Working on the bitch slow and steady. Decided to reroute the harness and do a little wire tuck while the engine bay is readily accessible. I pulled the main harness apart where it bolts to the stock intake manifold since I'm going to be running FRH manifold now. I got rid of all the old, brittle and cracking wire loom. I separated the CTS, CAS, TPS, fuel injectors and ignition plugs & wiring... that was fun
The plan is to run the CTS, CAS and TPS wiring around the passenger side of the motor (follow heater hoses) instead of wrapping all the way around the drivers side. That way I can can hide the injector harness under the fuel rail and not have the rest of the harness wrap around the head and make it's way over to the thermostat housing. I had to shorten the wires for the coolant temp sensor, CAS and TPS so I made sure to solder and heat shrink the connections. In addition to looking cleaner, it should make it a lot easier to disconnect and pull the motor in the future. I bought some new loom so once I re-loom the wiring and route everything I think it will turn out pretty nice. Shit, now that I've gone this far I'm really contemplating filling unused bolt holes and repainting the engine bay. Ehh that's more work than I really want to do at this point so we'll see if it actually happens.
Here's how it looked a couple days ago. It looks better than this now as I hadn't shortened any of the wiring or cleaned anything at this point.
Bought the Kiggly Racing 5 disk upgraded front clutch kit for the auto trans. The trans should be pretty stout at this point! According to Kiggly: A stock auto with upgraded end/front clutches, welded center diff, shift kit and full line pressure should live comfortably into the 9 second range. Next on the list is a TansLab shift kit and some valvebody modifications.
Now I need to figure out what to do with my battery. I'll no longer be able to run a stock sized battery in the stock location with the aftermarket intake manifold. So... I've been kicking around a few ideas and I really don't want to relocate the battery to the trunk for a couple reasons:
1. I don't want to deal with the voltage/amp drop issues.
2. I don't want to run a kill switch on the back of the car to pass tech at the track.
3. I'm cheap and to do it right it's going to cost more than I want to spend on the damn battery
^^Okay this is probably the main reason and maybe should have been #1
I'm pretty sure I'm going to drop the battery down on the K-member and build my own battery tie down solution. Then there's the question of what battery to use?
1. I've been thinking about using a Civic battery as they are about half the width of an OEM battery, only cost $59 at walmart, 500 cca and just a touch taller than stock.
2. Then I've been considering going with a motorcycle type battery, the odyssey pc680 or something similar. It would be really easy to make a mount for one of these little bastards and will be easier to fit on the K-member with the bulky auto trans. The thing that turns me off is they are fuckin expensive and most of the reviews out there are less than great.
So, being the cheap bastard I am, I decided to do a little research and see what else was out there for a better price with comparable specs. Let me introduce you to Deka batteries:
The model I'm considering going with is the ETX18L which is about the same size as the PC680 but has almost 100
more cca's, made in the USA, cost $40 less and I found a local distributor who has them in stock.