Wiring- COMPLETE whole vehicle standalone (1 Viewer)

[PIP]

I often go at things the long, hard stubborn way. The stuff I have put the time in to learn, I'm very good at. Countless times in my life I've had older, wiser folks in my life give me advice that I disregarded. Not sure why I did, but I just had to learn it the long hard slog way.

I do learn though. One thing I've definitely learned is to raise my kids by example. Not just telling them "don't do this, it's a waste of your time". I show them what my decision making process looks like all the time. Pros and cons, strategies to avoid scope creep, keeping focus on the bigger picture and goals, seeing things through to the end even if the plans have to change and adapt along the way. That stuff seems to sink in better.

One of my friends was a (the) senior corporate Toyota engineer (electrical/mechanical) throughout the 90's. I own an 80 series partly from his stories of how Toyota designed and built the 80.

I design and build things for a living and have lots of friends that do the same thing. I am thoroughly aware of how many sharp engineers worked to design and build the 80 series electrical system and come up with, prove out and write all the troubleshooting and repair procedures. It wasn't designed to be cutting edge. It was designed to work good for a very long time and be easy to fix if needed.

I think they did a great job and it'd be quite the undertaking to improve upon it.

 

[hazard]

Agreed with most folks comments. However my build, which I haven’t posted yet except the engine portion, will require a lot of customized wiring anyway. Not sure of complete plan yet but when I do I will post. I disagree that race cars are always rebuilt, engines yes, wiring no. They wire them to never have problems, they have to be perfectly reliable. To quote:
“PDMs are easier and more reliable to set up than discrete wiring with a series of small fuse holders. PDMs enable you to accomplish your goals with fewer, higher-quality connections. And they are much easier to maintain than a series of fuses and relays.”

 

[Dave 2000]

I am the original 'better than the factory' thinker, Ford Granada with a Rover V8 back in 1976. I was given my first car when I was 10 years old (1970). It was a gift from my parents and was a non runner, but great to sit in and muck about with your mates......but I also had all the Meccano sets you could think off, what was they thinking? I always thought outside the box, and one of the gifts my parents also gave me at a very young age was the ability to read......and I mean really read! With the help of a 'Haynes' workshop manual I had that first car running by the time I was 13 years old and took my friends to school in it. Yes the East End of London 50 years ago was like that, you could get away with murder....and many did!

I started modifying cars in the early 70's, and everything came easy to me, mechanical or electrical it did not matter...and my point is? What the OP proposes is absolutely brilliant! The enthusiasm appears to be there, along with some electrical knowledge however, there are a considerable number of things to be taken into consideration.

Patience, commitment, time (any family?), spare capital, component availability, and of course a large workshop to carry out this project will all be needed, It all sounds really straightforward but of course will not be, simply unplugging part of the OE harness to get to 'X' connection may sound easy enough, but you will have disturbed something that has been sitting in the same position for perhaps 20 or more years, the cables leading to that connection could be brittle and may become weakened by the movement or even snap inside the insulation, the following grief a few weeks (months) along the way will try the patience of a saint trying to find out why this or that does not work, trust me I have been there and it can be a nightmare!

I remain seriously impressed by the idea, and of course ask why? But if the above has not put the OP off, then sure go for it, I would love to see it done and completed, from one vehicle enthusiast to another, good luck.

Regards

Dave

 

[SmokingRocks]

please don’t take my comments as being naysaying. If you truly have the will, time, knowledge (and willingness to gain more) along with the aptitude to pull this off I think it’d be cool.

I'd suggest that you build the new wiring harness as its own completely stand-alone system. Don’t reuse ANYTHING from the old harnesses, remove them and set up them all aside. Leave them stock

That gives you several appealing options:

1) you have a fallback and don’t have to worry about having a chopped-up disaster should it all boil down to a soup sandwich

2) everything you build and put in place will be new, you don’t have to worry about incorporating old brittle plastics, heat-soaked and cycled brittle wire insulation, etc etc etc.

