ok.. so i was hoping to have the car in primer this week but i didnt have class for 2 day which put a pretty big damper on gettin anything done. however, the body work will be finished today. i am still in need of an s5 front bumper though if anyone has one they would like to get rid of for a reasonable price. i emailed mazdatrix a couple weeks ago and they said they had one in good used condition but they wanted 250 for it and that doesnt include shipping... :( they also wouldnt send me any pictures. so again if anyone following me on here has one share the love !!! :)

hooray for updates. the car has primer on it and i will post pictures tonight or tomorrow. its also my bday tomorrow:! Party!!!

HELL YES!!!!!

Did Ransom stop by and look at those exhaust hangers?

Sean he did stop by but as you already know i my car was all masked for primer. Matt said he got you one so i hope you have everthing back in good shape now :icon_tup:. ill start sanding again monday.. so here are the primer pics..........

Man this build is going to be SWEET

quick update.... noDOHC is sellin me his s5 front bumper!!! thanks man :). i also have a set of the aerocatch hood pins on the way! ill be re clearing my cf hood soon as well i believe.... sean can you say glasurit?

Got my aerocatch hoodpins sat. im excited for install :)

Nice - I'm jealous your car is in primer and I'm still waiting on a hood to be made (its been a month now since I paid the deposit and an ETA is still nowhere to be seen)...

Hope to see some color laid down soon man, keep it up!

i have one more coat of primer to do. i just finished sanding the first coat today. :)

ah shit... well ive been pretty lazy this week..well moving but i havent felt like doing much. i missed 3 days of class because of it. but the car is remasked for the next round of primer. i think i may end up tackling the interior revamp while its in the shop too.

:beatdeadhorse5: i just finished spraying the last coat of primer. i cant even begin to tell you all how awesome it is too see the whole car free of dents, and eventhough its just primer that its all one color. my bumper will be here on thursday of this week, again courtesy of nodohc :001_005:. im going to be doing some interior updates as well. pictures will be posted of that as well when i start. thats just gonna be a nice home winter project when im bored.

That has to be a good feeling. It's going to be sweet when its all done!

.........you are gonna have a nicer FC then me kyle :( ;)

Mine is falling apart while yours is rising up. Cruel world

how in the hell is yours falling apart? oh!! and i cleared the hood! it s pure sex... and not just normal sex... the best sex... BUUTTT...an unfortunate event occured that may cause me to have to re clear it. the filter fell out of the ceiling a little bit when i was spraying it so the hood is really dirty. so im hoping i can sand it out and polish it and everything be ok. but if not ill re spray it and it will be fun again. i have the s5 bumper and its almost ready for primer. ill post pics of it soon. for now ill post what i have of the dirty bitch hood

this doesnt do it justice.:001_005:

wooohooo!!! beers on the weekend!!!! drunk!!! good times. hows everyone

That hood does look good though... Is the color down on the body now? I'm impatient :)

What clear did you use on the hood? Is it cut and buffed in that pic? Looks awesome

No...the body is not in color. I'm waiting until everything is ready for paint. I need to finish prep for the bumpers and get them primed then I'll get the body sanded down and get the whole thing painted.

As for the hood in those pics it's not cut and buffed. Today I got it buffed with a wool pad which is stage one. I still have two more to go. I used a flexed glasurit clear. I think it's 926-something. It took me a bit to sand al the dirt out because of the damn filter.

Good looking clear. Was it reduced at all? What size tip and pressure at the gun please :D

I use U-pol Clear - 20:80 I BELIEVE. I've found that with my 1.3 tip and 40ish psi at the gun it lays pretty flat.

im used a SATAjet 3000 w a 1.3 tip. no reducer just a fast hardener and i sprayed at about 29-30 PSI at the tip of the gun. 3 coats and i went pretty slow :icon_tup:. i love spraying clear.

That much pressure at the tip? Damn, how are you measuring it at the tip? One of those special adapters that I've only heard of and not seen?

Ya lol that much. And we have another regulator at the end of the hose right before the gun. :001_005: i just finished the second pad for the buffing.. one more to go and ill try to post pics tonight:driving:

gettin closer to paint time. preppin door jams and hatch now:001_005:

k so im gettin the interior done before i do the door jams so i dont fuck them up tryin to do it later.... so the whole inside of the car is stripped right now except the front carpet piece. im still tryin to get it out:puke:. as far as the inner wiring goes, how much of that do i actually need... i dont use my ac because it doest work. im going to use the a racepak digital display for my gauges. Can i get rid of any of it at all or should i just not worry about it? also im going to be puttin a dash in that is from a s5 car. my concern with this is that while the connectors may all match up im worried about the wires inside the connectors being diff. case in point.. i tried to use a headlight switch from a s5 car with my s4 headlight harness and the headlight worked in the opposite way (down being up and up being down) i could hear the relays making funny noises and then i smelled buring:banghead:. anyone have some input?

HAHAHA that is funny shit.

