The Singer 911

We deal with a lot of unique customers with great cars. One that is getting very busy in the market is Singer Vehicle Design. They just announced the completion of their first production Singer 911.

Here's how they describe it in their own words...

The Singer 911 Concept attempts to channel the spirit of the delicate 1960's original, the race bred chic of the '70's long hoods, the '80's bomb-proof solidity and the power and sophistication of the 964/993 series: a single jewel-like form that represents and celebrates the golden era of the world's most important sports car.

They meld the old with the new in their Singer 911, a truly unique car in the resto-mod world. We first started working with them about a year ago on their prototype, which has been been praised in the media including by the typically skeptical team at Top Gear. Their production model is wired with our 3-Cell Kit with inMOTION. They even have the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System tied into the transmission so that the rear wing is actuated based on road speed.

They have a great website with lots of pictures, testimonials and specs on the car. Check it out here.

Low and High-Beams...

A lot of guys ask about how to wire in the floor-mounted headlight switch with ISIS in their car. One of our customers building a 1967 Cougar asked this exact question today.

There are two different ways that you can wire this switch.

One way is to use the switch to control inputs to the MASTERCELL. Check out "Wiring Headlights and High-Beams" on page 28 of the new manual for more details. Connect the high-beam input to what was the power feed for the switch. The connection to the low-beam input should connect to what was the high-beam terminal on the switch. The third terminal of the switch is unused.

The other way only uses one output from the front POWERCELL for headlights and high-beams. Connect the white output from the front POWERCELL to the power input terminal switch on the floor. Then connect the headlights and high-beams to their respective terminals on the switch. When you turn on the headlights, you get power to the front bulbs. Hitting the switch on the floor will switch from low to high-beams. The biggest benefit of doing it this way is that you save the high-beam output to use for something else.

Keep watching our Reference Library for more tips and tricks.

FAST EZ-EFI, Fuel Pump Control and ISIS...

We had a customer just ask a question on our website about integrating the Fuel Air Spark Technology (FAST) EZ-EFI system. He wanted to know how to control his in-tank fuel pump with our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System and the EZ-EFI system.

If you look at the instructions that FAST gives you for the EZ-EFI™ Self Tuning Fuel Injection System, they detail the connections to their EFI wiring harness. There is a wire in their harness labeled "Fuel Pump Relay". This is designed to ground the coils of the fuel pump relay. Here is the diagram from the FAST manual.

You can download their entire manual here.

You connect the fuel pump input on the MASTERCELL directly to this wire on the EFI controller. In the ISIS standard front-engine configuration, this is input 19 which is the Tan-Yellow input wire. Essentially, you are replacing the fuel pump relay with ISIS.

When the EFI controller wants the fuel pump to turn on, it closes the "Fan Pump Relay" circuit to ground. This grounds the input to the MASTERCELL, which sends a command to the rear POWERCELL to turn on output 10, which energizes the fuel pump. There is no need to run any additional wire to the back of the car from the EFI controller. This command is carried through the ISIS CAN cable from the MASTERCELL to the rear POWERCELL.

Check out our reference library to get other tips and tricks on how to simplify wiring your car at www.isispower.com.

Come see the ISIS Power Team at the 2010 NSRA Nationals...

Come out to the 2010 National Street Rod Nationals to meet with the ISIS Power team and experience the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System. The show will be held from August 5th through the 8th at the Kentucky Expo Center in Louisville, KY.

The team will be out there at booth 736B with demonstrations set up of our standard 3-Cell Kit. Plus we will be showing our new inRESERVE Battery Monitoring System and our inMOTION Motor Controller Cell. You can get some hand-on experience with our products to see how ISIS can help simplify wiring your car and get you more functionality.

You can check out the NSRA website for details on the show, including directions and show hours.

Check out our news section on the ISIS Power website for more details on the show and other upcoming events.

A great wiring reference...

A lot of customers call us looking for tips on the nuts and bolts of wiring a car while they are installing their ISIS Intelligent Multiplex Systems: how do I strip wire? What does a good crimp look like? Are butt slices okay?

We think that we know a lot about wiring, but we met a guy about 6 months ago who literally wrote the book.



Tony Candela is an Arizona-based author and all-around-car-guy. His book, Automotive Wiring and Electrical Systems, has become the new reference for everyone in the industry.

This is a great reference that every guy should have on the shelf in his garage. It has 144 pages of wiring tips, tricks and good advice. It is written in plain English with tons of pictures. Plus it just won the 2010 International Automotive Media Award for technical excellence.

Steve of Steve Meade Designs did this quick video on YouTube walking you through the book.


You can get more details from Tony's website by clicking here.

Grounds, grounds, grounds...

