Some of the Original F100 Wiring

Hi guys,

Here is an update on our rewiring project for the truck. Last week, I removed all the old wiring and many of the switches. It was a lot more work than it sounds like. There were many instances of wires that when to completely different areas of the truck being harnassed together.

Also, several wires were tied to the chassis with other wire or wrapped around the chassis several times. This is deifintely a safety hazard. We will replace all of this with zip-ties and bolted clasps. Also, most of the wire was run under the hood or underneath the chassis with no protection and showed significant signs of wear. Make sure to protect your electrical system. A few extra minutes now could significantly increase the life of your system.

Here are a couple pictures of some insanely complicated and over-loaded switches for the headlights/turnsignals and ignition switch which ISIS will very efficiently replace:

To see more F100 pictures, please visit our facebook page, ISIS Power.

Oh and one last picture. Here is ISIS compared to the old wiring system:

ISIS Power Diagnostics on the Ford F100 Panel Truck...

Okay Guys,

I'm putting the cart ahead of the horse a little here but I wanted to get this post out because it is timely.  We don't get to the diagnostic video in the series for a few more weeks, but this one was too good not to post. 

As you all know, we're in the the middle of our video series showing us install our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System in our 1955 Ford F100 Panel Truck.  You can see the string of videos at our website at this link. 

The install job is finished but we're still producing and editing videos.  We cranked the truck with ISIS for the first time last week.  We spent the last few days buttoning up wiring and looming.  There is a little cruise night every other Tuesday night down the street from my house.  Check out and like their Facebook page here.  Their profile picture is the back-end of our F100. 

Anyway, I wanted to take the kids in the truck down the street tonight so I was working with the guys to get the truck ready to go.  I took it for a 45 minute drive this afternoon to ring out the system and check a few other changes that we made.  Everything ran fine. 

I brought it back to the office and asked the intern, who shall remain nameless, to button up some of the wiring for the horn circuit.  We were scrambling to get out of the office at the end of the day to get out.  I unlocked the truck with my iPhone and inTOUCH Mobile and went to crank it.  The starter engaged but there was no spark.  I was going to be late but was able to fix the problem in less than 5 minutes. 

The first thing that I did was to check that I had a heartbeat on all of the cells.  The truck has our 3-Cell Kit installed, one POWERECELL under the hood and one in the back.  The MASTERCELL is on the base of the shifter console.  I had a blinking com light on every cell so I knew that the network was communicating. 

The next thing that I did was to turn on messaging on the MASTERCELL by pressing the Scroll Up and Select buttons at the same time, holding them for one second and letting them go.  This will display all switch input changes on the inSIGHT LCD module.  When I turned the key for the ignition, I could see that the MASTERCELL was seeing the switch.  That part was okay.

The last thing that I did was to pop open the hood and check the diagnostic LED for the ignition output on the front POWERCELL.  It was glowing dimly so I knew that I didn't have continuity from the POWERCELL output through the ignition module to ground.  I first checked the fuse and found that it was okay.  Since I was only troubleshooting the length of wire from the POWERCELL to the ignition module to ground, I had about a 3 foot span to cover.  The ground looked good so I could rule that out. 

This ignition module came out of another car so it has a connector between the module on the fender and the distributor.  I wiggled this connector and could see that the diagnostic LED went out.  The intern-who-shall-remain-nameless must have leaned on this part of the harness, pulling the connector apart.  I popped it back in place, cranked the engine and I was off to pick up the kids.  All in less than 5 minutes. 

The diagnostic tools in the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System pointed exactly where in the car I had my electrical problem.  What could have taken hours with a conventional electrical system, was fixed in less than 5 minutes. 

Sorry to run this out of sequence.  Watch for more updates. 

Jay

Mega Fuses and ISIS Power...

Okay Folks,

The team at ISIS Power just happens to know a thing or two about circuit protection and proper fusing of automotive wiring.  Most of us spent the bulk of our careers at Littelfuse, the largest circuit protection company in the world.  Everything that has a battery, plugs into the wall or connects to a data system has their products in it.  You can't make it a single day without touching something that isn't protected by Littelfuse. 

We designed into ISIS tons of circuit protection products to ensure that the system can survive the environment.  This includes electrostatic discharge protection on all of the inputs, fuses built into the POWERCELLs to protect the outputs, transient voltage suppressors to protect the system from load-dumps and primary fuses included in the kits to protect the primary power feeds from the battery.  We use Mega fuses to protect the 8-gauge feeds that supply battery voltage to the POWERCELLs. 

We picked the Mega series of fuses and holders for a few reasons.  They are tried and true, they are rugged and durable.  Also, the fuse holders connect easily with buss bars to create any side of holder that you would need.  Finally, they have plenty of time-delay built into them to eliminate the chance for nuisance opens. 

