Wiring

The wiring step is the most challenging step. I say it is challenging and time consuming but I enjoy it. This is what I have been working on for about the last 4 weeks. This is why there has been a gap in my blog posts because while you are wiring and trying to figure things out it is hard to write about it and it does not seem to transfer well to the internet.

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I started with a complete 2000 Camaro LS1 engine and body harness that I had bought from a fellow racer. Once I had the harness I bought a 2000 F body factory service manual off ebay. The best $60 bucks you will ever spend. Sometimes they are as high as $150 but nothing beats the factory service manual. EVERYTHING about the car is in the manual somewhere.

            Step 1 was to figure out what was on the engine harness. I took the harness and laid it out on the engine and started plugging in what was obvious. Injector, connections, alternator, etc.  By the length of the harness leads and the shapes of the connectors you can figure out most of the rest. There were a few connectors on the harness that were cut off, these where a mystery.

 

 

Step 2: I then removed all the black corrugated covering and tape holding the harness together. Leave some tape or zip tie the harness together at the junctions otherwise the harness becomes a huge mess. I removed all the covering because the next step is to trace the cut wire leads determine what is missing.

      Step 3: I began tracing the cut wires back through the harness to figure out what they went to. What was missing where the secondary 02 sensors, crank position sensor, Vehicle speed sensor and backup light switch. I was lucky and they all traced back to the PCM. By using the attached system wire diagram I was able to clearly determine what each item was by the pin out on the PCM.

        Step 4: this step was to repair the harness. I determined what was missing then I got the replacement connectors at my local salvage yard. I knew what I was looking for and went armed with a set of wire snips and found a 2002 Chevy truck with a 5.3. Most of the connecters where still on the engine, Some other connectors I got off some other nearby cars in the salvage yard. I was sure to get plenty of wire so there was ample room for splicing. Total cost was about 10 bucks for all the connectors. I then soldered the connectors on the harness. These connectors are way too important to rely on crimping connectors. Do yourself a favor and learn how to solder. See How to solder post.

        Step 5: No that the harness was repaired and is sitting on the engine I then started to figure out what was needed and what could be cut out. Some people like to tape up connectors that are unused and some like to remove that portion of the harness. I choose to completely remove the unused portions of the harness to simplify the harness. I first removed the AC portion. I traced the wires all the way back to the PCM and common grounds etc. Be careful doing this and be 110% sure you can remove the items you are cutting out. I had the factory service manual I bought off Ebay ($60) and found the circuits in the manual and was absolutely sure they had no impact on function. I also removed the EGR purge and backup lamp, skip shift and A.I.R.

        Step 6:  There are 5 major connectors to the engine controls harness. It is through these five and only these 5 that makes the engine run. When I speak of the engine controls harness I am not talking about all the harness under the hood. I am only talking about the harness that lays on the engine and hooks up to items attached to the engine. The five connectors are the C100, C101, C105, C220 and C230. Each connector has around 10 cavities and a description of the pin outs of each connector can be found in the service manual. You can also find pin out descriptions online with some digging. LT1SWAP.com has a lot of good info and had a great description of 2000 Camaro Engine harness connectors. See Attachment

            With the descriptions I was able to map out what was needed and what could be cut out. I then followed step 2 but on the under hood harness for connectors C100, C101 and C105 and the under dash harness for C220 and C230. With the C100 connector I took the corresponding portion of the connector and traced the wires I needed to the termination points. See the attachment. For the C100 connector there were only 4 of the 10 wires I needed. Two where fused inputs that I traced back to the fuse box and I cut the wire at the fuse box. The other two where  relay control wires for the cooling fans. These are the two wires that the PCM send a signal to the relay to turn on the cooling fans. I traced these two wires back to the relay and cut the wire at that point. I labeled the wires and moved on to the other connectors. After completing all this I began building my fuse box and power station.

