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Tabres' Turbo Cobra - Winter Shenanigans

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I thought rather than just commenting on everyone else's build threads that it was about time i share some of my own exploits with everyone.  Here, for your entertainment, is what I'm getting up to in the garage over the winter of 2015.

 

To put it mildly, I hate winter and much to my chagrin it seemed every meteorologist in the country was forecasting snow on Friday night and into Saturday morning.  In preparation for this, I've spent the past week or so running the last bits of delicious E85 out of my car so I wouldn't have too hard of a time pulling the fuel tank out this winter.  I took it as far as I dare go, any more and I was likely to be pushing the car home.

 

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One of the nice things about my employer is that they give us the perk of being able to set a flexible work schedule and so I am always done for the week by 10 A.M. on Fridays.  I knew I'd have quite a few uninterrupted hours to work on the car before my wife got home this past Friday so I set to work around noon.  Step one, park the car in happy place for it to live and be worked on for the next few months, get it elevated on all 4 corners and start pulling the wheels...

 

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I chose to begin by doing a bit of maintenance that I'd been putting off for a long time.  I've had some polyurethane swaybar bushings sitting around since last Christmas just waiting to be put on, so I started there.  The bushings that were in the car were the factory original, 20-year-old rubber, and it shows...

 

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The two old rubber bushings, flanking the new polyurethane replacement.

 

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Polyurethane bushings in place and everything all back together.  A quick and easy job that will complement the rest of my Maximum Motorsports front-end well.  The only rubber bushings left in the car are in the rear-upper control arms, as recommended by Maximum Motorsports.

 

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From there I moved onto something I should have done quite a while ago to be honest.  When I put the engine together last go around I got in on purchasing one of the first runs of the Modularspeed/On3 Performance coolant cross-over delete kits.  Honestly, its a really nice setup.  It moves the thermostat to the "upper hose", lets you run a cheap, chevy style thermostat, and also eliminates the bypass and then you just run a GT lower hose.  It also makes burping a 4v car super easy, whereas the factory cooling configuration can be a real struggle to burp sometimes.  

 

My original mistake when installing my kit was that given the bypass was deleted, my car would take quite a while to warm up and also build too much pressure and seep coolant out of the lower hose when i would see any levels of boost before the thermostat was open.  It wasn't anything bad really, but obviously needed to be addressed.  The common solution to create a psuedo-bypass, which I also followed, is to simply drill a few holes in the thermostat.  So, I pulled apart the thermostat housing and drilled four 3/16" holes in the thermostat.

 

The 90* elbow off of the radiator down to the thermostat housing is to allow me to run a decently sized air filter on my turbocharger.  I've seen people mount this kit and just lay the thermostat housing on top of the air-filter but personally I think it looks tacky and I don't care for something with 180* coolant running through it laying directly on top of my air-filter.

 

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Simple, reliable, cheap, regular old 180* chevy thermostat ready for outpatient surgery...

 

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Holes drilled and de-burred, just need to re-install the gasket and its ready to go back in...
 

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Time to seal it up.  The housing simply threads together with a small o-ring to make it water tight...

 

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After getting everything back together I started the car and let it run for a while to burp any air that was introduced into the system.  It came to temperature much quicker and still operates perfectly.

 

 

At this point I had eliminated everything that "needed" to be done, and turned my attention to things that I simply wanted to do.  Ever since I got my build together I've been frustrated with some of the aspects of my engine bay, especially when compared to some cars on this site.  I'm truthfully not into the super shaved bays.  I mean, I appreciate them for the work that goes into them and I think they're awesome on show cars, but my car is 100% street-car and right now I just don't want something that far done.  Instead I've settled on doing a battery relocation to the trunk of the car, relocating the fuse box to the driver's side fender, wire tucking the fenders, re-looming the harnesses with techflex with particular focus on the engine harness, and installing a set of the Scott Rod rivet-in style fender aprons that I purchased a virtually brand new pair on here from @Zach.

 

First step for me was to remove the washer tank.  For whatever reason I felt funny and wrong for removing this from the car, but I can't honestly say I can ever remember ever actually using the washers so it's w/e to me.

 

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Next went the battery and factory battery tray...

 

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Bye-bye battery/starter harness...

 

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At this point on Friday afternoon my wife was on her way home so I decided to call it a day and pick-up there on Saturday morning.