In the latest video in our series showing how we are wiring our Ford F100 panel truck with ISIS, I walk you through the Mega fuse kit and talk about the importance of properly protecting wires in your car with fuses. 



You can catch the rest of the install videos in this series at our website by clicking this link. 

F-Fun Hundreds...

Hey Guys,

One last quick post for the day.  We have been sourcing a lot of odd-ball parts for our Ford F100 Panel Truck as we rebuild it and re-wire it. 

We stumbled across John's F-Fun Hundreds website.  They have a broad selection of parts for the F100 series of trucks including our vintage of panel truck.  We bought the battery tray that Max describes in an earlier post from them. 

You can get to their website at http://www.f100.com/.  Or you can reach out to them over the phone at (714) 563-F100. 

I hope that this helps.

Jay

inRESERVE in the ISIS F100 Panel Truck...

Okay Guys,

Here is a follow up post to Max's about installing the battery box and the inRESERVE Active Battery Management System. 

We preach a lot about proper battery maintenance but we do stupid things just like everyone else sometimes.  We've been installing our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System in our 1955 Ford F100 Panel Truck.  All of this activity is going on while we're building product, answering the phone and calling on customers.  Last Friday, an intern who shall remain nameless, left the ignition key in the on position before he buttoned down things for the weekend.  Guess what... the battery was stone dead when we came in yesterday morning. 

This leads to a timely video about our ISIS inRESERVE Active Battery Management System.  The inRESERVE kit is an add-on to the basic 2 or 3-Cell Kit an it includes a latching solenoid, a primary fuse holder and some ancillary wires and terminals.  It works hand-in-hand with the MASTERCELL and POWERCELL to eliminate the possibility of the battery getting drawn down by the electrical loads in the car.  It watches for 3 things:  the ignition must be off for it to operate, the battery voltage must have fallen below 12.2 volts (which is clinically dead for most batteries) and it has to stay at this voltage level for more than 15 minutes.  If the 3 of these things happen, the POWERCELL sends a pulse to the inRESERVE solenoid and it opens up, completely isolating the battery from the electrical demand in the car.  This effectively kills all draw off of the battery. 

It protects you against two scenarios.  The first one is that you put your car in your garage and leave your headlights on with the ignition off.  The headlights drain the battery and you wake up the next morning and can't start the car.

In the second scenario, you have your car sitting idle for a few weeks without a trickle charger on the battery.  If you're like me, you travel a lot and forget to connect your battery tender.  All of the electrical accessories in your car draw small amounts of current.  That includes ISIS, your audio system, EFI and anything else that you have connected.  Over time, the battery voltage drops to a point where you can't start the car. 

In either scenario, the MASTERCELL would see the battery voltage drop below the set threshold.  It would check to see that the ignition was off and it would wait 15 minutes before it did anything.  It would then send a command to the POWERCELL to pulse an output to trigger the latching solenoid to open and cut all the current draw from the battery. 

There is an important note here.  Since inRESERVE kills all of the current draw from the battery, you need a reset button to re-engage the solenoid.  Most guys hide this under a fender.  Pressing this button turns the power back on to ISIS and the rest of the car.  We include a button and a fuse holder to protect this wire in the inRESERVE kit.  This feature also acts as a nice added security feature for your car. 

There are two goals for inRESERVE.  First, never let the battery voltage drop to a point where you can't crank the engine to get it started and charge up the battery.  Second, never let the battery voltage drop low, deep cycle.  Batteries don't like to have their voltage drawn down.  This will damage the battery and effect its lifetime. 

This is an example of the wiring diagram for inRESERVE. 

You can download this at our website at this link.

You can check out the inRESERVE Video talking about installing it in our F100 here. 



Stay tuned for more videos. 

Jay

Replacing the Battery Box in our 1955 F100

This is the first of many blog posts that I will write about rewiring our 1955 F100 company truck with the standard 3-cell ISIS system. In my mind, the logical starting point of rewiring the F100 is replacing the Battery Box, since all electronics in the car are tied to the battery. Also, the Battery Box certainly isn't in the best condition. As you can see, the floor plate has rusted through and the front plate is only hanging on by a single bolt. Lastly, the actual plastic box the battery sits in (not shown above) was partially eaten away by leaking battery acid which the previous owner had tried to fix by placing multiple rags in around the battery to soak up the acid.

Clearly, there is some work to be done here. In addition to replacing the entire Battery Box, I installed a couple other components that will become part of the ISIS system of the truck. First, I installed a fuse box with 6 megafuses. These fuses will protect the set power cables running to each of the 3 cells, 1 MasterCell and 2 PowerCells, in the truck and are included in the standard 3 cell kit.

I also installed inReserve, our active battery monitoring system. This will protect the battery from being drained if we accidentally leave the lights on in the truck, and prevent deep cycling which is potentially fatal to your battery.

