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Side shot of RCR SL-C wired with the Infinitybox System

Race Car Replicas SL-C Steering Column Wiring

May 11, 2021/0 Comments/in Wiring /by admin

This blog post is going to give you the details for wiring the steering column connector on your Race Car Replicas Superlite Coupe. Fran and his team at RCR have been engineering and manufacturing one of the highest performance and most complete kits to build super cars. Their chassis are engineered to perfection, the body styling is top notch and they give you everything that you need to build you own masterpiece.

They include a General Motors steering column with each kit. This post and wiring diagram are specific to the Oldsmobile column. If you have the older Cadillac steering column with power tilt & telescoping, give our team a call for specifics on the wiring

There is a connector on the Oldsmobile column that interfaces with the multi-function turn signal stalk. This has the signals for the parking lights, head lights, high-beams and turn signals. The connections between the steering column connector and the inputs on your MASTERCELL are simple. Here are the details.

First, you need to have a good way to make the connection between our MASTERCELL inputs and the wires going to the steering column. You could cut off the connector on the column and splice these wires together. We recommend a much easier way. You can purchase the mating connector and terminals to make this connection. You can purchase these components from Mouser. These parts are made by Aptiv, formerly Delphi. The part number for the connector is 12092248 and the terminals is 12092345. You will need 9 terminals.

You will need to splice the MASTERCELL input wires for your grounds, turn signals, parking lights, head lights and high beams to these terminals and insert them into the corresponding cavities on the mating connector. The cavity letters are molded into the plastic on the side of the connector. For your grounds, you can use the black ground wires in the MASTERCELL input harness. This list shows you which wire colors correspond to the different mating connector cavities.

Grounds- Black Wire- Cavities D, Q, X & Z

Right Turn Signal- Yellow/Red Wire- Cavity F

Left Turn Signal- Yellow/Black Wire- Cavity G

High-Beam- Blue/Red Wire- Cavity K

Head Light- White/Green Wire- Cavity L

Parking Lights- Blue/Black- Cavity R

This picture shows the wires from the MASTERCELL and their different cavity locations.

Picture of wiring diagram showing how to connect Infinitybox MASTERCELL inputs to steering column connector for Race Car Replicas SL-C

It is also important that you install a diode between the inputs for the head lights and high-beams. This should be a 1N4001 diode which can be purchased from Amazon or any other on-line electronics store. The orientation of this diode is very important. The cathode or the stripe on the diode must be connected to the high-beam input going to the MASTERCELL. This is the blue/red wire going into cavity K. You can crimp the leads of this diode to the terminals with the MASTERCELL wires to make this easier.

That is all you need to know to connect your MASTERCELL input wires to your steering column connector for your Race Car Replicas SL-C. You can download a PDF version of this wiring diagram by clicking this link. If you have any questions, you can call our team directly at (847) 232-1991 or click here to contact us directly.

Lucas Switch

March 24, 2017/0 Comments/in Wiring /by admin

There are very few companies in the car world that get the ribbing of Lucas Industries. They are the butt of many an old car guy’s jokes about reliably, safety and burning. The company was founded in the 1860’s in the UK and produced electrical components for over 100 years for all of the popular British brands. These include MG, Austin, Cooper, Jaguar and even the ubiquitous Cobras built by Shelby. It is not uncommon to hear of them referred to as “Lucifer” because of their alleged history of causing vehicle fires. One of the benefits of our Infinitybox system is that you can use practically any switch to control things in your car. This includes a period correct Lucas switch in your restoration of a MG or a Cobra replica build. Read below how to connect the Lucas 31788 headlight switch into the inputs on your Infinitybox MASTERCELL.

Our Infinitybox system has been used to wire some of the most advanced resto-mods and Pro-Touring builds. At the same time, our customers use our system in a lot of classic restorations and component car builds. The most popular component car that we see from our customers is the MK4 Roadster from Factory Five. This is a great replica of the Cobra made famous by Carroll Shelby. A lot of guys want to build this car and customize it to make it unique to them. Other guys want to build it period correct to look like the original Cobras but with all modern systems under the skin.

We got a question this week from one of our customers building a Factory Five Cobra. He wants to use the original headlight switch from Lucas in the car and wanted to know how to wire it to the MASTERCELL inputs. He’s using the Lucas 31788 switch. That’s an easy thing to do.