 

When I woke up Saturday morning I discovered that sure enough the meteorologists were correct and I found all of this shit outside of my front door.  I HATE winter.  It went on to snow until almost 5pm.  We wound up with 3-4" of the wettest, heaviest snow we've had in probably 3 years...

 

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One bright side to the snow was that in an attempt to distract myself from being grumpy about it I surfed craigslist for a bit and stumbled on these guys.  Super clean, all metal casing, in great shape and only $35 for the pair.  I picked them up from a music shop in town.  Apparently they would store and categorize small parts in them when tearing down instruments.  They're going to make organizing bolts and such super easy when working on the car.  One goes in the garage, one will find its way down into my basement shop...

 

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After I returned home Saturday morning from picking up the cabinets, it was still snowing pretty heavily so I decided to jump back on the car and pull out the fuse box and it's harness.  It turned out to be a tad fiddly with the turbo kit on the car and I wound up removing a portion of the cold side piping to be able to get good access to plugs and such.

 

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At this point it was getting later in the day and I started hearing snowblowers outside so for the last few minutes before I went to shovel I chose to test fit a Moroso power-steering tank that I picked up on sale a few months ago.  Like most things Moroso, it's nice quality and fits just fine.  I'm planning to have it powdercoated gloss black to go with the rest of my engine scheme.

 

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This morning I decided to remove the final harness from the engine bay, the engine harness itself.  This turned out to be a pretty big pain, which honestly was mostly my doing because of how I laid it in the bay when i reinstalled the engine last time.  I never imagined a day when I'd have to remove the lower intake just to get the engine harness out, but it happened today so there's that.  At least with the C-head lower and my aftermarket rails, they can come out as an assembly without having to remove them separately, so that's nice compared to the b-head intake and saves a lot of time.  I at least took a few pictures that give a decent representation of how the b-upper to c-lower intake adapter works/fits on these cars for anyone that may be interested.

 

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Once I had the engine harness out, I built the intake and fuel system back up.  I don't like leaving things like that apart and open to the environment longer than I have to, or the bigger, expensive parts laying around.  It really only takes 10 or so minutes to get back together so it wasn't any big deal and gives me peace of mind.

 

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It was at this point that I decided to test fit the Scott Rod panel on the driver's side and came to discover that I don't think they were intended to be installed with the engine in the car.  The power steering lines and brake lines are certainly in the way, and even after loosening those it was still a no go because of dimensional issues with the engine in place.  I'm reasonably confident that if I drill out the rivets holding the pieces together (they are two pieces after all) that I can slide them into place separately, then rivet them together and finally rivet them to the fender.

 

Something else I also came to at this point was noticing how bad the factory power-steering lines are going to look with everything else cleaned up.  Years ago I had to replace the high pressure line and it fits like crap no matter what I do with it.  The other two original lines aren't really that much better either for that matter.  Any suggestions on how to clean these up before I go full retard and rip them out in favor of a spending ~$300 building an AN line setup?

 

It was nearing lunch time when I reached that point so I finished up there for the day and threw the cover on the car.  I'm now waiting on Black Friday to roll around before I order all of my techflex and other final components needed for the battery relocation (and yes, my super old Wolf cover doesn't fit very well with the S281 wing on the car but it came with the car when I bought it and does the job well enough).

 

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Man I'm excited to follow your progress this winter!!! I'm with you on not being the biggest fan of smoothed bays. I certainly appreciate and like seeing the cars with them but mine never will be completely smooth. Are you dropping the tank for the battery relocation or other reasons? Off to a good start man!

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im glad to see this build going on! one question. with the on3performance coolant adapter. Should the "spring" part of the thermostat not face the engine? In your picture it is shown pointing up, and i assume that goes directly to your radiator? correct me if im wrong or there is something i dont know. Looking forward to many updates to come!

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Man I'm excited to follow your progress this winter!!! I'm with you on not being the biggest fan of smoothed bays. I certainly appreciate and like seeing the cars with them but mine never will be completely smooth. Are you dropping the tank for the battery relocation or other reasons? Off to a good start man!


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Thanks.  And yeah, its just coming out to install the battery box.  Though, I may take some time to change around a few things with my fuel setup, mostly how my filters mount.  How they're positioned right now I get a pretty healthy gasoline shower every time I remove the filter housings to swap the filter elements.  Haven't really decided yet if I'm going to bother to mess with it, mostly depends on my ambition after I get everything else done.

 

 

I think @95riosnake did his power-steering lines for a fair price, maybe he will come help us out Ina min.


