Today I had a poke around on the Lada in preparation for the EFi conversion. My mission for today was:
[] Locate an ignition switched 12V feed.
This turned out to be trivially easy.
Two screws are all that hold the instrument panel in place, and with those out you can pull it forward a few inches, reach in and unscrew the speedo cable, and that gives you ample reach in all the wiring to lift it to the left of the steering wheel.
Looking into the space behind it, bingo.
Just in case you're wondering - yes, all the engine bay side systems also plug into identical sockets on the underside of the fusebox on the other side of the bulkhead. Very sensible bit of design there I reckon!
The two "white" plugs to the right aren't used on this car as they are for various accessories, and even more usefully, I believe aren't connected to anything in the fusebox (which is what you're looking at the back of), so should I want to get 12V into the car at a later date for anything else, I'm all set.
One thing I am going to do before I actually get to work is have a look at how much space there is in the fuse box there - as if it's reasonably empty there, I may consider cutting those two accessory sockets out, and installing a modern high density multiway connector to route the EFi loom through to save me having to cut an inch and a half diameter hole in the firewall to route the loom through. Not worrying too much about it, but being able to do that would appeal to my sense of doing this in as professional a looking manner as I possibly can. Having said that, Lada's approach was to drill a hole in the bulkhead, so I'm not going to worry too much if I end up doing that!
[] Investigate why the dash lighting seems to cause the indicator flasher unit to have a fit - theory being a dodgy earth.
This has had me scratching my head a bit since I got the car. When you turn the ignition on, the indicator flasher unit ticks and the indicator tell tale on the dash blinks. It also does this (with the ignition on) when you turn on the headlights, and often then starts blinking (and ticking) as though you've got the indicators on but with a bulb blown somewhere. The actual operation of the indicators isn't affected.
This behaviour will do one of two things. If you're only going for a short trip, it'll stop after a few seconds. Or if you're going on a long drive, it will persist until about a minute before you get to your destination! It can sometimes be stopped though I've noticed by turning the dash illumination rheostat down - which immediately suggested to me that there's a duff earth related to that, and it's backfeeding into the flasher through a common connection somewhere (possibly even for the indicator warning light on the dash, thinking about it). I haven't actually sat down with the wiring diagrams in front of me to ponder that out yet.
However I don't think it's as simple as that - as having locally tied the ground terminals for both the flasher and the dash illumination to a solid ground has no effect on the behaviour. Hmmm...
Wiring diagram is here...Apologies for the size of the file, but I wanted to keep it readable. This is actually for a 2107 (the 1.6 engined "luxury" version!), but aside from a couple of gauges on the dash and a clock the wiring is identical*
*This also lacks the wiring for the emission control stuff on the later cars like mine - but that was a later add on and didn't change any of the existing vehicle wiring.
This one has me quite baffled.
The common contact terminal (pin 30) on the relay instead of being connected into the fuse box, where it should go to 12V + via fuse number 7, instead is wandering off out of the fuse box by a bit of red wire, and terminates on a terminal on the inner wing. So the relay is switching ground, rather than power as it should normally be. I've checked, and the terminal in the fuse box does indeed have 12V on it. Plugging the relay in normally results in the relay clicking merrily when the horn is pressed, but the horn making no noise. The relay looks to be original given it's identical to all the others (complete with CCCP markings of course...), so I don't think it's the cause in itself.
The first thought I had was that someone had messed with the horn...but it doesn't look like it...
Honestly not sure what's going on there, and I need to investigate further. I'd rather get it sorted as it currently means that I can't close the lid on the fuse box properly.
You make all us Xantia owners very jealous over how easy it is to get behind the instrument pod!!!
Then I clear the cache after.