The Racepack gauges will looke great. Brians set up looks sweet and really turned me on to the "F1" gauge look. I saw it on other vehicles and thought it was lame BUT the FC interior pulls it off.

Car is coming along bro, as for the wiring I would say your best bet is just PM Brian and ask what he did. I am sure the wiring is striaght forward and you could use the leads going from your senors to the race pack unit. See if you can download the wiring instruction manual from Racepacks website. That will tell you all you need to know.

Hey I got a contact here in town that does ceramic coating for cheap. LMK if you want to do any of your turbo/exhaust system.

Every setup is different - but for me, I ditched the interior wiring harness all together and plan to utilize a universal "street" kit from Summit (similar to Painless Wiring's kits) which accounts for everything you need (turn signals, brake lights, etc) and then you can wire the gauges up separately.

When I originally swapped over to S5 engine/instrument cluster (was an S4), etc I had to use an S5 dash harness. It was a HUGE PIA to get and to this day my brake light switch never worked correctly nor did the volt gauge?? This is primarily why I'm scrapping all the stock stuff and going custom - just did it with my friend's MG and it turned out great.

I woke up and my ears were burning :rofl:

I'm not familiar with the RacePak unit. I can tell you that my AIM digital dash uses CAN communications with my Motec so I didn't have to double up on sensors. I'm afraid that with my FD, I'm going to need to double up on a few, if not all of them becuase I don't think that I'll be useing the same dash. Like Sean said, it works in the FC dash becuase of the inherent recess, I think it'll look like crap in the FD. So basically everything that I want gauges for, I'll need to double up on. Coolant, Boost, FPSI, OPSI, Otemp etc etc will need two sending units, one for the Motec, and one for the gauge - that really pisses me off actually. I need to do more research and see if I can avoid that.

As for the wiring, here's what you need to do - you need to match ALL the harnesses. For example - you can't use an S4 chassis harness with an S5 Dash harness. As you found out, little things are different. Different enough that it's just not worth the headache of trying to make everything work together. Inevitably, I believe something will get mixed up and the little electrical Genie will pop up and fuck stuff up. As you've already witnessed. If there was a burning smell, there was probably a puff of smoke somewhere and the genie is out.

So, If you have an S4 car, you already have the S4 chassis front and rear chassis harnesses. All you need now is an S4 dash harness, engine harness, and all the S4 switches etc etc and it'll work just fine.

I stripped a TON of wiring out of my harness for things that I either wasn't using, or wired up myself. My car was originally an SE. I didn't have PW, PDL, PM, I stripped out my A/C and a few other things. Basically it's alot of staring at wiring diagrams and tracing the wires inside of the harness. You'll find a metric shitton of wire splits. The b/y is a very common one to split all over the place as is the b. the Bl/W is another one that runs all over the place as well. Here is where planning is a BIG thing. Say for example you're installing a rear hatch solenoid that requires about 10A and you're not using any of the factory stereo amps. Well there is a (I BELIEVE) a Bl/W wire that goes all the way from the fuse box all around the car to power the Amps. Although this is only active when the key is on, so it won't work when the key is off. It may be nice to use that as the ign hot to the trigger of a fuel pump relay though.

It's shit like that that needs to be taken into consideration. It's a long, monotonous arduous task that requires alot of patience and planning to get it right, but in the end, it's worth it. I pulled a few BOXES of wires out of my harness. Most, as in 80% if not more of the wires going across the tranny tunnel to the ECU I stripped out becuase I have my own coil & trigger wires in my engine harness - all of those could go. All of the trigger and power wires for the A/C went with the excpetion of one or two power and trigger wires.

I think the best way to attack the problem from a starting point is to do exactely what we did with Alex's car. Make a list. This list needs two columns. One side is things to add, the other is things to subtract. The things to add side needs lists of wires that need to be added. See if anything from the list to be subtracted side can power the list to be added side. If so, cross those off the list to be subtracted side. Then start tracing wires and pulling them out of the harness. DO NOT CUT ANYTHING though. What you'll find is that whire you can trace one color of wire from the harness of the load all the way back to the fuse box or control control box, it may be a wire that is used for something else. In this case, it will not appear in the FSM wiring on the page that you are looking at becuase that other circuit may be in a different location. Instead what the factory does is split the wire somewhere in the harness. If you strip this wire out at the source, you'll kill both circuits and one may be a circuit that you don't want to take out. The stereo and the rear defrost I think is a good example, as is the infamous B/Y wire that is just EVERYWHERE. You need to start at, say the speakers, and work you're way towards the fuse box/dash harness. If the wire splits, open up the wrap and cut it, then re-wrap it and leave it there. If that wire appears again on you're subtract list, you'll find it again at the source of the load and be able to work back again.

Better to take your time and do it once than fuck it all up and be looking for a replacement harness.