One of the advantages of our system is that it takes very little current to turn on a MASTERCELL input. The actual amount is less than 1 milli-amp. (0.001 Amperes). This means that you don’t have to use high-current switches to turn your lights, fans, ignition or starter solenoid on or off. The high-current part of the circuit is managed in the POWERCELL. A lot of the alleged issues that Lucas had over the years came from too much current being pushed through their switches. Our MASTERCELL completely eliminates that.

This diagram shows you the specifics on how to wire the MASTERCELL inputs for parking lights and head lights to the Lucas switch.

Picture of Infinitybox wiring diagram showing how to control headlights and parking lights from a Lucas Switch

Terminal 4 on the switch needs to get connected to ground. If you understand how the switch works, this may seem counter-intuitive, just trust us. You can either connect this terminal directly to the chassis or use one of the black ground wires that is included in the MASTERCELL inputs harness. Using one of the dedicated ground wires is our preferred way of wiring these kinds of switches.

From there, connect the MASTERCELL input for the parking lights to terminal 7 and the input for the head lights to terminal 8. The switch is set up internally so that the parking lights will stay connected when the switch is in the headlight position.

Check the specific configuration sheet that came with your kit for the exact wire colors and connector locations for these inputs. Different configurations may have different wire colors and connector locations.

You can read these blog posts to get more details about wiring the head lights and parking lights to the POWERCELL outputs.

That’s all you need to do to wire your headlights and parking lights to this Lucas switch. When you turn on the parking lights or the headlights, the MASTERCELL will see the switch turn on and send the appropriate commands to the front & rear POWERCELLs to manage the lights.

You can download a PDF copy of this wiring diagram by clicking this link. If you have any other specific technical questions, you can contact one of our technical support engineers by clicking this link.

Headlight Switch

June 28, 2016/0 Comments/in Wiring /by admin

It’s time to wire in the headlight switch in our customer’s 1967 Mustang. They are installing our 20-Circuit Kit in the car. In previous posts, we blogged about wiring the headlights and parking lights to the outputs on the POWERCELLs in the car. You can read about that process at this link.

Remember that there is no direct connection between your switches and the things that you are switching. In this case, there is no direct connection between the headlight switch and the headlight bulbs in the front of the car. The headlight switch connects to the MASTERCELL. The headlight bulbs connect to the POWERCELL. The MASTERCELL and POWERCELLs are connected with our CAN data cable. When you turn on the headlight switch, the MASTERCELL sees the switch turn on. It sends a command to the POWERCELL in the front of the car and commands it to turn the output on that powers the headlight bulbs. The same thing happens when you turn on your parking lights. The MASTERCELL sees the parking light switch turn on. It sends a command to the POWERCELLs in the front and rear of the car. Each of these POWERCELLs turn on parking light outputs locally in the car.

Our customer started with the original headlight switch that came with the car. After some checking and testing of the switch, they figured out that the switch was bad. Something inside the switch failed.

Picture showing how to use a multimeter to check continuity between terminals on a headlight switch

They wanted to keep the traditional pull-type headlight switch in the car so they picked up a replacement switch made by Standard Motor Products. This what the switch looks like.

Picture of a headlight switch manufactured by Standard Motor Products

This is a multi-function switch. It controls the parking and headlights in the car. You get the parking lights when you pull the switch to the first detent. You get both the parking lights and headlights when you pull the switch to the second position.

This is a very common switch, used in lots of different cars. We created a specific wiring diagram showing how to wire your MASTERCELL inputs to the terminals on the switch. This picture shows you the diagram.

Picture of a wiring diagram for a typical headlight switch

You can download a PDF of this diagram by clicking this link.

The first thing that we did was to check the configuration sheet for this system. You can get more details on the configuration sheet for your system by clicking this link. The MASTERCELL inputs for the headlights and parking lights are going to connect to the switch. The headlight input is the white wire with the green tracer. The parking light input is the blue wire with the black tracer. Both of these inputs are on the MASTERCELL input harness. You also need three ground connections to this switch. Two of the terminals need to be grounded and the switch housing needs to be connected to ground. You can use the black wires that came in the MASTERCELL input harness as grounds for this switch. One of the MASTERCELL ground wires can handle the ground for the entire switch. Just jumper that black wire between the different terminals on the switch and the case.