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Unfortunately his setup would be considerably different to a 4V car.  The 94-95's don't have hydroboost.

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im glad to see this build going on! one question. with the on3performance coolant adapter. Should the "spring" part of the thermostat not face the engine? In your picture it is shown pointing up, and i assume that goes directly to your radiator? correct me if im wrong or there is something i dont know. Looking forward to many updates to come!

 

lol.. you're right.  I didn't even notice that I replaced it backwards.  I guess with the bypass created that the coolant circulated enough and it still worked but I'll definitely have to change that.  Thanks for catching that!

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Thanks. And yeah, its just coming out to install the battery box. Though, I may take some time to change around a few things with my fuel setup, mostly how my filters mount. How they're positioned right now I get a pretty healthy gasoline shower every time I remove the filter housings to swap the filter elements. Haven't really decided yet if I'm going to bother to mess with it, mostly depends on my ambition after I get everything else done.

Unfortunately his setup would be considerably different to a 4V car. The 94-95's don't have hydroboost.

crap I forgot about all the other hard lines with the hydroboost vs the simple 2 line our pushrod cars have, well dang maybe someone will have some ideas to help you.

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I think @95riosnake did his power-steering lines for a fair price, maybe he will come help us out Ina min.

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Yep, I did a how-to thread on the topic also.

 

http://www.sn95source.com/topic/2458-converting-94-95-power-steering-lines-to-ptfe-braided-stainlessan-fittings/

 

But like @Tabres said, most of it won't be relevant because the modular cars are a bit of a different animal when it comes to power steering.

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Not much been going on since I quit on Sunday morning.  I did take the few minutes to replace the thermostat in the correct way, aside from that just been going through old parts and junk in my basement and listing it for sale... trying to get rid of things.  I did spread the wiring harnesses out on the floor and think I have a pretty good plan for where I'm going to start on them.

 

Should start back on it more actively after I can order my techflex and the rest of my battery relocation items on Black Friday.  Don't know that I'm actually going to get too much of a deal by waiting until then but can't hurt...

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UPS visited this afternoon.

 

Moroso battery box, Summit remote start solenoid, 30amp relay, 150amp circuit breakers, 10 gauge fuse holders and a few rolls of non-adhesive vinyl tape.  Now I'm just waiting on some ring terminals and my techflex and shrink tubing to arrive, which should all be delivered this week.

 

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Here's a tip I gave Will about cutting tech flex. They sell a "hot knife" that cuts it and prevents fraying, but it's $$$ and if you cut tech flex with regular tools it will fray, big time in my experience. So what I do is lay a piece of flat steel stock on the work bench and lay the tech flex across it. Then I clamp it with a couple spring clamps to keep it from moving around. I then use a regular utility knife (needs to be an all-metal knife, nothing with plastic parts) and heat the blade with a MAPP gas torch. Then just press and cut across the tech flex to cut it. Don't hesitate too long or it will start melting it together rather than just preventing fraying. Try it out on a small piece to get the hang of it, but it works great. The blade will be junk as far as regular cutting goes but they're cheap and I just always use the same blade for cutting tech flex.

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Here's a tip I gave Will about cutting tech flex. They sell a "hot knife" that cuts it and prevents fraying, but it's $$$ and if you cut tech flex with regular tools it will fray, big time in my experience. So what I do is lay a piece of flat steel stock on the work bench and lay the tech flex across it. Then I clamp it with a couple spring clamps to keep it from moving around. I then use a regular utility knife (needs to be an all-metal knife, nothing with plastic parts) and heat the blade with a MAPP gas torch. Then just press and cut across the tech flex to cut it. Don't hesitate too long or it will start melting it together rather than just preventing fraying. Try it out on a small piece to get the hang of it, but it works great. The blade will be junk as far as regular cutting goes but they're cheap and I just always use the same blade for cutting tech flex.

 

Thanks for the idea, Dan!  All of my techflex actually showed up last night and I was brainstorming how to cut it.  I saw their tool on their website but there no way I was going to spend that much on it.

 

 

Go to lowes and buy a butane soldering iron. They have one that comes with multiple tips(one being a hot blade) for around $25.

Plus it's always nice to have a butane soldering iron to get into tight spots.

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Not a bad idea.  I don't do a ton of soldering but might be a nice tool to have on hand for when I do.

