Soldered Hazard Light Circuit

I picked up a handful of these solderable breadboards and soldered up the hazard light circuit with a couple of I/O connectors. Before installing it, I verified the circuit still worked as expected.

I also picked up some of these small plastic enclosures. I cut some access ports on the side using the mill that align with the connectors and then threw a few labels on it.

Wiring Cleanup

I started trying to organize the wiring a bit and shortening some of the long wires that I had coiled up behind the dash.

When I powered everything back up though, the indicator lights in the panel weren’t working. Somehow in the process of shortening the wires, one of the power wires coming from the inDASH Max box must have hit the chassis and blew the internal fuse. I opened it up, and it uses these incredibly tiny micro fuses. I verified one of the two had blown and ordered some replacements. The came a couple of days later and I verified that the replacement fuse fixed the problem.

Hazard Circuit

The buttons in the button panel I showed yesterday have LED rings around them that will light up when the corresponding function is turned on. Most of these are pretty simple since there is a single output wire from the front POWERCELL for each of the functions. I tapped into each of these wires and will power these LEDs from them.

The hazards are a different matter though. There’s not a separate output from the POWERCELL for the hazard lights. Instead, the power cell flashes both left and right turn signals in unison. I obviously don’t want the hazard button to flash whenever a turn signal is on; it should only turn on when both turn signals are on at the same time. Essentially, I need an AND gate for 12V signals that is capable of flowing enough current to drive these LEDs.

Fortunately, that’s a pretty trivial circuit to build with a couple of NPN transistors and a few resistors. The two upper yellow wires represent the left and right turn signal wires. When both are plugged in to the power rail adjacent to the red line, the LEDs turn on, but if either wire is removed from 12V (as would happen if only a single turn signal is turned on), the LED is off.

I have some small breadboards coming in a couple of days and will solder up this circuit to be installed in the car.

Prototype Button Panel and Lighting

I 3D printed a prototype button panel. Ultimately, I’ll fabricate something that sits below the dash and is recessed somewhat. That will make it easily reachable, but not in the way of shifting.

The final button arrangement hasn’t been determined, but the initial layout places the seat heater controls on the top row at each end and all exterior lighting between them. Starting from the right is a button for the parking lights. The middle light will turn on the headlights (which will also turn on the parking lights if they’re off). Finally, the left button is the high/low beam toggle. I considered putting these near the steering wheel somewhere, but any location along the bottom of the dash is obscured by the steering wheel. Any higher location is easily visible, but more awkward to reach.

The bottom row has an assortment of buttons. Starting from the left, the first button is for the interior lights. These will come on automatically when the alarm is disarmed or when the car is turned off. The second button is the hazards. The third button is the fan override, and the final button is the passenger eject button.

I hooked up all of the exterior lights to verify they worked, and ran into an odd behavior. When the right turn signal was turned on, it worked correctly, but when the left turn signal was turned on, both left and right turn signals flashed dimly.

When I diagnosed the issue, I found out that one of the tail lights had a broken ground wire. This was causing power flowing into the turn signal to flow back through the brake light filament (through the shared ground in the bulb) and into the brake light of the opposite tail light. If it’s easy to fix, I’ll do that; otherwise I’ll call Factory Five to get a replacement.

Update: the wire broke right at the solder joint. I removed the heat shrink and re-soldered the ground, and everything now works correctly.

First Drive!

I buttoned up all the loose items on the car in preparation for taking it for its first test drive, then removed it from the dolly and sat it on the ground.

I also installed the driver’s seat, seat belts, and steering wheel.

I fired up the car and pulled it out into the driveway where I immediately ran out of gas. After a quick trip to the gas station, it fired right back up.

I drove it around for a bit to test the clutch, brakes, and throttle. Everything works as expected.

It will be incredibly handy to be able to move the car under its own power to turn it around and move it between bays. Also, it will be nice to be able to pull the car into the driveway when I need to run the engine to avoid filling the garage up with exhaust.