Follow the diagram to see which terminals on the headlight switch connect to the headlight and parking light input wires on the MASTERCELL. This is pretty simple.

Once you have the input wires connected and the grounds connected, you have wired the inputs for the headlights and parking lights. When you pull the switch to the first position, the switch connects the parking light input wire to ground. This sends the signal to the MASTERCELL to control the lights through the front and rear POWERCELLs. When you pull the switch to the second position, the switch connects the headlight input to ground. This triggers the MASTERCELL to control the headlights from the front POWERCELL. When the switch is in the headlight position, the switch also keeps the parking light input connected to ground.

Once you have the headlight and parking light inputs wired, you can also use this switch to control and dim your dash lights. This specific switch has a rheostat built in to dim dash lights. In most cases, you are powering your dash lights off of your parking light output. See this blog post for more details. You will have power to your dash lights when the parking lights or headlights are on from this switch.

This switch has a rheostat built in to dim the dash lights. A rheostat is a variable resistor. Turning the knob, increases or decreases the resistance in series with the dash lights. This lets more or less current flow to the dash lights, which will dim or brighten them. Please note that the dimming effect may not be as significant when using LED dash lights.

You can wire the dash light feed though the rheostat on the headlight switch. See the wiring diagram above for the details of which terminals need to connect to the wires. Please note that there is a metal jumper that must be cut to do this. If you do not remove this metal jumper, you will damage your MASTERCELL inputs and potentially void the warranty.

That’s it. This one post covers wiring your parking light input, your headlight and your dash lights. Please click this link to contact our team with any questions about our Infinitybox system.

Wiring an LED

September 4, 2015/0 Comments/in Wiring /by admin

We got another great question from a customer today. This one came in through our Facebook page.

“I’m going to be running LED headlamps and taillights on my Infinitybox-equipped car. Can you write-up a blog on the changes I’ll need to make in my wiring?”

Here are the changes that you need to make when wiring an LED light with the Infinitybox system: absolutely nothing.

Our POWERCELLs turn things on and off including fans, ECU’s, pumps and lights. Lights come in basically two flavors: incandescent and LED. Incandescent lights were the original creation of Thomas Edison. Up until a few years ago, they were used for all of the lights in cars including headlights, running lights, interior lights, brake lights and turn signals.

The trend in automotive lighting is towards LEDs or light emitting diodes. This link will take you to a Wikipedia page talking about how they work. LED’s have two main advantages of incandescent light bulbs. First, they have no filaments or fragile parts so they last a long time. Second, they are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs. This means that they consume much less current to get the same level of brightness.

To go back to the question, you can connect an LED light in the place of an incandescent bulb and it will work correctly when connected to an Infinitybox POWERCELL. The other question that we usually get related to LED’s is “do I need a load resistor when using LED turn signals?”. The answer again is “no”.

Traditional turn signal flashers work by drawing current through a heating element within the flasher. The flashers are expecting a certain amount of current being drawn by an incandescent bulb. When you change to LEDs with a traditional turn signal flasher, you needed to add a load resistor that draws current through the circuit. This compensates for the reduced current flowing through the LED.

With the Infinitybox system, you don’t need the load resistor to get your turn signals to work correctly. We do the flashing of the turn signals and 4-ways through the processor on the POWERCELL. The flashing does not depend on the amount of current flowing to the bulb. To the POWERCELL, there is no difference between an incandescent bulb or an LED light.

To round out this question, there is one thing that you may need to do when wiring an LED into your Infinitybox system. As we mentioned above, LEDs are much more efficient than their incandescent cousins. It takes very little current to turn them on. LEDs from different manufacturers are more or less efficient, depending on the materials that they may use.

Our POWERCELLs leak a very small amount of current out of the outputs. We use this as part of our diagnostic system. Depending on the efficiency of the LED, this diagnostic current may make the LED’s glow dimly when the light is off. To eliminate this, you can simply connect a 10K (10,000 ohm) resistor between the POWERCELL output wire and ground. An 1/8 Watt resistor or larger will be fine. This picture shows you how to wire this in.

Picture of wiring diagram showing how to wire a bypass resistor with LED lights

This bypass resistor shunts the diagnostic current through the resistor around the LED. You can pick up a 10K resistor on-line.

You can download a PDF of this wiring diagram by clicking this link.

Please give our technical support team a call if you have questions about this post.

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