Heat

Heat

Well it’s been cold and warm here but either way it’s still cold in the garage. The garage is on the North side of the house so I don’t get the benefit of any heat from the sun. It makes it nice during the summer but not so much during the winter. I looked at having a gas heater installed in the garage but it was a bit more than I wanted to pay. Since it was a natural gas heater it was going to require a power line, a gas line and then a vent. For now I’ve gone with a propane heater.

PropaneHeat-0001

It works, takes about 2.5 hours to get the garage to a nice temp, so nice in fact that I was working in my t-shirt on Saturday. Problem is it has a little bit of an odor and I have to leave the garage door cracked a bit so I’m not overwhelmed by carbon monoxide. The other down side is that I used a 15 gallon tank in 2 days. That’s ok though, I found an electric shop heater and I ordered it. Should be here in a week or so. Nice thing on this one is though I have to have a 240V line run I won’t need a vent or anything. I’ll be able to run it on a thermostat and hold the temp in the garage. With the heat problem sorted for now, I was able to continue to make progress on the wiring. Some more parts came in this week and I now pretty much have everything to finish up, or at least I think I do. The only piece I’m missing right now is a custom piece I ordered. It’s basically a steering column out of VW that will fit over my column and provide an actual turn signal stalk, with auto canceling. I mean if I’m going to have a keyless start I can’t have an old school switch on the dash for the turn signals. I had to send the steering wheel boss to the guy I’m getting it from so he could modify it all to work. That should be in this week. In the mean time I started fitting all the pieces behind the dash. I was struggling at first with how to mount everything and  I was just going to go with some brackets for each part but then came up with the idea to build an inner firewall instead.

DoubleFirewall-0001

You can see it in the pic above behind the main firewall. This gives me a nice flat area to mount everything to and I don’t have to worry about screws sticking through the main firewall not to mention that the main firewall is finished and has been powder coated. Oh yea, side note, I got all my panels back from powder coating. They look good with only one needing to go back because they coated the wrong side. Those will be going in shortly but that’s a week or so away. In the pic below you can see some of the items mounted. The box on the right is the power distribution box that’s part of the engine controls for the Coyote. The 2GO Keyless box is the controller for the keyless ignition system and then there are 3 relays for the parking lights, headlights and wipers. The red block below the keyless box is the power lug for connecting all the power together from the battery, alternator, fuse box, etc.

DoubleFirewall-0003

There’s also been a lot of sorting through the wiring harness. With the combination of adding the controls for the Coyote engine and now the keyless start there’s been quite a few modes I’ve had to work out. I think I have everything worked out at this point. I guess we will see when I get everything connected and it either creates a massive fireball spark or it does absolutely nothing. That’s it for now. See ya.

4 Comments

  1. Bob
    Jan 19, 2014

    I’m watching cause when it’s done I’ll be out on the bike for a ride. Hopefully good weather! I know that this car will not see any bad weather.

    • admin
      Jan 19, 2014

      Well I signed up for the cobra club 11th annual cruise which is in June so I gotta have it done by then. Just a little pressure. 😉

  2. Wilson Glover
    Jan 19, 2014

    Looking good! Can’t wait to go for a ride! Stay warm!

  3. Doug Barron
    Jan 30, 2014

    Fellow classmate, Rich & I have been reading your posts with great interest. Our Coyote engined builds are similar. You are far ahead of us. I had an 8-circuit subpanel put in the garage with 2 dedicated 30 amp circuits for heating. However it has been so frigin’ cold that the partially insulated garage can’t be heated adequately or cheaply. I need some heat (at least 65 – 70) so I can paint several parts. Sigh!

    Well done and keep posting!

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