 

 

Step 7:  Fuse box and cutoff switch: At this point I needed to decide where to put the fuse box and cutoff switch and battery and common grounds. Once these locations where decided for various reasons I was able to begin laying out my wiring. I started with the power source and ran the battery cable from the battery to the cutoff to a power lug next to 3 fuse boxes holding six fuses. Two fuse boxes have power coming off straight off the cutoff switch and one fuse box is only "on" when the ignition switch is on. This fuse box powers the PCM and all the fused wires that I pulled from the connectors I described in Step 6 .The other two fuse boxes power stuff like wipers, headlights, horn, fuel pump and fan relays, brake lights and gauges. I did not want any grounding issues so I created 4 central grounds by welding bolts to the rollbar cross tub and the floor so I could ground all the wires in these known locations.

            Step 8: Actually running the wire. This step took forever and was a lot of soldering. First I listed what needed power and figured out how many fuses I needed. Then started running the wire from the fuse box to all the locations that needed to be powered. For the gauges I created a mini harness complete with a 10 pin connector so I could easily remove the gauge cluster if needed and also remove the entire dash panel easily. Do yourself a favor and don't wire through the dash or around the roll bar. Make sure all your wires are on the same side of the roll bar or whatever so you can also remove the harness without cutting it. This step is by far the most time consuming but is not hard.

 

 

Step 9: Testing and bundling. Before I started bundling the wires I wanted to make sure everything worked so if I had trouble I could easily identify the wires and fix if needed. This was good because I had wire the fuel pump incorrectly. When I first fired the engine the fuel pump would only run when the ignition switch was off. I had mistakenly run the relay so it was switched to 12v and not to ground as it should be. Problem solved and with the wires unwrapped it was easy to make the correction. The engine runs great now and will wrap all the wires and make sure the harness has no rubs binds and is clear from the exhaust.

 

     Misc stuff. Since this is a race car I wanted to make sure that the brake lights where good and bright. Since I was not going to use turn signals any longer I wired the brown, green and yellow wires together to the brake switch. This way all the filaments will light up when hitting the brake. Easy to see in race conditions.

 

 

Wipers: Here in the Midwest wipers are a must. We have a least one rain race per year usually two or three. On GM cars the easiest thing to do to wire the wipers is trace all the wires from the wiper motor back to the connector under the dash. This connector then go to the steering column and up to the switch on the stalk. All the electronics for the wiper function are in the stalk switch. The delay, park and multiple speed functions are all there. The only thing you need to do to make it work is provide power to the yellow wire on on the connector that goes to the column. You will also need to ground the black wire. That is it nothing else is needed and the system will stand alone.

 

 

 



V6 to V8

V6 to V8

 

When I started this project I had no idea how many differences there are between the v6 and the ls v8. The first major difference is the k member. See the posted photos for the diffences. If you are considering doing this and you can easily get a ls1 k member that is the easier way to go. If you cant find one you can convert one if you are handy.

 

 

          The other major difference is the steering rack. The v6 and lt1 cars are the same but on the LS1 the angle of the steering knuckle is a steeper angle to clear the motor mount. Also the knuckle that attaches the rack to the steering column is different.

   Then finally the transmission cross member is different. The v8 manual trans is substantually different than the v6 auto. This gets the engine and transmission sitting in the car. Surprisingly the driveshaft is the same length and shares the same yoke as the v8. The V6 driveshaft is made out of steel however but can be used.

As for the wiring for a v6 to v8. I am going to modify a Ls1 harness and make it a stand alone harness.

 

 

 

 

Seat mount

        The seat mount was pretty straight forward. First step was figuring out where I wanted to sit in relation to the steering wheel and pedals. So I temporarily installed both of them. Then using 2x4s pieces of metal and whatever I could find I set the seat in the car and started figuring out where it needed to be. After this was figured out I tack welded the top part of the mount in place. This was sturdy enough to figure out if this was truly where the seat needed to be. This sounds all simple but this process took a couple evenings and there was a lot of trial and error. I was calculating the mount location using the middle holes of the seat brackets. This way if I screwed up i can go back or forward one inch.

 

To get the seat centered with the steering wheel I also need to remove a small section of the floor brace. This allowed me to move the seat the needed 3/4 of an inch toward the center of the car.

Here is the finished product. It is probably overkill and wieghs too much but it is solid.

