Installed my new Switchbox

Bought a sweet box for all the electronics in my car. Hoping to have it all hooked up this week. Had to fab up a bracket, but for the most part it turned out great.

dude that looks super sic.

Yeah, I am pretty excited to get all the electronics and starter button hooked up. Hopefully tomorrow.

damn thats some fast and furious shit right there. looks go mikey.

Flight crew....... prepare for takeoff!!!!

Which one starts up the turbines?

haproot wrote:

Which one starts up the turbines?

The switch on the far right.

are you maken it so you dont even need a key at all?

I am going to retain the key. I dont feel like removing my steering column to get rid of the barrel lock and I think it will be a better idea to keep it.

yeah that would be kind of a pain in the ass.

James Bond just shat...

hey mike i talked to apc today about that CFM box we talked about. they have 3, they are on sale right now for 270. brian over there thinks if you run your fuel pump and main computer tuning /injection with it, it will work like a champ

turbotudor wrote:

hey mike i talked to apc today about that CFM box we talked about. they have 3, they are on sale right now for 270. brian over there thinks if you run your fuel pump and main computer tuning /injection with it, it will work like a champ

I am 100% sure I will pick that box up, I just dont have the funds right now. I really want to get the intercooler setup done first, so that will be next on the list.

cool, keep us in the know

What is the CFM box?

It is a box that takes in 12v and amplifies it. I am guessing with all my electronics I need something to help keep things above 12v. Josh has much more information on it. I guess they work really great though. Most of the hardcore drag racers use them as they dont have alternators.

MIke I like the fact that you have every electronic device under the sun in your car, yet you are still rocking the stock radio! I am suprised the mod bug never got you to go spend a few hundred bucks just so you had more "cool" aftermarket stuff.... I would have thought you would have put a stereo in that thing back in the 80's when you bought the car! j/k


Also I think you should add some red accents to your interior so it matches the outside! ha ha, just messing with you

The stereo is last on the list and going to be done this year, finally. I am not going to run an amp or anything, but I will be getting at least 200w speakers and head unit.

Seems like the CFM box would be overkill for your or most cars on here. You can easily use hard wire your fuel pump with a relay to get more consistent power. I can't imagine you have anything using enough amps to warrant something like this. Even with serious electric fans you should be ok with a good battery and a working alternator. Just my .02 cents.

ts4l wrote:

Seems like the CFM box would be overkill for your or most cars on here. You can easily use hard wire your fuel pump with a relay to get more consistent power. I can't imagine you have anything using enough amps to warrant something like this. Even with serious electric fans you should be ok with a good battery and a working alternator. Just my .02 cents.

the issue is simple. stock alt is like i think 65 amps. mike has like a 90 amp on it now. it isn't so much the voltage as the amperage draw that can affect the ignition, fuel pump, tuning computer, and wideband. not to mention he still has the cars computer system, lights, bells, and whistles. it is very similar situation to car stereo stuff. thats why people install capacitors, extra batteries (50lbs), CFM box is under 3 lbs. having even a 1.5 volt drop can greatly affect multiple electrically ran systems on the car.

I completely agree having Voltage drop even in small increments is not good, I just can't see anything MIke has pulling more than a few amps. I run the stock 60 Amp alt. and with a hard wired fuel pump I never see voltage drop below 13.2. That's plenty safe. I guess maybe MIke has some crazy amp draw with all those fancy gauges all over but those shouldn't pull enough Amps to matter. I can see that box being worth it if he is having issues just seems like he shouldn't be having that issue in the first place. If he had a bunch of fans for oil coolers and tranny coolers I could see an issue but nothing he has should pull that many Amps.

turbotudor wrote:

ts4l wrote:

Seems like the CFM box would be overkill for your or most cars on here. You can easily use hard wire your fuel pump with a relay to get more consistent power. I can't imagine you have anything using enough amps to warrant something like this. Even with serious electric fans you should be ok with a good battery and a working alternator. Just my .02 cents.

the issue is simple. stock alt is like i think 65 amps. mike has like a 90 amp on it now. it isn't so much the voltage as the amperage draw that can affect the ignition, fuel pump, tuning computer, and wideband. not to mention he still has the cars computer system, lights, bells, and whistles. it is very similar situation to car stereo stuff. thats why people install capacitors, extra batteries (50lbs), CFM box is under 3 lbs. having even a 1.5 volt drop can greatly affect multiple electrically ran systems on the car.

So I'm kind of curious..... I know why Mike would be putting a "CFM" in his car...... But I kind of see the answer already listed in you're post.

Why doesn't he use a one fared car audio capacitor to run all his powertrain management and fuel pump? It weighs like one pound and costs like $120. Would take out all the current spikes just like running a big car amp. What does this "CFM" do that a "cap" won't do?

