This is going to be a relatively short post. I spent a number of hours today working on the car again. I picked up some various connectors and other parts I needed last weekend and wanted to get more progress made on the wiring today. While I didn’t get as much done as I hoped, I did hit an important milestone — not only applying power to the car as I did last week, but I got the car turned on!
The output side of the Digital Guard Dawg system was wired up for the most part last weekend. The actual power feed to the relays, the ground and the output back to the car needed to be wired up. I didn’t have the parts I needed to do that so I had to wait until today.
In the photo above, the red wiring is the power from the battery, going to the relays to power the accessory circuits, the run circuits and the starter itself. A three-way crimp connector solved my problem last weekend of how to keep splitting the power when I had 10 gauge wiring. The yellow wires are the output from the relays back into the car to actually power the car up.
After I had those parts wired, I started wiring the alarm side of the Digital Guard Dawg, which includes the push button start mechanism. I got the power wired to the system, as well as temporarily wired up the alarm horn/siren and a second push button I’d considered using on the dash. (The one that came with the DGD is installed the the dash, which isn’t installed in the car yet).
There are no photos of this part of the build on the website for security reasons — this wiring is all fairly sensitive in nature and I’m not posting how all the security measure in the car work on the Internet. Suffice it to say, I’m not concerned about anyone stealing the car with anything but a flatbed.
After getting some additonal wiring and components together, and doing some “debugging” of the wiring, I reconnected the battery and turned the primary power switch back on.
The push button successfully indicates the alarm status, as well as triggers the relays to power on the car and trigger the starter solenoid. Pushing it again successfully turns the car off. I also tested the key fobs both in manual mode and automatic (proximity) mode. In the former, the alarm works like any normal car alarm, and in the latter the alarm will arm and disarm automatically as the fob moves in and out of range. I discovered the hard way that I still had the wiring to the fuel pump connected, as I was sitting in the back of the car trying to figure out what the noise was. The Ron Francis harness has power always on to the fuel pump (which is appropriate for a carb setup). That part of the harness I’ll not use, as the ECU will control it. I temporarily disconnected the fuel pump since there’s no fuel in the tank and it can overheat.
In all, this is a very slick setup. Once the dash is together, I intend to post a video on here showing how it all works. I am going to put a short video together this week as well, to show the state of the car right now.
I figure I need another day of wiring next weekend to finish the DGD wiring, and perhaps a day beyond that to get the engine wiring put together.