Fireandfuel Hits MOPAR Action...

I wanted to get out an update from the FireandFuel team in Canada.  Dave Hartnell has been one of the earliest adopters of ISIS.  They were actually one of the first shops to use ISIS for sequential turn signals.  Check out this video. 

They built a tremendous 1968 GTX for a customer that has been cleaning up the awards.  It was just featured in the October 2010 edition of MOPAR Action. 

There is a great bio available on Ken Jansen plus some good details on his '68 GTX.  You can check it out here. 

Check out the For a Few Dollars More acticle in the October 2010 edition of MOPAR Muscle to see the car and the level of work that Dave does.

He is in the middle of wiring a few more cars with ISIS so watch the blog for more updates from Fireandfuel.

Wiring Humor...

Okay, I saw these pictures on the GT40 forum and found it funny enough to pass on. 

We know that wiring a car can be a daunting project, even for something very basic.  We read about completed cars and talk to guys who have dozens of relays stuffed behind the dash.  Guys talk about hundreds of feet of wiring with dozens of extra connections to make things work.  This guy in particular must feel a little overwhelmed with his traditional wiring system. 

Our goal from day one has been to simplify wiring your car, to let you install your electrical system in less time and to give you more features.  Check out http://www.isispower.com/ to learn more. 

Thanks to BigB98 on the GT40 forum for the humor. 

Wiring Turn-Signal Indicators with ISIS...

We received two related questions this week about turn signal indicators.  The first question was how to wire the turn-signal indicators on the dash.  This is very simple.  Essentially, you are going to splice off of the turn-signal outputs on the front POWERCELL and bring these connections back to the lights on the dash.  Typically, the left and right turn-signal outputs on the front POWERCELL are brown and violet wires respectively.  The dash indicators, whether they are incandescent or LED, pull very little current.  You can use a 22-AWG wire to make this connection. 

The left & right indicators on the dash gets power when the POWERCELL is supplying power to the left or right turn signal bulbs.  This is pretty simple. 

We had another customer with a late 1960's British car who had an interesting question.  He only has one turn-signal indicator bulb on the dash and wanted to know how to wire that into ISIS.  Essentially, the bulb is supposed to flash when either the left or right turn-signals are on. 

With ISIS, this is a very simple problem to solve.  You are going to wire the turn-signal indicators just like you would if you had independent bulbs.  The big difference is that you are going to connect the wires from the left & right turn signals to the same terminal on the indicator light.  But, you need to put a diode between each output wire and the light.  Remember that a diode acts like a check valve only allowing current to flow in one direction.  Without the diodes, all of the turn-signals would turn on a the same time if there was no way to block the current from one to the other.  The diode eliminates the cross talk from the left and right sides of the car.  Check out the new application note on the http://www.isispower.com/ website. 

The diode can be any blocking or rectifier diode.  A popular part number is 1N4001.  These are available at any Radio Shack or can be purchased online from companies like Mouser and Digikey.  Note that the orientation of the diode in the circuit is important. 

You can download this schematic from our reference library here.

ISIS Power Coverage in Kit Car Builder...

Jim Youngs, editor of Kit Car Builder, did a great install of our standard 3-Cell Kit with inLINK in a Thunder Ranch Porsche RSK Spyder replica.  He documented his wiring job in a very thorough article in the August 2010 edition. 

For those building kit cars (or components cars which is the new vogue term), this is a great magazine for you.  It is the last magazine standing that covers building these cars.  Overall, it is well written with tons of informative articles.  You can learn more about the magazine here. 

In Jim's article covering ISIS, he does a step-by-step install in the RSK.  It is a small car, with very basic electrical functions, but he still gets the benefits of multiplexing the wiring harness. 

This is just one example of the many magazines that have covered the benefits of the ISIS Inteligentl Mulitplex System.  You can see more of then in our media section here. 

How to wire your door locks with central locking...

Okay Guys,

When we brought inMOTION to the market, it gave you a very flexible way to manage accessories in the car that had to be reversed.  The most popular example is wiring a power window.  Another good application is wiring power door locks. 

If you are using a 5-wire lock actuator, you can use the built in switches to do central locking.  Essentially, there are no buttons in the car to work the locks.  Manually pulling up on the door lock plunger would unlock all doors.  Pressing down on the lock plunger would lock all doors. 

One of the most popular lock actuators out there is the kit by Electric-Life.  These guys are literally down the road from us and they have a great technical support team.  Here is their popular 5-wire actuator. 

There are 5 wires on these actuators.  The black wire is ground.  The red and blue wires move the plunger in and out.  The brown and purple wires are for the internal switches for central locking. 

We have created a new app note that shows you how to wire these door lock solenoids with central locking to the ISIS 2 or 3-Cell Kit with inMOTION.  

