rolleye
It's a disease I tell ya
- Joined
- March 7, 2004
- Messages
- 144
- Reaction score
- 1
- City, State
- Calgary AB, Canada
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 02 Sport - Playne Jayne
My '02 Sport Pj - Playne Jayne - was brought into the world by Ford lacking a number of electrical things - no overhead console, no power seats, no EATC of course, and no cruise control. The cruise control was dealt with successfully - definitely worth it !! So PJ has excess amps ...
This thread, though I am still thinking how I want to do it, will probably point to other threads and will attempt to document my very amateur attempts at bench testing various electrical mods that I might do. I know just enough about electrical/electronics to be much more dangerous than someone without any knowledge at all ...
Anything I put here and you choose to follow is your decision and I will not be responsible if your cat grows 2 heads or your house burns down because of something that you chose to follow that was documented here. You get the picture... I will be responsible - and will expect significant compensation - if you win the Powerball lottery after reading anything that I write here or any place else for that matter.
A number of the items that I am looking at adding to PJ have fairly high amperage requirements so I started searching for some form of 12V power supply- PS - producing 30 - 40 amps . They are commercially available for around $ 70 off eBay. As it happens, I was getting ready to recycle an old Dell server computer with 3 hot swappable power supplies. I went to Google to see if there was something I might be able to with them. It is becoming quite popular to re-use 12V server power supplies for various things, most notably as relatively high amperage recharging sources for radio control battery packs. Obsolete used commercial servers can be found in the usual places such as Craigslist and Kijiji - a Canadian local classified web site.
Using a server power supply is different than using a modified normal PC power supply - it is usually much easier - if you can find the pin outs for the particular model of server power supply you would like to use. The big benefit of using a server power supply is that you generally only have to solder a few wires to the PS in order to harness its output goodness and a standard PC power supply usually requires much more work to convert it into a bench top supply.
Though the power supplies that I have don't produce 30+ amps it does provide - at least according to the label - somewhere around 16amps @ 12 volts. The price was certainly right so I looked online and was able to find the pins that I needed to use the 12 volts capabilities of the supply. It only required 4 pins - 2 to tell the PS to turn on and then 1 for +12V and the other for ground. I only know very little about the supply that I am using so please don't ask for more info or whether XYZ super dooper server supply will work as I don't know - Google is very useful for this - 'nuff said.
I am not very skilled in the soldering - as you will see shortly
- but I manged to bodge together a toggle switch I had lying around and then soldered leads with alligator clips to the 12 Volt and ground pins. Though it may be a feature of all power supplies, mine will shut itself off if I happen to request more from it than it is designed for - a great feature in my opinion . Thus far i have made it turn off with my testing antics but it has always tuned back on and I have not let the smoke out of any electrical components that I am torturing thus far. Bonus !!!
Here a couple pics of my "Missing Control" bench test arrangement
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So far I have had mostly successful testing experience with EATC - Electronic Automatic Temperature Control system that is used on high end Ex's, Overhead Console, and my current testing on a set of '00 Limited power/heated/lumbar/memory seats.
Things tested/testing:
EATC
EATC ripped completely from a '99 or '00 EB that I lucked into at the local Pick-n-Pull. I did a fair amount of research on this mod - most info is available on an excellent cardomain site for installing it in a Ranger - and found some very helpful members here that have done the mod successfully. This is pretty much a non-reversible mod as it requires cutting off existing connectors and possibly running some additional wires into the cab from the engine bay. Finding the parts or donor vehicle was time consuming for me. There is an eBay seller that periodically has complete setups for sale - including instructions but I decided to gather my own parts - I find it very enjoyable to take things apart that I don't have to put back together - and I was able to gather the required parts off one vehicle for roughly 50-60% of the cost of buying a complete setup. I found it very useful to get an idea of the work required for the install by doing a de-install from a donor vehicle - once I was able to find one.
I haven't got everything figured out for the actual install yet but i did manage to get everything I needed from the one vehicle. The pieces I pulled included 3 sensors, blend door actuator, blower motor resistor, and a good condition EATC controller with the green display that I wanted to match the other lighting in PJ, and various harness bits. The cardomain article recommends bench testing everything and provides great details on the setup required. The EATC also has a built-in diagnostic test which I went through and shot a bad video of.
Youtube link:
http://youtu.be/5f8U94nSD-M
Overhead Console
Though a popular and fairly simple mod i decided that a bench test was a good idea to verify if the various bits and display worked as expected. I think it was a three wire hookup based on an older thread that I found here. Will maybe take a quick video of that as well - it turns on and displays the output from the attached external temperature sensor at least. So far so good.
