown and blue terminals at the switch end, and B. The convenient source for 12v dimmer power. Stay tuned!
 
I'm pretty sure those are AMP mod IV pins, but idk what series. I'd try mouser electronics, digikey , they stock everything they list, but allied newark, and future electronics have more, but lead times can be 22 weeks and up. Amazon has a crimper set that does everything for ~$30.
 
Grog6 said:
I'm pretty sure those are AMP mod IV pins, but idk what series. I'd try mouser electronics, digikey , they stock everything they list, but allied newark, and future electronics have more, but lead times can be 22 weeks and up. Amazon has a crimper set that does everything for ~$30.
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That’s why I just hoard old harnesses to scavenge from 😆

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Grog6 said:
Virgin pins are nice, tho.
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I prefer experienced pins 😆

The way I do all my wiring is with solder anyway. I take an old pin, grind off the factory crimp, place the new stripped wire in the slot, take a single thin strand of wire and tightly wrap it around them and solder it together.
 
I have done that, on old equipment. If I needed to do it in a car, that's how I'd reuse it. as long as the retaining clip lasts, you can reuse the pin.
 
Next task mating the new harness to factory harness, this is quite simple, you just need to unclip the purple/orange and brown terminals from the red connector. In the SATC system these circuits simply exist to tell the module its *on*, which is why the wires are quite puny.

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Now what you want to do with these is up to you, but remember the purple/orange wire is 12v ignition. What I did was simply tuck the brown terminal into the harness. It’s not a live circuit, it literally goes from the red connector to the SATC connector.

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The purple/orange ignition wire I likewise tucked into the harness but stuffed an inch of battery cable shielding in first for it to go inside of and be protected from shorting, simple quick and effective

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Now I can simply install the new large gauge wires, order doesn’t strictly matter as it’s a simple switch but factory has brown on the outside(12v from the fuse) and blue in the second position(power output to the blower)

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And that’s that (mostly), now the head is ready to go in!

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All that’s left is illumination, for which I’ll be needing to remove the cluster bezel to access its source, and unfortunately it’s again a little cold yet to be popping off 32 year old plastics, so have patience!
 
You don't need to remove the cluster bezel for dash illumination. The feed comes from the secondary junction block which is inboard from the throttle pedal.

When I did my always-on cluster illumination mod, I just went down there, cut that wire, put in a relay, so cluster illumination alternates between ignition power (headlights off) and dimmed dash illumination (headlights on).
That said, can't you simply pull the illumination circuit from the clock or the ashtray/shifter illumination? That's right there.
 
The clock and SATC illumination circuit don’t run off 12v at full brightness, instead going through resistance in the dimmer switch which goes to the light green wire rather than the full 12v blue/red wire used for everything else.

I’m aware of the SJB source but there’s an even better one closer to the climate control that is so ridiculous in its presence I can’t resist not showcasing it 😉
 
Got the dash put together, surprisingly happy with how it looks given the last time my car had the manual head in it I thought it was so lame! 🥱 but symmetrically I actually like the layout better, and coincidentally the three knobs actually makes the 3 gauges look better IMO


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And yes it works!

 
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