Here's what you do.  inMOTION is going to connect to the the red and blue wires going to the lock solenoids.  You are going to wire both of the solenoids in parallel with inMOTION.  You need to to a little work here to get the wires connected in the right direction.  These solenoids are designed to mount any way in the door.  That means that there is no set lock and unlock direction.  You need to reference the instructions that came with your inMOTION Cell Kit and use these as a guide. 

There are 5 outputs on inMOTION.  Pick the one that you are going to use for the locks.  The instructions show you the wire colors for the pairs of wires for each output.  After you get the lock solenoid mounted in the door, temporarily connect the output wires from inMOTION to the lock solenoid.  There are manual buttons for each output on the inMOTION Cell.  You can use these to cycle the solenoid to determine the correct direction before you permanently wire it up.  Use the picture on page 2 as a reference.  The buttons each are labeled in the picture U and D for Up and Down.  Also, the groups are switches are labeled F1 through F5.  These correspond to the output number on inMOTION. 

The solenoid should lock when you press the Down button and unlock when you press the Up button.  Imagine pulling up the plunger or pushing it down to unlock or lock the door.  If the action is reversed, flip the red and blue wires on the output wires for inMOTION. 

Once you have this done, you need to wire the MASTERCELL inputs to the brown and purple wires on the solenoids.  Just like the red and blue wires, you need to figure out which wire is for the lock and which is for unlock.  The easiest way to do this is to use a multimeter set on resistance.  Start with the purple wire and measure for resistance between it and ground.  Use your fingers to push the plunger in and out.  In one direction, the resistance will be very high or an open circuit.  In the other direction, the resistance will be low, less than 1 Ohm.  The purple wire is the switch for whichever direction has the low resistance to ground.  Repeat this process for the brown wire to check. 

The wire that shows low resistance in the lock direction should connect to the MASTERCELL input wire for the down action for the inMOTION output that you connected to the solenoid.  The wire that shows low resistance in the unlock direction on the lock solenoid should connect to the MASTERCELL input wire for the up action for the inMOTION output that you connected to the solenoid. 

So here is an example.  Let's say that you choose output 5 on inMOTION for your door locks.  You are going to connect the White and Grey wires coming off of the output harness on the inMOTION cell to the Red and Blue wires on the lock solenoids.  Orienting your inMOTION cell per the picture in the instructions, you are going to press the buttons labeled U & D in the lower left of the area under the cover to check the direction of the solenoids.  They should lock when the D button is pressed and they should unlock when the U button is pressed.  Reverse the White and Grey wires from inMOTION to the Red and Blue wires on the solenoid if necessary. 

Now for the inputs.  Let's say that the purple wire measures low resistance to ground when you press the solenoid plunger in the lock direction and the brown wire measures low resistance to ground when press the solenoid plunger in the unlock direction.  Refer back to the table in the inMOTION instructions for the MASTERCELL wire colors.  Remember that lock is down and unlock is up.  Since the purple wire connects to ground in the lock direction, that wire connects to input 36 which is the Tan wire with the Red stripe.  The brown wire connects to ground in the unlock position so that wire connects to input 37 which is the Tan wire with the Black stripe. 

Once the wiring is done, train the inMOTION cell per the instructions.  Make sure that the solenoids are in the unlocked position before you start the training sequence. 

This diagram shows the Electric-Life 2-door kit.  Wiring the 4-door kit is exactly the same, just you wire the 4 solenoids the same way as the two. 

You can down load this application note here.  You can find this note and many others in our reference library at www.isispower.com. 

Wiring the ignition and starter with a 3-Position Switch

We just had a customer email us with a good question about his 3-Cell Kit. He wants to use a three position toggle switch to control his car's ignition and starter. The switch is off in the down position, on in the middle and momentary in the up position. The switch that he wants to use is sold by Longacre Racing. Their part number is 45490.


This is an easy one to wire to the ISIS MASTERCELL. The common terminal on the switch gets tied to ground. The middle position gets connected to input 3 on the MASTERCELL. This is the white wire with the blue stripe. Input 4 on the MASTERCELL, the white wire with the yellow stripe, connects to the momentary terminal on the switch. As it is wired, the ignition input to the MASTERCELL will be on in the middle position and the starter input will be on in the momentary position. Since you need to have the ignition system powered when you are cranking the engine, you need to put a diode between the ignition and starter terminals. See the diagram for more details.

You can download this diagram and many others to help to wire your car from our reference library here.

Check out ISIS Power on Hub Garage...

Okay Guys,

As we spread the word about ISIS Power, we've just hung out our virtual shingle at Hub Garage.  You can check us out at www.hubgarage.com/mygarage/isispower.  It's a great gear-head environment and it will be another place where you can learn more about ISIS Power products and how you can simplify the wiring in your car.

Check it out.