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'00 Limited Loaded seats - Leather/power/lumbar/heated
The seat testing is in progress as I try to figure out various things. Some of the actual vehicle wiring that will be used is fused with 30 amp fuses so I will need to be a little careful though the auto turnoff of the PS that I am using should help somewhat. NICE59FORDF100 has recently posted a plethora of very useful information on adding memory seats to Explorers in another thread which I refer to often.
The passenger seat appears to work completely though I am unsure if all the heating elements are working correctly. The passenger side is much simpler than the driver side as there is no memory capability for the seat. I was thinking about adding the memory capability to the passenger side but my ongoing experience with the
driver side has caused me to re-evaluate that addition.
The drivers side uses a fair size 12 wire connector with multiple power feeds. The seats that I am using didn't come with the body side connector or wiring so i had to find something to use. This proved difficult but i did find the matching connector off a different Ford truck - not sure what it was - and so I grabbed a whack of harness that was attached to the connector as well. Though the connector matches I have had various challenges with the actual wiring - gauge size etc - and my JY harness is not color matched with the seat connector wiring. I did learn how to do simple re-pinning of the connector to move more appropriate gauge wires into higher amperage feed positions.
So far I have hooked things up and have the seat moving in every way that is supposed to, the inflatable lumbar system works as it should as well but the memory switch isn't working and I can't seem to get anything working for the heating elements. I did test the heat on/off switch on the passenger side and the indicator light comes on so I am thinking that at least the switch is oK. There is some magic - at least magic to me - going on with how the system controls when certain things are allowed to happen. What I mean is that various vehicle inputs are required before the memory system is allowed to be used. I think that the memory position can only be saved or used/accessed when a vehicle is in park or neutral and there seems to be some voodoo input required that I haven't figured out yet that causes that to happen.
Though not completely sure, I think the fact that I am able to move the seat track every which way indicates that the seat memory module is at least functioning and I did manage to get the memory switch indicator lit though I have only managed to have it on all the time ... More work is required on these bad boys and it is possible that I may not get a functioning memory system when I actually install the seats. There is a well documented diagnostic procedure for the memory system but the memory module that I have doesn't have the little white button needed to start the testing. Not sure what that is about though I am wondering if I actually have the correct memory module in my seat.
Here is a short video of testing in action...
http://youtu.be/CuMNDPH0FnA
Possible future bench tests:
I am gathering parts to put a nice EB steering wheel with the cruise and audio and EATC controls into PJ and am looking to bench test the button control lights.
Though still undecided, I might add an autodim/auto lighting mirror as well so will see about doing at least some bench testing of that stuff. PJ is indifferent about the mirror mod currently.
That about covers it for now. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.
Remember, I will take zero responsibility for anything that happens after you read anything that I have written.
This thread, though I am still thinking how I want to do it, will probably point to other threads and will attempt to document my very amateur attempts at bench testing various electrical mods that I might do. I know just enough about electrical/electronics to be much more dangerous than someone without any knowledge at all ...
Anything I put here and you choose to follow is your decision and I will not be responsible if your cat grows 2 heads or your house burns down because of something that you chose to follow that was documented here. You get the picture... I will be responsible - and will expect significant compensation - if you win the Powerball lottery after reading anything that I write here or any place else for that matter.
A number of the items that I am looking at adding to PJ have fairly high amperage requirements so I started searching for some form of 12V power supply- PS - producing 30 - 40 amps . They are commercially available for around $ 70 off eBay. As it happens, I was getting ready to recycle an old Dell server computer with 3 hot swappable power supplies. I went to Google to see if there was something I might be able to with them. It is becoming quite popular to re-use 12V server power supplies for various things, most notably as relatively high amperage recharging sources for radio control battery packs. Obsolete used commercial servers can be found in the usual places such as Craigslist and Kijiji - a Canadian local classified web site.
Using a server power supply is different than using a modified normal PC power supply - it is usually much easier - if you can find the pin outs for the particular model of server power supply you would like to use. The big benefit of using a server power supply is that you generally only have to solder a few wires to the PS in order to harness its output goodness and a standard PC power supply usually requires much more work to convert it into a bench top supply.
Though the power supplies that I have don't produce 30+ amps it does provide - at least according to the label - somewhere around 16amps @ 12 volts. The price was certainly right so I looked online and was able to find the pins that I needed to use the 12 volts capabilities of the supply. It only required 4 pins - 2 to tell the PS to turn on and then 1 for +12V and the other for ground. I only know very little about the supply that I am using so please don't ask for more info or whether XYZ super dooper server supply will work as I don't know - Google is very useful for this - 'nuff said.