Okay... regardless of the electrical system you are putting in any car, problems with grounds account for over 90% of any of the issues that you may have. This is true for our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System, any EFI controller, stereos, amplifiers, even traditional relays. There are few things more important when wiring a car than your connection to ground.

This starts with something fundamental: a good metal-to-metal connection. When creating a ground connection, make sure that all of the metal surfaces are clear and clean. This means removing any rust, paint, powder coat, clear coat that may get in the way.

Second, you have to protect these joints from corrosion. A good ground today, may degrade over time as the junctions get dirty and corrode from normal driving.

Finally, remember that what goes in must come out. Make sure that your ground connections are sized to handle current. I mentioned before that the most common mistake that guys make when wiring their cars is to under size the cable from the battery to the starter. Well, the second most common is to under size their ground cable. A OO gauge wire from the positive side of the battery to the starter is useless if the negative terminal connects to the chassis through a 6-gauge wire. Same thing when you think about ground straps from the engine block to the chassis.

Remember that that ground has to carry the alternator current plus the starter current. A 14-gauge wire between the block and the chassis will measure good continuity with a meter but will cause a lot of problems when you crank the motor.

Keep an eye on the ISIS Power Reference Library. We're creating a few tutorials on grounds. These will have our recommendations on where to put them, how to prepare the surfaces, the types of hardware to use and how to size the cables. I'll post them up on the blog too when they are done.

Check out ISIS on Lokar Car Show TV...

For those who didn't catch this on the Fox Sports Network earlier in the week, here is the piece that MastersTV produced for Lokar Car Show TV. Cathy Fisher interviewed me in our booth at the 2010 Hot Rod & Restoration Show in Indianapolis. It is a quick exceprt from the interview talking about the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System, car wiring and our standard one-button start feature.



You can check out this video and many others in the media section of the ISIS Power website.

How to modify the S2000 start button for illumination...

Okay... we had a customer ask us a very good question about wiring into the S2000 switch. We missed the switch illumination in our last app note and this raises an inportant point on how the MASTERCELL inputs work on ISIS.

Remember that all of the inputs are pulled to ground. Also, remember that we build a significant amount of circuit protection into the system. This means that we protect all of the inputs on the MASTERCELL from electrostatic discharge (ESD).

I just happen to know a thing or two about ESD. In a previous life, I managed a piece of business that made suppressors for ESD. Some of these parts were board mounted surface mount components. Other parts were inserted into connectors for high-end aerospace and military applications. I even published a few papers on really esoteric high-bandwidth testing methodologies for transmission line pulse testing.

Anyway, the diode arrays that we use to protect the inputs from ESD are sensitive to DC voltages above 9 volts. This means that you cannot apply the battery voltage to any of the MASTERCELL inputs. When you wire ISIS into your car, you have to take care to make sure that the inputs are only connected to ground.

So, to make the illumination work for the S2000 switch, you need to physically separate the power to the internal light bulb from the contacts for the switch. This is very easy to do and it should take you less than 15 minutes. We added a second S2000 switch app note to our Reference Library.



You can get the full note at this link. Plus you can access our full library of application notes to help you wire your car with our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System.

ISIS Power on Lokar Car Show TV...

Tune into the Fox Sports Network on July 11th at 11:00 AM Eastern to watch ISIS on Lokar Car Show TV. The MastersTV team interviewed ISIS Power president, Jay Harris at the 2010 Hot Rod & Restoration show in Indianapolis, IN. They'll chat about the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System and how you can simplify wiring your car plus get a more powerful and functional electrical system.

The show airs again at 4:00 PM Eastern on Monday July 12th. Check with your local cable provider for details.

Wiring ISIS POWERCELL to Ford OBDI EEC Module...

Okay Guys,

We were asked today how to wire ISIS to a Ford OBDI EEC module. This customer in particular did one of the first 4.6L transplants into a Mustang. The donor car was a 1991 Lincoln Town Car.

We'll get some prettier drawings of this, but here is how you would wire the outputs on the ISIS POWERCELL to the harness of the Ford EEC module.

These two wires are hot all the time.

Yellow/Black wire connects directly to B+ through a 30-amp fuse.
Pink/Black wire connects directly to B+ through a 20-amp fuse.

The Dark-Blue/Orange wire needs to get voltage when the starter is cranking. Splice this wire into the starter output off of the POWERCELL.

If you are using the EEC Power Relay with the EEC Power Diode, connect the Red/Light-Green wire to the Ignition output on the POWERCELL. If you are not using the EEC Power relay, you can connect the red-wire from splice S129 to the Ignition output on the POWERCELL.

The Green-Yellow/Yellow is the connection for the HEGO sensors. You can either use a separate output off of a POWERCELL to power this or you can use the ignition output to switch a relay to provide power to this.

You can find similar ECU wiring schematics for ISIS plus other tips and tricks at our Reference Library at www.isispower.com.

Jay