Something else to consider - and this is something that I'm doing over the winter in an effort to simplify my incredible complicated simplified electrical system :rofl: Yeah I know.... what I did was installed a battery cut-off switch. The issue with that is that you need to wire in a few constant hot circuits to do things such as keep your radio memory, alarm, PW, PDL, headlights, interior lights, etc etc etc. The things that need to be on even when the battery is shut off. I added an external fuse box and relay box. What I ended up doing is running larger gauge wires all over the place. Over the winter I'm going to get my hands on Alex's spare S4 harness (becuase even though his car is an S4, we're using all S5 harnesses because he wanted the S5 interior) and strip out a bunch of wires that I need to be constantly hot. Things mentioned above that have factory circuits. Break them from the main supply in the fuse box, and route them to a powerpost (or something similar) connected to the battery. Greatly simplifing my mess located where the factory ECU once was.

Can I ask Brian why you didnt go the route of a universal wiring kit? The issues you describe are the reasons I plan to bail on the factory harnesses (I've already done the chassis harnesses and dash harnesses, it was a PIA). My S4 SE is now an S5 GTU from headlights to tailights, lol... it was NOT fun and to save the torture of hacking up stock harnesses, I'd rather leave them in tact and use a universal kit... thoughts?

Sorry project86 - dont mean to bulk up your build thread on wiring BS...

Hey man no worries this is all stuff i need to know so carry on. Im very interested in wiring. Its something i dont know a whole lot about at this point. And i realize that im probably gettin in over my head haha but ill get it figured out :001_005:

i think i just had a revelation.....i was just bringing my interior into the shop when it dawned on me that i dont need to use any of the s5 interior wiring. ill just use my existing s4 headlight switches etc. and keep the interior harness. no need to get rid of it. if i need to in the future ill pull the dash out and mess with it but for now im still going to be using the s4 logicon and other s4 electronics.... did that all make sense? lol im feelin kinda scatter brained right now after thinking about all the wiring "fun" i might have to go through.

Ok so i think i should win the rotary retarded award for today:leaving:. im puttin the interior back together today when i realized that the trim that goes around the seatbelts wont work cause the car i got them out of had auto seat belts....and to top it off i threw my old parts away already so i dont have any thing to replace them. genius eh? im kinda kickin myself.. oh well.. lesson learned i guess. im hopin someone local will have some spare parts....... :banghead:

PM Sunshine on the Evil forum or the v8rx7forum. He had an S5, now were building his S4 but using all S5 wiring but S4 interior..... yeah

Either way, he MAY still have the interior pieces that you need, he doesn't toss anything, he's just like me. Even though I would like to take a front end loader and clean out his shop.

I think as far as the wiring goes, you need to make a decision and stick with it and not try to mix and match harnesses and circuits. I think you're asking for a MAJOR headache down the road. If you're using S5 harnesses, use S5 EVERYTHING.... except for interior trim, that's easy enought to get around.

right. im sticking with s4 for that interior wiring. i dont know why i made it such a big deal earlier. i was just over thinking a simple situation.

here are some pics of the interior install. jams and engine bay are pretty much ready for paint. hopefully these arent too small. i had to re size them cause it was taking forever to upload. let me know if they need to be bigger for future posts. haha im actually taking these with a legit digital camera now instead of my phone.:icon_tup:

ugh... i like having break from school, but im gettin anxious to work on my car. i got my s5 lights last week and soon ill be ordering a the re type wing that corksport sells unless someone responds to my WTB thread. after that im gonna be done buying body parts until after the car is painted. i think the last thing im going to get is the cf s5 lip that mazdatrix sells. im not worried about getting it before the car leaves the shop cause i can just bolt that up whenever.
sooooo. as soon as i get the wing taken care of im gonna start collecting suspension parts. im gonna order my coilovers and hubs and brakes and poly bushings etc. im more than certain i can get most of that stuff taken care of this summer and then ill focus on engine stuff. wheels im keeping a secret :)

Sweet bro! What skirts are you going with? DO I KNOW THE WHEELS? ;)

As far as stripping out loads of wiring: I did that on my vert, and I greatly regreted it later, because after I took out some things like the top motors, and deleted the wiring, I could no longer use them anymore... I also found it a PITA to route the re-wrapped body harness back through the car because it no longer fit right... things were unsurprisingly too long in some spots, and didnt reach/ tuck properly anymore in other parts. Right now, on my TII build, I am avoiding cutting ANY wiring out if I can help it, aside from the engine harness....

A good example of what I mean is this:

Even through I've done so a bunch of times already, when I rebuilt my charging harness on the TII, it was STILL off and didn't quite fit right after I had new tape on it. This led me to unwrapping it it several times to redo some routing, which is not bad for a simple harness like this, but a royal pain for something that takes 30 min to remove and reinstall each time you need to redo parts of it.

My suggestion for the body harness is to get a cannon plug for the firewall if you plan to remove it at all.

i dont know that im gong to do anything for skirts. if i do anything its gonna be t2 skirts but i think im just gonna leave it alone. annddd.. nooo.. lol u dont know the wheels. after you said you were getting the vs-xx i changed my mind haha..

You do know that I got Work Equips right?