I am not very skilled in the soldering - as you will see shortly
- but I manged to bodge together a toggle switch I had lying around and then soldered leads with alligator clips to the 12 Volt and ground pins. Though it may be a feature of all power supplies, mine will shut itself off if I happen to request more from it than it is designed for - a great feature in my opinion . Thus far i have made it turn off with my testing antics but it has always tuned back on and I have not let the smoke out of any electrical components that I am torturing thus far. Bonus !!!Here a couple pics of my "Missing Control" bench test arrangement
------
------
So far I have had mostly successful testing experience with EATC - Electronic Automatic Temperature Control system that is used on high end Ex's, Overhead Console, and my current testing on a set of '00 Limited power/heated/lumbar/memory seats.
Things tested/testing:
EATC
EATC ripped completely from a '99 or '00 EB that I lucked into at the local Pick-n-Pull. I did a fair amount of research on this mod - most info is available on an excellent cardomain site for installing it in a Ranger - and found some very helpful members here that have done the mod successfully. This is pretty much a non-reversible mod as it requires cutting off existing connectors and possibly running some additional wires into the cab from the engine bay. Finding the parts or donor vehicle was time consuming for me. There is an eBay seller that periodically has complete setups for sale - including instructions but I decided to gather my own parts - I find it very enjoyable to take things apart that I don't have to put back together - and I was able to gather the required parts off one vehicle for roughly 50-60% of the cost of buying a complete setup. I found it very useful to get an idea of the work required for the install by doing a de-install from a donor vehicle - once I was able to find one.
I haven't got everything figured out for the actual install yet but i did manage to get everything I needed from the one vehicle. The pieces I pulled included 3 sensors, blend door actuator, blower motor resistor, and a good condition EATC controller with the green display that I wanted to match the other lighting in PJ, and various harness bits. The cardomain article recommends bench testing everything and provides great details on the setup required. The EATC also has a built-in diagnostic test which I went through and shot a bad video of.
Youtube link:
http://youtu.be/5f8U94nSD-M
Overhead Console
Though a popular and fairly simple mod i decided that a bench test was a good idea to verify if the various bits and display worked as expected. I think it was a three wire hookup based on an older thread that I found here. Will maybe take a quick video of that as well - it turns on and displays the output from the attached external temperature sensor at least. So far so good.
-----
-----
'00 Limited Loaded seats - Leather/power/lumbar/heated
The seat testing is in progress as I try to figure out various things. Some of the actual vehicle wiring that will be used is fused with 30 amp fuses so I will need to be a little careful though the auto turnoff of the PS that I am using should help somewhat. NICE59FORDF100 has recently posted a plethora of very useful information on adding memory seats to Explorers in another thread which I refer to often.
The passenger seat appears to work completely though I am unsure if all the heating elements are working correctly. The passenger side is much simpler than the driver side as there is no memory capability for the seat. I was thinking about adding the memory capability to the passenger side but my ongoing experience with the
driver side has caused me to re-evaluate that addition.
The drivers side uses a fair size 12 wire connector with multiple power feeds. The seats that I am using didn't come with the body side connector or wiring so i had to find something to use. This proved difficult but i did find the matching connector off a different Ford truck - not sure what it was - and so I grabbed a whack of harness that was attached to the connector as well. Though the connector matches I have had various challenges with the actual wiring - gauge size etc - and my JY harness is not color matched with the seat connector wiring. I did learn how to do simple re-pinning of the connector to move more appropriate gauge wires into higher amperage feed positions.
So far I have hooked things up and have the seat moving in every way that is supposed to, the inflatable lumbar system works as it should as well but the memory switch isn't working and I can't seem to get anything working for the heating elements. I did test the heat on/off switch on the passenger side and the indicator light comes on so I am thinking that at least the switch is oK. There is some magic - at least magic to me - going on with how the system controls when certain things are allowed to happen. What I mean is that various vehicle inputs are required before the memory system is allowed to be used. I think that the memory position can only be saved or used/accessed when a vehicle is in park or neutral and there seems to be some voodoo input required that I haven't figured out yet that causes that to happen.
Though not completely sure, I think the fact that I am able to move the seat track every which way indicates that the seat memory module is at least functioning and I did manage to get the memory switch indicator lit though I have only managed to have it on all the time ... More work is required on these bad boys and it is possible that I may not get a functioning memory system when I actually install the seats. There is a well documented diagnostic procedure for the memory system but the memory module that I have doesn't have the little white button needed to start the testing. Not sure what that is about though I am wondering if I actually have the correct memory module in my seat.
Here is a short video of testing in action...
http://youtu.be/CuMNDPH0FnA
Possible future bench tests:
I am gathering parts to put a nice EB steering wheel with the cruise and audio and EATC controls into PJ and am looking to bench test the button control lights.
Though still undecided, I might add an autodim/auto lighting mirror as well so will see about doing at least some bench testing of that stuff. PJ is indifferent about the mirror mod currently.
That about covers it for now. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.
Remember, I will take zero responsibility for anything that happens after you read anything that I have written.