I've seen people use a setup like that when they had electric fans that have an amperage spike of about 30 amps when they kick on. They used the capacitor to store the energy so that the fans pull the amps from the capacitor instead of directly from the battery. I think that seems like a much better option although I still am not sure what in Mike's car would require that many amps.

a one farad cap would work, but when you spin a motor up at higher rpm, there can be multiple things happeneing besides a voltage drop, like an ignition signal getting scattered. the CFM box doesn't only supply more amperage in your system, it also supplies more than 13.5 volts constant power. his fuel pump is the same as mine, rated for a certain psi and lbs/hour at a certain voltage, but makes more psi and more lbs/hour at a higher voltage, not to mention his wideband, laptop, fuel tuning computer, and all his gauges can create a amperage spiike and voltage drop that a CFM box can maintain all this at any load level. reguardless, mike has some sort of electical issue that needs to be addressed before he can run his car to it's true potential.

So basically this "CFM" unit is kind of like what they use for professional PA sound equipment? They call it a "Clean power source" .... Al little more complicated because we're dealing with A/C and the 60Hz sign wave which can cause a hum in the sound equipment. And the unit is like a "UPS".
Whereas a alternator on a car creates an a/c signal at a frequency that changes with RPM. And then the rectifiers or (diode bridge) converts the a/c from the three-phase windings to d/c with low ripple but with peak loss. And that peak loss sounds like what this "CFM" deals with. Cool but..... I don't know if it really necessary since the lap top probably has circuitry already built into it that does this, along with the ECM(standalone) and I'm sure the ignition control unit does too.

Quote :

A quote from Wikipedia: (in case there are any questions about what I'm talking about)
While half-wave and full-wave rectification suffice to deliver a form of DC output, neither produces constant-voltage DC. In order to produce steady DC from a rectified AC supply, a smoothing circuit or filter is required.[1] In its simplest form this can be just a reservoir capacitor or smoothing capacitor, placed at the DC output of the rectifier. There will still remain an amount of AC ripple voltage where the voltage is not completely smoothed.

Sizing of the capacitor represents a tradeoff. For a given load, a larger capacitor will reduce ripple but will cost more and will create higher peak currents in the transformer secondary and in the supply feeding it. In extreme cases where many rectifiers are loaded onto a power distribution circuit, it may prove difficult for the power distribution authority to maintain a correctly shaped sinusoidal voltage curve.

For a given tolerable ripple the required capacitor size is proportional to the load current and inversely proportional to the supply frequency and the number of output peaks of the rectifier per input cycle. The load current and the supply frequency are generally outside the control of the designer of the rectifier system but the number of peaks per input cycle can be affected by the choice of rectifier design.

A half-wave rectifier will only give one peak per cycle and for this and other reasons is only used in very small power supplies. A full wave rectifier achieves two peaks per cycle and this is the best that can be done with single-phase input. For three-phase inputs a three-phase bridge will give six peaks per cycle and even higher numbers of peaks can be achieved by using transformer networks placed before the rectifier to convert to a higher phase order.

To further reduce this ripple, a capacitor-input filter can be used. This complements the reservoir capacitor with a choke (inductor) and a second filter capacitor, so that a steadier DC output can be obtained across the terminals of the filter capacitor. The choke presents a high impedance to the ripple current.[1]

A more usual alternative to a filter, and essential if the DC load is very demanding of a smooth supply voltage, is to follow the reservoir capacitor with a voltage regulator. The reservoir capacitor needs to be large enough to prevent the troughs of the ripple getting below the voltage the DC is being regulated to. The regulator serves both to remove the last of the ripple and to deal with variations in supply and load characteristics. It would be possible to use a smaller reservoir capacitor (these can be large on high-current power supplies) and then apply some filtering as well as the regulator, but this is not a common strategy. The extreme of this approach is to dispense with the reservoir capacitor altogether and put the rectified waveform straight into a choke-input filter. The advantage of this circuit is that the current waveform is smoother and consequently the rectifier no longer has to deal with the current as a large current pulse, but instead the current delivery is spread over the entire cycle. The downside is that the voltage output is much lower – approximately the average of an AC half-cycle rather than the peak.
End Quote:

hey, i don't know the entire wiring diagram of mikes car, but i personally think that without the laptop, he still has a voltage and amperage issue, i hope whatever it is, he gets it figured out

JOsh I was in no way saying the CFM box is not the solution or that it won't fix his problem. I just see all too many times people buy expensive parts trying to fix things that I don't see they really need. I just want Mike to consider him Amp draw and what else is going on before spending a bunch of money. I'm sure you can relate it sucks to waste cash on stuff that don't make your car any faster!

i agree 100% with you. i guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

I am not sure what the deal is. I am going to make a decision after I get this switch box installed, as it is going to be running all my stuff. Maybe having it all run to the box it will smooth out the problem. I guess we will now tomorrow.

ts4l wrote:

JOsh I was in no way saying the CFM box is not the solution or that it won't fix his problem. I just see all too many times people buy expensive parts trying to fix things that I don't see they really need. I just want Mike to consider him Amp draw and what else is going on before spending a bunch of money. I'm sure you can relate it sucks to waste cash on stuff that don't make your car any faster!

I have no problem wasting money on unnecessary parts.

no shit, i mean uhhh, you don't do that, you got everything you need, except a potty and a fringe in your car.