Above, you can view the end result. The fuse box is located on the left, and the latching solenoid and fuse of inReserve of the right. Today I will be working on making a good ground connection, i.e. chassis, for the negative terminal of the battery. This will complete the Battery Box replacement, although inReserve will not work until I install the rest of the ISIS system.

I'll be making more posts as I continue to work on the F100. If you are interested, please check our website for the video series associated with the truck.

Thanks,

Max

Introducing the ISIS Ford F100 Panel Truck Installation Series...

Hey Guys,

We're thrilled to introduce a new series of videos that show off our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System.  A few weeks ago, I posted a teaser post about our new ISIS Truck. It is a 1955 Ford F100 Panel truck.  The body is rock solid, that's the most important thing to me.  The mechanical and electrical stuff is easy to do.  Body work scares me.  The engine is an old-tired 302 out of an early 1980's Mustang and the transmission is a mystery TMX.  It has the original truck suspension on the front and rear end. 

The best part of the truck is that the wiring is a nightmare.  There are some pretty scary things lurking behind the dash and under the hood.  I sent Max the intern out to start pulling the old audio system out of it a few days ago.  After about 10 minutes, I heard the truck start up, run for a few minutes then shut down.  Max ran up to my office looking very pale.  He said that he pulled on a speaker wire, trying to trace it through the dash and the truck started up by itself.  Obviously there is some strange short somewhere in that wiring.  Regardless, it is all coming out.  We'll post pictures of the existing mess to show you where we started. 

We are going to be installing our standard 3-Cell Kit in the truck with inMOTION for the windows.  We will also be adding a third POWERCELL in the cabin for more electrical goodies that we will be adding over the course of the project.  We will also be fabricating a new center console to add our inTOUCH MAX touch screen.  As we go through this process, we will be showing you how to install ISIS step-by-step in a series of videos.  You can catch those on this blog or on in the install section of our website.  You can get to that link by clicking here.  You can also search for these videos on http://www.youtube.com/.

We are also going to be highlighting some of the most popular installed electrical products in this truck.  You can see us wire these step-by-step to help you with your install.  These will include popular ignition systems, EFI, air conditioning systems and lighting.  Stay tuned for more details. 

Here's the kick off video. 



We've said from the beginning that the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System is the easiest and most powerful electrical system that you can put in your car or truck.  ISIS can give you control that no other system can.  Watch the install in our F100 Truck and we will show you. 

Jay Harris
President, ISIS Power

Check out the 5-Axis Stage 3 Camaro on the Hot Rod Power Tour...

Hey Guys,

Nevill and the guys from 5-Axis just finished the Hot Rod Power Tour.  They don't mess around so they did the whole thing.  This is a pretty grueling run that covers a lot of miles.  Check out some of the pictures...

You can see more of Troy & Nevill's work at www.fiveaxis.net.

ISIS Durability

Yesterday I spent several hours assembling kit components in an effort to learn as much as I can about our product. After crimping wire for an hour, I was really curious why the the rubber seal that is crimped onto each wire, was covered in oil. I did a little research and this is what I found:

http://www.powerchemical.net/library/Silicone_Oil.pdf

The silicone increases the water repellency of the circuit by protecting the connections between the rubber seals and the wires. In fact, all ISIS products are completely waterproof. In addition, the Powercells, which are placed in the most undesireable places in a vehicle, are tested to withstand intense vibration, salt corrosion and heat up to 120 degrees Celsius. The ISIS system can hold up to just about anything you are building your vehicle for.

Summer Experience with ISIS

Hello readers,

My name is Max and I've just started my summer internship here at ISIS. I recently finished my junior year as a Mechanical Engineering student at Rose-Hulman. I'm very excited to be a part of the ISIS team and look forward to contributing our products and aiding our customers.

I'll be dipping into all the different aspects of the business over the next few months and I'll make sure to post anything interesting I learn.

Thanks,
Max Grove

First Day

Hi,

I'm Dan, today is my first day with ISIS Power. I joined ISIS to be part of the sales effort, so today and throughout the near future I'll be learning a lot about ISIS Power's products. I look forward to sharing a lot of what I learn through this blog. For example, today Max (he will introduce himself later) and I were given a history lesson on the origin of the ISIS Master Cell and Power Cells. One of thing that really stood out was the robust engineering under which the products were developed. The fact is, ISIS Power products were developed using world class power management specifications by the world leader in automotive circuit protection. On top of that the engineers that work here are here provide true best in class support for vehicle wiring that only experts in the field can bring. I already knew the ISIS 3-Cell Starter kit had several advantages over wiring a vehicle with traditional wiring harnesses (speed and ease of installation - saving time and money, flexibility and control - providing capabilities to add features and functions to your install), but I didn't realize how powerful the technology was in making the system more reliable and secure.

I really look forward to sharing more of the background behind the amazing products that ISIS Power has to offer.

Dan