Building the roll cage

The first step to building the roll cage is reading the rules for the class. CMC requires

1.750 x .120 Seamless Alloy (4130), Seamless mild steel (CDS Mechanical) or DOM (Drawn over Mandrel). This is the requirement for cars over 3000 pounds with out driver. The next step is buying the steel. I bought the steel from a local supplier, Hagerty Steel in East Peoria Il. The price is fluid based on current steel prices. I bought three twenty foot sticks for $110 each and bought two more at $106 each. The sticks being twenty feet long does require a trailer to pick it up, Too long to shove in the back of the Suburban.

Tim Bennett and I built the cage in Tim's CMC car two years ago and we were very happy with the results. Tim put together a program on his computer to figure out the lengths and bends of the tubing. We used a manual tubing bender for this project. It is slow but it is just the right speed for a novice. I am afraid if we used a hydraulic bender it we would bend the tubing too much. Whatever the case this bender works great for us.



Front Plinth



We had the benefit of learning from the mistakes and or improvements from Tim's car so we had a pretty clear direction of how we wanted to do things on this build. For example, on Tim's car I had a heck of a time welding the tube 360° because it was difficult to reach the top due to the roof panel. Rules require all welds be 360° around the tube. This was done but very difficult. On this build to make this easier we made 1 inch tall pedestals for the main hoop and 3 inch tall pedestals for the front down tubes. With these pedestals we are able to weld 360° then lift the main hoop up, slide the pedestals in place and then weld in the pedestals. This adds a little weight to the cage but it is a safer cage in my opinion because the upper welds are of high quality.



Front plinth placement







The main hoop and the front down tubes are the hardest to bend. they have got to be right. The main hoop went pretty smooth and fits very well. Once this was done and the location of the hoop was established we could begin trimming the front down tubes. At this point nothing is tacked into place. We held the main hoop in place with a large welding magnet to the roof. this can be seen in some of the photos. We then trimmed the lower part of the front down tub to set the height then we were able to easily set the for and aft of the front down tubes by trimming the end. Once trimmed we put the end in the tubing notcher and the bar was done. Rinse and repeat for the other side and this porting of the cage is done. We have not welded anything at this point. Next steps are the cross bar in the main hoop and size and fit the rear down tubes to the main hoop. Then the upper and lower cross bars between the front down tubes.



Magnet to hold main hoop





Rear
plinth

 in place

I have finished the Front section of the cage. I was able to tack the bars in place then was able to remove the entire front section to weld 360° around the tubes. With it out I masked the areas that need future welding and then painted the whole sub assembly. This is nice to get a smooth even finish around the entire bar.

The rear section / main hoop i have done the same thing. I was able to remove it and sub assemble and then paint. I still need to do the rear down tubes. When that is complete both sections will be fitted in the car and I will only have the welds that unite the front and rear sections to do in the car. I will then bend the side impact bars or more commonly known as the NASCAR bars for the drivers and passenger sides. I am not going to install these bars until after I have wired the car. They are too difficult to climb over when you are wiring a car. that is the plan anyway, we will see if it works.

As you can see here the front and rear sections are held together with my welding magnets.

More cage pictures. I am progressing nicely.

                Rear bars set in place. Trial fit not welded.

                                                 Front hoop reinforcment.

                                                                     Rear bar mount plate.

                                                Plinths welded in place.

Front hoop to rear hoop reinforcment.



The tear down

The tear down.

This is a very simple and self explanatory step. The pictures tell a thousand words. I dropped the engine and transmission out the bottom of the car and it was very easy to do. All in all it took me about two hours to get the engine and trans on the floor. The tricky parts where getting the fuel lines unhooked and finding all the wires that are hooked to the various sensors on the engine. The Fuel lines need a special tool to remove. As stated earlier the interior was completely trashed and was either thrown in the garbage or put in the scrap metal pile. I called a local transmission shop to see if they wanted the automatic trans for a core. they told me it was not worth anything so I scrapped it and the engine which had a rod thrown out the pan. I am saving some pieces to modify and or use later. I am not sure if I can reuse the radiator but I am keeping the fan assembly to use a t a later date. I am very careful not to throw out anything unless I am absolutely sure I am not going to need it. The whole process took about two weeks to get it completely torn down to the tub and ready for the roll cage.