A while back I bought a gently used Racepak G2X. These seems like a simple task to install: connect power, ground, and an RPM wire…done. Well, I suppose it could be done that way. But, I want to be able to turn it on and off without starting the car. That requires a switch, and an unswitched wire. In addition, while I was in the dash wiring things up, I figured I might as well pre-wire for the other bits I plan to add to the car: Camera, and cool shirt. I plan on making the cool shirt flow adjustable, so I need an on/off plus an adjust. Finally, in order to synchronize data and video you need to have a signal in both. I plan on hooking up steering/throttle/brake sensors to the G2X, so I’m going to hook up a light to the brake switch and put it in view of the camera. I don’t need or want this light flashing all the time. Once I’ve provided a good sync to the video and data, the light can be switched off. So, one more switch. That makes 5 switches.
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This is mostly a pictorial, its all pretty self explanatory. Unveiling the CageIt takes time unwrap a cage after being masked. Lots of tape, and still sticky paint. It took a couple hours to get it all off. But, I think it was worth the wait.
I’ve been thinking about how I want to setup the instruments. I don’t want to go all-out right off, but I also don’t want to re-buy things by buying parts that are going to be obsoleted by future upgrades. My primary need now is simply to get the car on the track. I can use the stock instruments since in the ‘92 all the gages are truly analog gages (not indicators). Eventually, though I want to replace these with good Auto-meter gages. Next I want to get a predictive lap timer, and finally a data acquisition system. I thought about the stand-alone lap timer….but, that is $300-$400 that will be obsoleted by a data-acq system…that’s 1/3rd the cost or so. Since everything kind of stems from the final Data-Acq system…I figured I should start with selecting that. I’ve looked at several, but it seems like there are three pimary systems that are in the amateur price range: Nothing makes a car look like a racecar like removing all the amenities, carpet, seats, dash, etc. Today’s goal (if I had such a thing) was to remove as much weight from the car as I could find. I actually started by weighing everything that I had removed so far. I’ll put the weight savings in a separate post, and just update that as I go. I started in the trunk, removing the spare tire, jack, carpet, and the piece of metal that holds the jack handle. There is a giant pad of that tar like stuff that I removed from the passenger floor, yesterday. I know a couple guys that have remove this…after yesterday, I’m still on the fence….it’s a lot of work. I’m sure I’ll end up removing it, I just need some distance from my previous experience. After I removed everything from the trunk…I began to think about the passenger compartment…airbag, sensors, computer…that kind of thing. Of course, most of that stuff can’t be reached without removing the dash. Well, it was early enough in the day…what the heck! WARNING! An airbag is an explosive device. Certain precautions are in order. Please read your manual, before proceeding. This is not meant to be a guide…just a basic discussion of my experience. After following the precautions laid out in my shop manual, I set about the task of removing the airbag. The big thing is that all the airbag connectors are blue and orange. The orange connector comes off first, then the blue connector. IMPORTANT: Don’t try to remove them at the same time. |
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