3) it gives you a blueprint, a helpful reference guide to plan your runs, lengths, harness splice points, connector locations etc

In fact, I’d probably recondition the factory harness and string it up on its own pegboard for just this purpose.

And in the end, if you don’t need them then sell them! Hell, I’d be happy to buy a reconditioned engine main and dash harness from ya.

I’d also suggest either getting a label maker that can print on heat shrink tubing, I have the Brady BMP21 Plus and it’s great. All my wires are labeled at the end of the harness at the connectors, which makes it super nice when building and troubleshooting.

So the label maker is the 'cheap option', if you want to get Gucci then your other option is to have a professional company print you labeled wires, the company that built one of the pumper trucks for the Fire department I was a part of did that and it was amazing, all the wires in the harness were white but had a UV laser-printed label on them every 8” or so. A lot of airplane manufacturers do this as well. That’s a lot more costly but it sure is nice. More info on that HERE

Also, there are dedicated programs that greatly help wiring harness designers build the harnesses such as RapidHarness. IMO these are invaluable as you can build, adjust, revise and play with the design before you ever pull a single wire across the pegboard. And if you choose to get custom UV-Laser printed wires you can send these build files directly to the printers and they can fire off the runs you need. Lastly, these programs will pretty much build your EWD's runs, junctions, splices, connector locations and pinouts, for you as well

Genuinely I am interested to see what this becomes, I was just so cautionary because 99% of the people who bring stuff like this up don’t have the skills to back it. Then we see a post a year later of them scrapping the car because they got way over their head. It took me 3 years to completely eradicate the issues the previous owner of my rig inflicted on it because he “was an electrician”.
This was the joy I found when I finally got the dash out, fuses inline fusing fuses, the cheapest butt connectors China could find, 'crimped' with what I only assumed were even cheaper needle nose pliers..... Glad you know better than to make something like this.

 

[SmokingRocks]

One thing I did modify with my factory harness is that I peeled out all of the system circuits that are needed to start the engine (Engine Controls, EFI system, Ignition & engine cranking) and put them all on my AUX battery. So even if I run the house battery flat listening to my stereo at camp, at the same time when my rear Lithium battery bank is depleted from running both my refrigerator and freezer all night and my 200w of solar can't harvest any sun because its cloudy, I'm still able to start the engine every time.

Separating all of the functions required to start and run the engine onto its own isolated battery is a game changer.

something to consider.

 

[Dave 2000]

One thing I did modify with my factory harness is that I peeled out all of the system circuits that are needed to start the engine (Engine Controls, EFI system, Ignition & engine cranking) and put them all on my AUX battery. So even if I run the house battery flat listening to my stereo at camp, at the same time when my rear Lithium battery bank is depleted from running both my refrigerator and freezer all night and my 200w of solar can't harvest any sun because its cloudy, I'm still able to start the engine every time.

Separating all of the functions required to start and run the engine onto its own isolated battery is a game changer.

something to consider.

I did similar to this, I run every from the aux battery except for the starter main supply. So the results are the same, if the fridge, shower pump (yeh I know) and other 'stuff' flatten the battery I have the started battery protected with a VSR, nothing like a bit of redundancy when out in the desert.

Regards,

Dave.

 

[Chu2k]

From what I have read you are not likely to achieve much mileage Improvement with these mods, perhaps 2 mpg. But still worth it. I am a long ways off from starting my endeavour yet.

I know two other dudes that installed aftermarket ECUs to their 1FZs and they swear they got 14-15 MPG after the tweaks. Gonna see if its true soon enough.

 

[SmokingRocks]

I’m curious how

 

[ignite]

DIY Full Standalone ECU setup in AT 1FZ-FE

With the lack of information on tuning or installation of aftermarket ecus on a 1FZ-FE and after lots of research I finally bit the bullet. I was confident I would be able to get the engine running but knew I would most likely fall into issues with other control modules that rely on the original...

forum.ih8mud.com

I just got full DIY standalone working in an Automatic 105. Now working on a DIY TCU