Dash Wiring and Painting

My aluminum dash

My aluminum dash, during mock-up

Dash test fit into the car

The dash, almost complete

The dash, painted and complete

Painted, powered up and ready to go!

So, over the weekend, I got a little bit of work done on the Talon. I painted up the dash, so that is looks all nice and spiffy, and I also worked on getting the wiring in the dash done up. I spent about 4 hours working on the wiring for the dash, and it’s almost all done. The lighting was cake, and the gauges requiring other electrical are almost done. the I have to dig through the Haltech manual to find a tach signal somewhere (can I just use one of the ignition outputs, I wonder? No, it looks like a tach adapter is available – okay, then I will just have to hook up the tach signal from one of the power transistors and that will work as a tach signal.) and I also need to get the Autometer EGT box hooked up. Oh, and I need to hook the AEM UEGO wideband 0-5V output up to the Haltech to be able to log that data for tuning.

I should also note that I have a new laptop. The pisser about it, though, is that it’s a Dell Inspiron 6400, and they have no serial ports. “Just get one of those USB to Serial adapters!” you’re saying to the screen right now. Well, I would, but I haven’t found one of them that is officially supported in Vista, and that’s what came on my new laptop. So, I can’t use one. I actually have one, and Vista recognizes it, and it *appears* to work properly, but it doesn’t appear to pass any data. It didn’t even work with my old Laptop on Windows XP, even though the real serial port on that machine works without a problem. In addition to that, I’m using the E6S, and that’s got ancient DOS software. and, it must use some special VESA mode, because it won’t run in Vista. When I try to run it, I get an error that says “This program cannot run because your system does not support running in FULL SCREEN mode” or something to that effect. So, that would also have to be fixed, too. It has been. I found an ExpressCard from Startech.com that you actually has a port dongle hanging off the side of it, and purchased it because it claimed to have support for Vista. And, amazingly enough, the driver CD that came with it works. So, I now have a one-port ExpressCard slot, which completes the Serial communication need of the computer. Now, I needed something that would actually allow me to use the E6S software. This was accomplished using a piece of software I found called DOSBox. DOSBox allows you to emulate DOS under Windows XP/NT/2003/Vista/Etc and even has serial port support. I quickly found a shareware software serial port sniffer, and started it up. Then, I configured DOSBox to use the new ExpressCard serial port, and bingo, it works. So, the computer is finally squared away, too! (and it only took a month and a half!)

But, this post isn’t about any of that stuff – it’s about the Summit Racing order I just made at lunchtime today. I ordered up a Kirkey Pro Street Drag seat and seat cover. Because there were issues with fitment of the Corbeau Racing seat, I started to think about selling it. So, I asked Warren if he knew anyone who wanted to buy it after seeing his Corbeau seat in a picture he sent me. Well, Warren took it off my hands for me :-) He wants to scare passengers in his FWD racecar. That’s crazy ;-)

Oh, yeah, I also ordered up a few small bits and pieces – a new fuel pressure gauge, a fuel pressure isolator, and some fittings. they should be here tomorrow. Although I will say that I will be amazed if that race seat shows up tomorrow. I imagine it’s over UPS’s girth limit. I guess we’ll see :-)