Mike what are the swutches going to run? Depending on what its running make sure and use relays.

I am going to be running my MSD box, Laptop, LM1, and Fuel Pump off the box. I was planning on getting a relay for both the MSD and Fuel Pump, not sure if I will need one for the Laptop or the LM1. What do you think?

DoodieHead [ADMIN] wrote:

I am going to be running my MSD box, Laptop, LM1, and Fuel Pump off the box. I was planning on getting a relay for both the MSD and Fuel Pump, not sure if I will need one for the Laptop or the LM1. What do you think?

I'd bet that if you ran all you're electronics off a one farad cap and through you're switch box you would never need that other unit.

it takes about 30 seconds to kill off a 1 farad capacitor at a constant 40 amp load. they store energy(DC), but they dont amplify it like a CFM box. many parts mike is running are compatible at higher voltages, lm-1, fuel pump, msd boxes and add ons too.

More than likely getting the CFM box if I cannot get the voltage figured out. Using a stereo piece is not going to happen.

turbotudor wrote:

it takes about 30 seconds to kill off a 1 farad capacitor at a constant 40 amp load. they store energy(DC), but they dont amplify it like a CFM box. many parts mike is running are compatible at higher voltages, lm-1, fuel pump, msd boxes and add ons too.

I really don't know what the fuss is on this "CFM"..... not saying it won't help or be the cure all for MIke but....really?

A one farad cap might take 30seconds to discharge on a 40amp load......by itself. but when you're using it as a reservoir capacitor or a stiffening capacitor in conjunction with a battery and an alternator it will be more than capable of dampening out any amperage spikes that might be a problem.

If it is voltage ripple you're chasing after then that is a little different. But of coarse that's nothing that a little altering of the alternator regulator can't take care of. Has no one ever played around with what is possible when you full field an alternator? But then at that point you are right...... if this CFM unit conditions voltage as you insinuate i.e. provide lets say a 14.3v constant supply voltage to whatever you want without voltage ripple I guess it's probably worth it in place of coming up with you're own evil brew of capacitors and re-engineered voltage regulators for the alternator.

it makes/amplifies voltage to a constant no matter what your alternator is producing( even if your alt is only making like 10 volts..)

Pretty excited to get some money for the CFM box. Soon we will know what the problem is.

Not looking good for wind today, soooo I guess working on the is eminent.

live by the wind, die by the wind... or something like that...

Decided to wait till tomorrow to get started. I need to get a relay before I start anyway.

DoodieHead [ADMIN] wrote:

I am going to be running my MSD box, Laptop, LM1, and Fuel Pump off the box. I was planning on getting a relay for both the MSD and Fuel Pump, not sure if I will need one for the Laptop or the LM1. What do you think?

Using relays is the best way to save your switch panel from melting! I would use a relay on all of them. Most switches have very low amperage ratings because they are desinged to be used with relays.

A relay should be installed in a circuit, when the circuit current draw is greater than the amperage rating of the switch or
control module.

Look at your car stock, every switched power source is run through a relay. If the extra dollars you spend on relays saves you from melting your dash you will be glad you spent the extra bucks.

The relays are only $7 apiece, so it would be a good idea to use as many as I need.

amen sprockadocious

I have no idea why, but for some reason when I hook up the LM1 it is giving me a really f'd up reading. If I run the power directly from the battery it works fine. ???

The LM1 has 14v and does not fluctuate. Any ideas, besides hooking it up to a different power source. I really want to hook it to the switch box.

Did you use a relay for that one? You should use the switch as the trigger for the relay, then the power from either the battery,starter terminal or anywhere that has a nice thick wire coming from the battery. If you need a diagram to wire it in or have questions let me know I'll be happy to help ya out.

so it works fine once you hook it up to the battery directly?

turbotudor wrote:

so it works fine once you hook it up to the battery directly?

yep

Then using a relay should get rid of the problem. A lot of times if there is a lot of electrical noise from the power source you use the wideband will be off. Where did the power supply come from that you were trying to use? I can promise you that if you run a 12volt signal to the switch, then to a relay as the trigger and then use battery voltage to the relay and to the wideband you will be much better off.

Here's a quick diagram to make it pretty simple. Verify the pinouts depending on which relay you use but this is a common Bosch style 5 pin relay. Its been a while since I have done any wiring. You can also do this for your fuel pump/ignition by using the factory wiring for the trigger and then connect the high power source to the fuel pump. Very simple way of maintaining voltage to important systems. The stock wiring can be old or just plain under rated for the current draw on high flow pumps and ignition systems. MSD and others sell this as a kit but you can do it for about $5.

Pin 85 ground to chassis
Pin 86 +12v signal to switch, then to pin 86 to provide power when switch is turned on (Trigger wire)
Pin 30 High power feed (you should fuse this and run it from the battery or a distribution block)
Pin 87 connect to LM1


This makes so small current goes through the switch which will burn up or melt if too much current is sent through it. This will also make the switch last for a long time. Also wiring it this way with a fuse high power feed will make this much safer and will save your electronics in the event of a problem.