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I've spent barely any time this week messing with things.  My Grandmother passed away on Sunday at the healthy age of 96.  Super cool lady.  She and my Grandpa were essentially daycare for my brothers and I growing up, watching us when both of my parents were at work, helping us get off to school in the morning as we got older, and being there for anything and everything throughout our lives. She lived two blocks down the road from us, and was in her home until 1.5 years ago when my parents moved down south.  She was always the first and last stop when we went to town to visit everyone.  Going to miss her...

 

Back to regularly scheduled programming though... I did find a few minutes on Tuesday that I decided to start stripping down the battery harness.  I removed all of the convoluted tubing that Ford puts on it and actually laughed.  It's pretty amusing how much they oversize the tubing for the small number of wires that actually run through it.  I removed the original power cable and stored it (maybe I'll find some use for it in some random project someday), removed the original ground cable and set it aside so I can shorten it up and stick it back on the car in a cleaner fashion, and I removed the starter signal wire so I can modify that and run it back to the relay that will trigger the remote start solenoid I'm mounting in the trunk.  After you take all of those items out you're really not left with much - just the wires that run the two oxygen sensors, the oil pressure sensor and the low oil light in the pan; which mine is still shown here (its the wire kind of diagonally off to the right on its own) but will be removed from the harness as my pan has no provision for it.  Just need to clean the wires up and get some techflex on it and this harness will be good to go.  It should be a lot cleaner and remove a lot of the bulk that used to live in that area.

 

Started as this...

 

 

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Ended as this....

 

 

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Speaking of TechFlex, my friendly neighborhood UPS man brought me more goodies last night.  A various assortment showed up along with my shrink tubing and the ring terminals for all my cables.  I'm sure I've got way more than I need of some sizes of TechFlex and probably not enough of other sizes but I'll have to figure it out as I go.  The TechFlex is REALLY nice.  I knew it was going to be, but it exceeded what I was expecting.

 

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Another side note, lately I've been hawking some parts I've had laying around for years and have drummed up quite a good chunk of change (at least for selling old factory parts) that I think I'm probably going to apply to doing AN power steering lines to alleviate my issue of the stock ones looking like crap.  I just need to get a few more things gone and I'll have all of the cash I need.  That and cash back rewards on my credit card is really how I build up $$ for modding the car anymore.  Rarely do I ever use any of my actual paycheck.  I'm too much of a spaz about saving money, just can't bring myself to waste it on the car these days.

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All of my techflex actually showed up last night and I was brainstorming how to cut it.  

 

I know this isn't the best way to do it but I just used a sharp pair of scissors to cut the tech flex then hit the end with a lighter to melt the strands together and help keep it from fraying.  Then placed the flex over whatever wiring I wanted to cover and used heat shrink tubing with adhesive backing to hold the end of the flex from ever fraying.

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Always loved this car!

 

 

Thanks, I appreciate that!  It's not even in the same universe as the stuff you put together, though!

 

 

I know this isn't the best way to do it but I just used a sharp pair of scissors to cut the tech flex then hit the end with a lighter to melt the strands together and help keep it from fraying.  Then placed the flex over whatever wiring I wanted to cover and used heat shrink tubing with adhesive backing to hold the end of the flex from ever fraying.

 

This crossed my mind, too.  No doubt it would work well for the larger sizes but I'm hesitant that it may melt the smaller sizes closed.  May have to cut some small pieces to test with.

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I ordered it all from Wirecare.com.  The techflex and shrink tubing was $85.10, the TechFlex itself was $60.60.  That was for 10ft of 1/8", 10ft of 1/4", 10ft of 3/8", 10ft of 1/2", 10ft of 3/4", and 5ft of 1".  All of it is the F6 style, which is their split loom and I imagine a little more expensive than their "normal" style.

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Dan's suggestion worked like a charm.  I did it a little different, only because i dont care about my random table in the basement haha.   Heated up a metal knife with the mapp gas till the blade was red, and it fell through the techflex with ease.  melts the cut portion together too so it doesnt fray.  Thanks for the tip Dan!

 

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@Tabres, i really wanna know and see more of the B head to C head adapter plate.  I keep hearing about them, but have really yet to see one or even find one for sale :(   


 

This crossed my mind, too.  No doubt it would work well for the larger sizes but I'm hesitant that it may melt the smaller sizes closed.  May have to cut some small pieces to test with.

if it melts together, just kinda roll the end between two fingers and it'll break it apart enough that you can get wires through it.  as long as you didn't melt like an inch long stretch into one massive piece lol

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Dan's suggestion worked like a charm.  I did it a little different, only because i dont care about my random table in the basement haha.   Heated up a metal knife with the mapp gas till the blade was red, and it fell through the techflex with ease.  melts the cut portion together too so it doesnt fray.  Thanks for the tip Dan!

