Alcan RallyLog

A Weekend of Wiring by Dan

This past weekend (January 10-11) we spent a few hours crawling through and around the WRX. Here's a recap of everything we did:

• Replaced battery with new Optima blue top. Installed battery blanket.
• Rewired accessory power cable with new 80 amp fuse block and fabbed a mounting plate to go over the top of the battery to hold the block.
• Temp/altimeter/compass display: pulled power and ran sensor cable to right side B pillar door jamb.
• Replaced under-seat fuse block on driver's side.
• Installed control head for 2nd ham radio in headliner, pulled cable to slated location under right seat. Pulled speaker wire to right rear of car.
• Pulled antenna feeds for both radios to rear of car. (Replaced cable for radio #1)
• Pulled switch wire for rear fog lights to passenger side front dash.
• Installed GPS multiplexer on mounting plate under driver's seat. This will take the GPS signal and feed it to radio #1 for GPRS as well as to the laptop. Pulled cable for GPS power and signal from top of dash to this location too.
• Sealed subwoofer enclosure, re-ran control cable.
• Pulled power cable for laptop.

Here's a view of the interior with all the seats out. Radio #2 is sitting on the temporary piece of plywood. Lookit all the wires!

Here's what the under-seat radio (#1), fuse block and GPS mux look like with the driver's seat out:

I probably forgot one or two things that we did. We still have to add some bits but we're pretty much done pulling wire through and under things. I hope. This should be the last time we have all the seats out of the car, anyway, except to complete the install for radio #2.

When you see Jim, congratulate him on his ability to shoehorn yet more gadgets into the WRX.