Day 2 on the Two Guys Garage Set with ISIS Power...

Hello All,




Sorry I didn't get anything out yesterday on our ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System install with Factory Five and Two Guys Garage. We were running around so much, I didn't take any pictures. Plus, we were wiped out by the time that we got back to the hotel. There is a great team of guys there, more like 25 Guys Garage. In addition to the Two Guys hosts and the Factory Five build team, there are guys from Lizard Skin, Dart and Monster Transmissions.




We accomplished a lot yesterday. Most of what Mike and I did was prep work for the rest of the shoot. We laid everything out and mocked up where we were going to mount cells and route wires. We also took the time to put connectors on all of the electrical components that come in the Factory Five kit. This will make the actual wiring of the car much easier. We will just need to run the wires from the POWERCELLs to the accessories then attach the mating connector. It will literally be plug and play.




Today was equally busy, but I made time to take some pictures. The first thing that we did was to route the main power feeds from the battery. Mike spent most of the morning routing the primary feed from the battery to the starter, mounting Mega fuse holders to protect the cables and installing the master disconnect switch.




While he was doing that, most of my attention was spent on the dash. We mounted the gauges then I wired the power, grounds, illumination and switches using our inDASH harness. Here is a picture of Mike checking my work.

I thought that the dash would be a separate piece like the Factory Five MKIII, but it is integrated into the fiberglass tub. Having it on the lift made this an easy job.

Here is the dash wiring just before I finished dressing it and zip tying the harness. The extra wires coiled up on the right go to the turn-signal & high-beam indicators plus the high-beam switch. We'll drill the holes for these after the body is on the frame. That way we can make sure that they are centered on the steering column.

Here is the gauge view.

As I mentioned, there are a ton of guys on the set workin on all of the different parts of the car. Here is a picture of the controlled chaos around the chassis.

Here's a shot of the POWERCELL mounted in the rear of the car. This is on the top tier of the decks in the trunk.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Jay

We're off to Florida...

Greetings to all,

Just as we clear out from another dumping of heavy wet snow, we're packing up our tools to go down to the set of Two Guys Garage in Tampa, Florida. We're working with Brenton Productions, Factory Five Racing and the crew of Two Guys Garage to build a car from the ground up in 5 days. We're going to be installing our standard ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System 3-Cell Kit with inLINK and inDASH.

We'll be posing pictures here on the blog and on our website, www.isispower.com. Check back here for updates over the course of the next 5 days.

Jay

ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System to Support OneLapCamaro Team...

The whole team here at ISIS Power is proud to become a sponsor of the OneLapCamaro for the 2010 Tire Rack One Lap of America challenge. James Shipka and his team just landed Optima Battery as their main sponsor. We're thrilled to be a small part of this.

We first met James leading up to the 2008 SEMA show. His '67 Camaro is wired with our standard ISIS 3-Cell Kit and it has seen some grueling abuse over the miles since they first hit the road.

Check them out at http://www.onelapcamaro.com/

You can see their press release at their blog.

New Manual...

One more thing for this morning...

We honestly try to learn as much as we can from our customers. Comments and feedback regurarly make it into software changes, literature and new product features.

In particular, we have spent a lot of time lately taking customer feedback on the install manual. I have been very critical of this since the beginning but I am pretty pleased with the new version.

We took a slightly different approach to the layout of the manal. There is less material covering features and benefits and more on actually wiring the car. We broke it into the specific car functions like how to wire headlights, how to wire turn signals, how to wire ignition & starter, etc.

We think that this new version will make installation of the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System far easier.

Check it out here.

Jay

ISIS Rankings in Google and Keeping New Year's Resolutions...

Okay Folks,

I've been slacking on my New Year's resolution to keep the blog current. The good news is that we have been swamped with other things in the business.

Our most exciting news of the day is that I typed the phrase car wiring harness into Google and the ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System website came up as the first link. Not too bad. I'll debate weather those are the best search terms but we'll take what we can get.

Jay

Proper Wire Sizing... How Not to Make Fuses...

Okay Folks,


Back to electrical stuff...


I mentioned below about how the fundamental job of a fuse is to protect a wire from fire. You want the fuse to be the weakest link in the car's electrical system. It should open long before the wire that it is protecting gets hot. This means that builders should take care to really understand how much current a load draws when they size the wire connecting it and the fuse protecting it. Most manufacturers of automotive accessories will publish the current draw.


Just to make things a little more complicated, there are really two current draws that you need to know about. The easiest is the steady-state current draw. For example, a light bulb may have a steady-state current of 7 amps. This is the current that flows through the filament after any transients, in-rushes or start-up events go away.


The current draw that is a little more complicated is the in-rush. This is the initial surge of current that some loads draw. There are basically two types of loads that have in-rushes: inductive loads and incandescent loads.


Inductive loads include any load that has an inductance, or coils. Think about things like the windings in a motor or a solenoid or a relay coil. The physical turns of the coils in these devices create inductors that generate magnetic fields when the current flowing through them changes. Changing current flowing through an inductor drives a change in the voltage which cause surges in the current when the voltage changes suddenly. When you turn on a motor, the current surge can be 2 to 10 times higher than the steady state current.


Light bulbs work by passing current through a filament that has resistance. In all cases, the resistance of the filaments is a function of its temperature. It has a relatively low resistance when it is cold but the resistance goes up significantly when it heats up. Since current flow is inversely proportional to the resistance, the current starts high when the bulb is first turned on and drops as the filament heats up. This first surge of current through he filament can be 2 to 5 times its steady state current.

This means that when you choose a wire and fuse combination, you need to consider the steady-state current and any in-rush current that the load may draw.

We do some of this heavy lifting for you in our standard ISIS 3-Cell Kit. All of the output wires from the POWERCELL are sized with 14 AWG wires. Each output is rated to a maximum of 25-amps. Feel free to contact our technical support team if you have questions on sizing wires or fuses for your ISIS Intelligent Multiplex System.

Jay

Interesting blog posting on Early Adopters...

Okay Folks,

More off-topic stuff today, but a colleague sent me a link to this blog. Since we are living the entrepreneurial dream, I have been following a lot of these types of postings.

Marty Zwilling posted a great article on the hazards of letting early adopters define your market. Since we are a technology-driven business, this is good advice.

Interesting reading. Check it out here.

Jay