07/25/2010: A Wiring Harness Odyssey, Pt. 1

This is (most of) the wiring from our ZX2 donor car. I laid it out on the driveway last Sunday so I could approximate what parts went where and label it accordingly. It's all well and good to lay it out on the open ground, but something tells me it will be a wee bit harder to put all this wiring into the LX. But once this harness goes into the LX, we will finally be ready to throw the Zetec engine in!

Alan was working on his newly-acquired 2000 Proteg for most of the day, so I was pretty much on my own. After labeling the harness as best as I could, I wrapped up all 50 lbs. of it (so I guesstimate), threw it into the LX trunk for now, and proceeded to loosen the LX wiring harness under the dash and in the engine bay. With another 30-60 minutes, the LX harness will be free and a new nightmare (called "How in hell do we put two miles of wiring into another car?") will begin.

Clean!

A clean engine bay may be frowned upon in a race of crapheaps, but it'll make engine installation and trackside repair much more pleasant.

In related news, for a while the power washer was failing to deliver much water at all. I found out later that there was a tiny frog in the garden hose that got pushed against the input screen on the washer. Poor little guy fell out, stone dead, when I took the hose off.

Now with updates!

The weekend before last, we finished pulling out everything we needed from the green ZX2. Steering rack, wiring harness, and a number of things to sell. There was some serious funk in there from stagnant water that leaked in past the tarp. Last Wednesday the ZX2 was dragged onto a flatbed and hauled away, leaving our team poorer of 1 broken, rusty chassis and richer by $100.

The 1.9 liter CVH engine from the LX got dropped neatly into the engine bay, complete with rear-left-wheel drive invisible magic propulsion drivetrain. 

We treated the cab like a dumpster for unused parts. We tossed the suspension from the LX in there, along with nearly all the interior parts from both cars. All the stuff in the picture below, with the exception of the tires and the white hatch, was stuffed into the car. It was full up to the headliner.

We may post more regular updates as we go along. If we have time, we may also post here the content of the posts on mine and Eric's blogs which detail our progress so far. We'll differentiate those by leading the title with "Old News:" or something like that.

Some upcoming work:

Remove wiring harness and fuel tank from LX.

Install ZX2 wiring harness and fuel tank into LX. Figure out plumbing discrepancies.

Replace rusty fuel and brake lines.

Install steering rack, engine, dash, and instruments.

Install Zetec engine.

Install safety equipment.

Get accepted.

Race.

Credit for the top photo and this video below go to my mom, who was home to handle the transaction.