 

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@Tabres, i really wanna know and see more of the B head to C head adapter plate.  I keep hearing about them, but have really yet to see one or even find one for sale :(   

if it melts together, just kinda roll the end between two fingers and it'll break it apart enough that you can get wires through it.  as long as you didn't melt like an inch long stretch into one massive piece lol

 

 

Thanks for the tip on it melting together!

 

Btw, regarding the adapter plate, I just saw in probably the past week or two on SVTPerformance that the guy that makes them is looking to do another run but needs to line up several first before he will go ahead and produce them, kind of group buy-ish.  Might head over there and check it out if you're curious.  In the meantime, next time I have everything apart, I'll be sure to get some better pictures for you.  Shouldn't be too long.

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This past Thursday I finished up getting all of the factory looming removed from all of my harnesses.  What a dirty, sticky job that is.  With my TechFlex now in hand though I've begun the task of rewrapping them all.  Thanks to @95riosnake for his tip on how to cut the TechFlex, I chose to do it the same way.  I pulled out a propane torch I already had and my trusty old Stanley classic utility knife.

 

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I also used standard electrical tape and non-adhesive vinyl tape like the OEM's use to wrap the joins between the different sections and sizes of the TechFlex.  I used the non-adhesive vinyl tape for probably 98% of the job and went through roughly 3/4 of a 100ft. roll on the battery harness and the fuse box harness.  It's very easy to work with, is cheap and leaves a professional look to the job.

 

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I chose to begin with what was the battery harness.  I say was because as I previously noted I've removed all of the battery and starter cables from the harness and it is now just for the oxygen sensors and oil pressure sensor.

 

What it started as:

 

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After modification:

 

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Final product after wrapping with TechFlex:

 

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After this was finished up I turned my attention to the fuse box harness.  While unwrapping it I discovered a cut wire.  It seem like it was like that from the factory because I could find no evidence that someone had been inside that area of the harness before.  Either way, I repaired it before moving on.

 

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With that area of the harness repaired I took it back out to the garage and spent probably an hour or so test fitting it into the car bare to work out where and how to mount the fuse box and route it the way it will be finished installed.  This way I could get an idea of which plugs, if any would need extending before I wrapped it.  In the end I only needed to extend one plug for the driver's side crash sensor and one plug on the passenger side that ties in with the harness in the fender.  I didn't take any photos of this as my camera battery was dead at the time.  I'll take some photos of it finish installed, though.

 

With that completed I took it back into my warm basement and started covering in TechFlex.  It's certainly not what I would call difficult work, but it is definitely time consuming to do it cleanly.  I have probably 6 hours or so in just covering the harness.

 

What it started as:

 

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In the process of wrapping.  You can see how I used the non-adhesive vinyl tape to keep the harness tight and as small of a diameter as possible:

 

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Here you can kind of see how I would wrap the joint areas:

 

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The two harnesses all finished up:

 

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Tomorrow if I get some time I may work on getting a fuse box mount made and final installing the fuse box harness into the car before moving onto wrapping the engine harness, which I'm kind of dreading.  There are so many short sections and joins to cut and wrap.  But I need to test fit it before then and I'll definitely need to order some more of various sizes of TechFlex before being able to finish the engine harness anyway.

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That stuff does look awesome. I wish I had the skill to do that.

 

Honestly, give it a shot.  I've seen your build, you can do this no problem :)  There really aren't any special skills needed to do this, unless you count a lot of patience because it's very time consuming.  I've been doing a lot of catching up on the podcasts I'm behind on, lol....

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I spent a little time this afternoon making a simple bracket to mount the fuse box and getting the harness installed in the car.

 

I chose to build a very simple bracket that mounts to the same area that the horns mount to rather than move the horns like I see a lot of people do.  This way I didn't have to change any wiring paths or find somewhere else to put the horns.  I went out to the hardware store and picked up a small piece of 1/8" x 1" aluminum to use.  I very briefly considered using steel but the aluminum won't rust and is easier to form.  I stuck it into my vice and put a short 90* bend in it to create a kind of bracing for the mount to grab onto and prevent it from spinning when I tightened everything down.  From there it was a matter of test fitting and drilling a few holes into the mount.

