Well, it's 12:30 UTC (that's 7:30am for those of us who live on the East Coast of the US.) My hands are still aching from last night, but I had to get up and share what I accomplished yesterday on my new 2016 Ford Fusion. It doesn't look like much, but it's the part of any radio install that I dread. For many, the dreadful part is drilling holes in new body work. For me, the battle is finding a place and a way to get power wires through the firewall and routed to the location of the radio. Last night, that battle also involved 2 sliced fingers, a sliced knuckle, and just a little bit of blood. Ouch!
I started the project last night by popping off the trim at the front passenger side of the car, so that I could pull back the carpet from the firewall. I looked to see what I could see - I was hoping for an unused grommet or some easy place to fish the power wires through. No dice. I got out and looked at the same area from the firewall side. Nothing. I got back in and looked some more. I got back out and looked again - still nothing. I'm not sure how long this went on, but you get the idea. I was really hoping to find an easy, exisiting, location to get wires through here because of how much room there was in the engine bay on this side - oh well, that would have made things too easy.
I finally gave up, and moved to the drivers side. After some reaching, bending, and twisting around I was able to find one of the factory wiring harness pass throughs, and it seemed pretty roomy...awesome! In the engine bay, this turned out to be right behind the battery, so I undid the battery hold downs and slid the battery forward a little bit to get myself some additional room. To get the wires fed through, I did a fancy trick that I either made up, or read about and didn't remember. I proceeded to grab an old coat hanger, cut it into a straight wire, and poked it through from the inside out.
I started the project last night by popping off the trim at the front passenger side of the car, so that I could pull back the carpet from the firewall. I looked to see what I could see - I was hoping for an unused grommet or some easy place to fish the power wires through. No dice. I got out and looked at the same area from the firewall side. Nothing. I got back in and looked some more. I got back out and looked again - still nothing. I'm not sure how long this went on, but you get the idea. I was really hoping to find an easy, exisiting, location to get wires through here because of how much room there was in the engine bay on this side - oh well, that would have made things too easy.
I finally gave up, and moved to the drivers side. After some reaching, bending, and twisting around I was able to find one of the factory wiring harness pass throughs, and it seemed pretty roomy...awesome! In the engine bay, this turned out to be right behind the battery, so I undid the battery hold downs and slid the battery forward a little bit to get myself some additional room. To get the wires fed through, I did a fancy trick that I either made up, or read about and didn't remember. I proceeded to grab an old coat hanger, cut it into a straight wire, and poked it through from the inside out.
Bingo! There's the other end of my "fish-wire". I attached my power wire to the other end of this and pulled it through. I had to pull pretty hard to get the end of the zip cord to widen the hole in the grommet enough for it to pull through, but after that it was easy going!
Here's my spool of wire on the inside of the car, fed up through the grommet. Sorry for the weird lighting - the lights I use to be able to see my work do strange things to my iPhone camera as it tries to focus.
Before doing anything else, I cleaned up the wires in the engine compartment. I added 2 fuse holders (one for the negative and one for the positive. I also dressed the wires with splitloom, and slid the battery back in place. Most people probably wouldn't know I even added anthing now that its all done! (Except for maybe the couple extra fuse holders that you might able to find, if you look closely.)
Just a note here - All the big manufaturers tell you to connect both positive and negative leads directly to the battery. I actaully connected my negative to the "jump point" as outlined by the K0BG article on wiring because this car, like many new ones, has some fancy "stuff" in the negative lead for system monitoring, that you end up bypassing if you connect straight to the battery.
My bad on this next one - I didn't take any pictures while I had the trim off and the carpet rolled back. Basically, I took the door sill trim off, rolled the carpet back, and ran the wires along the channel underneath. Once again, sorry for the weird lighting in these pics.
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All that to get the wires here, in the trunk. As you may have guessed by where the power wires are routed - the radio body will be getting installed back here. These will get tucked behind the upholstry for final routing, when the time comes. At this point, you may also notice that there is an extra pair of power wires popping out. There will be a distribution block back here, and I pulled an extra pair of power wires from the trunk, back to the front, for a small CB radio that will end up getting installed.
Oh No! Did he really say CB? What honest ham radio operator has a CB, let alone calls it that? Well, this one I guess. Because of the amount of time I spend on the road, I like having a small CB, which pretty much always stays on channel 19. Often, I don't even have a mic connected, but I like being able to flip it on when I'm getting into weird traffic stuff in other cities - the truckers always know whats up, and are usually talking about it when the traffic is bad.
For those who are curious, I used an app called "Circuit Wizard" by Blue Sea Systems to decide what gauge of wire to use. It's pretty slick actaully - you put in all kinds of specs on the equipment, the wire, the type of install (does it go through an engine compartment) and it spits out what gauge of wire you should be using.
Oh No! Did he really say CB? What honest ham radio operator has a CB, let alone calls it that? Well, this one I guess. Because of the amount of time I spend on the road, I like having a small CB, which pretty much always stays on channel 19. Often, I don't even have a mic connected, but I like being able to flip it on when I'm getting into weird traffic stuff in other cities - the truckers always know whats up, and are usually talking about it when the traffic is bad.
For those who are curious, I used an app called "Circuit Wizard" by Blue Sea Systems to decide what gauge of wire to use. It's pretty slick actaully - you put in all kinds of specs on the equipment, the wire, the type of install (does it go through an engine compartment) and it spits out what gauge of wire you should be using.
So whats next? I supposed I might tackle drilling the hole for the NMO mount on the roof next, or I might work on routing the cables needed for the remote mounting of the radio body. Stay tuned to find out which!
P.S. For those who know about my home shack project, the next step on that will be more concrete sealer (just to make sure the cat smell is gone for good) and framing up some walls. My next weekend that isn't already full of stuff will probably involve a trip to Lowes for some lumber.
P.S. For those who know about my home shack project, the next step on that will be more concrete sealer (just to make sure the cat smell is gone for good) and framing up some walls. My next weekend that isn't already full of stuff will probably involve a trip to Lowes for some lumber.
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