 

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Here you can see it test fit.  It sandwiches nicely between the horn bracket and the body mount.

 

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After I knew it would fit well and clear everything, I fastened the original factory fuse box bracket to it.  I did bend flat one little tab on the fuse box bracket to get it to sit flush on the the bracket, very simple and quick to do.  In retrospect, I should have just drilled an additional hole in my mount for it to fit into.  Oh well, lesson learned for anyone doing this in the future.

 

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From there it was a matter of laying the harness and fuse box into place and routing everything properly.  I securely fastened the harness on top of the lip of the frame using some heavy duty zip ties.  This should keep it well clear of the fender liner and of any moving parts.  Between how well the harness is zip tied and how well the bracket is secured, it should be strong enough to prevent vibration or shaking of the fuse box.  I had to apply a pretty reasonable amount of pressure with my hand before it started to move, and even then it was the body mount that the fuse box and horns is bolted to that was twisting and not the fuse box mount.  Just have to wait and see what happens when I get it out on the road.

 

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A few pictures of the only areas of the harness you can still see, and honestly you'd have to really look for them.  I moved the two tiny ground by the headlights to attach elsewhere - one on the radiator mount, the other to the mount I have my fuel pressure regulator on.  This shows the driver's side looking towards the front of the car.  You can barely see the tiny ground wire.

 

20151206_160945_zpsqvlzwdch.jpg

 

 

Looking down on the engine bay "normally."  I'd say it is a success.  It should look a lot better once I get the mess cleaned up in the passenger fender with the boost control solenoid.

 

20151206_161049_zpsn7syycb2.jpg

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what radiator overflow do you have? i think i like that more than the one everyone else has.

It looks like the one that would come with the HPP twin turbo kit.  Not sure if it can be purchased separate but it is for sure one of the nicest looking overflow tanks I have seen.

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what radiator overflow do you have? i think i like that more than the one everyone else has.

 

 

It looks like the one that would come with the HPP twin turbo kit.  Not sure if it can be purchased separate but it is for sure one of the nicest looking overflow tanks I have seen.

 

Kevin is correct, its from the HPP twin turbo kit.  They can be purchased separately, you have to call HPP directly to order one.  It took me I think maybe two weeks to get mine because they construct them when ordered and don't stock them.  The build quality on it is outstanding, though.  They come in natural aluminum finish, I had mine powdercoated locally.  I'll warn you upfront, they're pretty expensive (at least, in my opinion).  I think when I bought mine it was just over $300.  It was kind of hard for me to swallow the cost but I had been wanting one for years and years and don't regret the purchase.

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I spent some time this evening working on the engine harness.  I got the last little bits of factory wrapping peeled off and started deleting things out of the harness that I don't use any longer.  I took out the knock sensor pigtail, egr pigtail, the connector for the coolant overflow tank sensor (which I was surprised to find is actually its own harness just wrapped into the main engine harness) and some other items as well as resoldered some of coil-on-plug conversion harness more cleanly.  When it was originally soldered in it was done with everything on the car and I just had more access to do it much nicer this time.  The only leads that I don't currently use that I chose to leave in the harness are for the A/C system.  The rest of the crap will never go back in the car, air conditioning... maybe, lol...

 

From there I started wrapping up the portions of the harness that I know won't change in non-adhesive vinyl tape, but I'm going to test fit it on the engine next to make sure I don't need to shorten or lengthen any plugs before finishing wrapping it up and covering it in TechFlex.  I'm still not sure what to do with the connector that plugs into the harness that has the oxygen sensors and oil pressure sensor in it.  Originally I was going to pull it back from the main harness and extend it into the fender (which is why you see is separated out in a giant mess) but that would be adding a ton of length to the harness I'm not sure that it is going to be any cleaner than if I were to leave it routed in the factory fashion.  I've also considered soldering the two harnesses together to make one huge harness for the engine but I don't know that I like that option much either.  Either way, I'm going to wait and see how the test fit goes before making a final decision on what to do with it.

 

I'm going to be gone to Columbus, OH all weekend for my nephew's birthday and an early family Christmas so won't get to make any progress this weekend but I'm hopeful I can knock this out by maybe the end of next weekend.  Then I can move on to the battery relocation...

 

20151210_193201_zpsl4kqub6s.jpg

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