LINE LOCK WIRING Section 1 Wiring up the line lock is pretty straight forward: Power on, turns on the solenoid; Power off, turns off the solenoid. We only need power from the battery and a simple switch. Throughout the installation, I'm using 14 AWG wire. It's heavy duty enough to withstand lots of heat/harsh conditions and can handle a good amount of voltage, but it's still small enough to work with easily. NOTE: most wire in the truck is thinner 18 AWG or 22 AWG. I took my roll of wire and set it in the drivers seat. I then pulled out enough length to reach the front headlight. You can always trim wire, but it's a PITA to make it longer. For the solenoid power wire, I went from the steering wheel to the front side of the battery. We can ground to almost any bolt on the truck, so only red power lines were run. Ground wires will be short and sweet. To get the wire from the cab to the engine bay, I utilized the rubber grommet that the hood latch cable uses. This little thing is not easy to get to. LOL Under the dash you'll see a large electrical connection block that's attached to a metal tab on it's right side: Press in on the tab and lightly pull the large connection off it's mount: We're just moving it out of the way so we can access the grommet: You'll need to remove the grommet from the firewall. You can push from the firewall side, or pull from the cab side. Your call. It's a tough bugger to get out. DO NOT use pliers. You will shred it if you do. Once out, you can slide it up the hood latch cable a little to get it past that bigass connection block. Slide your power wires through the grommet, and then feed them through the firewall (carefully- don't accidentally remove their jacket on the sharp firewall edge!) into the engine bay. Once these guys are in the engine bay, you can replace the grommet in the firewall. This will be VERY hard to do, considering the angle of your body, all the stuff in the way, and the fact that you just made it less flexible by adding a couple of wires. It will, however, seat in there. You can wipe (NO SPRAYING!!!) some WD-40 on the firewall side to help it back into place: Don't forget to re-clip the mega-connector back onto it's mount bracket! The 12V power line was pulled to the front side of the fuse box. For now, it will be hard-wired to the main power terminal for the fuse box. Later it will get it's own fuse inside. The solenoid power line is pulled to the back edge of the battery. Inside the engine bay, down by the grommet the lines are coming through, we take our two power lines and wrap them as a lovely pair around the hood latch cable: The hood latch cable is a GREAT 'navigator' for lines such as this, and it's quite sturdy being a solid cable and all. The lines are wrapped until the solenoid power winds off to go to it's source and gets connected. The 12V line continues on until it winds off and goes to the front of the fuse box. With a nice tight winding, zip ties aren't really necessary. They do help you sleep at night though. TIP: HEAT SHRINK IS THE FIRST THING YOU PUT ON A WIRE!!!! Even if the other end of the wire is open, PUT THE HEAT SHRINK ON FIRST. Don't heat it or shrink it yet; just slip it on the wire. Oh, and try to match the color. LOL The power wire for the solenoid gets a matching ground wire made for it. Again, I cut it a little long to be trimmed later. Each wire is connected via butt-connector, then heat shrink applied. A larger diameter piece of black heat shrink is placed over BOTH wires. I left a little open section close to the solenoid in case of diagnosis or repair. The black heat shrink runs the length of both wires until they split off: We can now run our first ground wire! Yeah! This one will be nice and short- from the solenoid, to a big ol' ground on the drivers side fender. Find a nice stealthy spot to run the wire (in this case, between the battery tray and the ABS module) and then trim it. The eyelet is first crimp-connected, then the heat shrink is put over it: It was then attached to the ground wire already on the fender: Route the main power line so that it won't fall down or get caught in anything. I kept with my original plan and continued wrapping it over the hood latch cable (which goes behind the battery tray). Remove the fuse from the fuse holder we're going to attach to our 12V power line. The weather-tight fuse holder attaches via a butt-connector, and then is shrink-wrapped to the 12V power line: MAKE SURE YOU TAKE OUT THE FUSE!!!!! We'll put it in later. It is then connected to the Pos. terminal at the front of the fuse box using an eyelet connector. The Hurst unit comes a 4A fuse, but mine will end up with a 5A fuse (more on that later). With our underhood connections all set, it's time to crawl under the dash and get those wires run correctly. No matter how tall or short you are, working under the dash sucks. LOL The only thing that helps is a good shop light. In the next pic, you can see the pair of red power lines twisted and zip-tied together. I came down the hood latch cable, then up to the large white wire clip, then back down to the metal frame of the dash, then back up towards the switch. Why so long? Because it's better to be a little long than a little short. LOL First, we'll build a ground wire for the switch. There's a great connection on the metal frame of the dash that other wires use as a ground....so, we'll use that one too!. A black wire had an eyelet crimped to it, then heat shrink. The ground screw came out, eyelet slid on it, then re-attached nice and tight: We can now pull our 3 wires through the switch hole in the bezel: Section 2 Now comes the fun part: Brake Light Wiring. No one had ever installed a line lock on our trucks where the brake lights came on when engaged, so I get to be the first. The good news is that even if you already have a line lock system installed, you can add this safety feature very easily. I didn't do a ton of research on the law regarding this, but the instructions say "to remain street-legal, the brake lights must come on when the line lock is activated." They show a simple hydraulic switch (NAPA, about $10) that connects to one of the outlet ports on the solenoid, then two wires run to the brake light plunger switch by the pedal. Simple, right? It would be, if we were working on a '69 Camaro. The difference is our vehicles are *slightly* more complex now. We have ABS and Cruise Control and Airbags and a bunch of other stuff....all requiring input from the Brake Pedal Plunger Switch. So, even if you do the hydraulic switch you'll still need to wire it up to the Plunger switch in the truck. I didn't waste my money. The Plunger switch is located, of course, right above the brake pedal. DON'T PULL IT OUT OR MOVE IT! The plunger has a one-time-only setting on it- if you remove it from it's mount, you'll have to go buy a new plunger switch. There's also a little black lever on the back. DON'T MESS WITH THE LEVER! What we need to look at is the connector that goes into that switch. On the top side of the switch, there is a red safety lever (like most connections in the truck). Pull that red lever toward the bed. There is then a tab on the black connector to release it from the main switch housing. In the pic you can see the red tab on top, and the connector on the right side. The brake switch connector on our trucks has SIX (6) leads coming off of it. If you look closely at the face of the connector you can see the numbers "6" (closest to the engine) and "1" (furthest from the engine). What we're looking for is wire #2. It's white with a brown stripe. This is the wire for our brake lights (all 3 of them). We need to tap into that wire. But hold on...don't do anything yet. If we just did a straight tap, every time we hit the brakes (turning on the brake lights), the line lock would come on. That would be bad. What we need is a 'safety valve' or a 'one way wire' so that the line lock only gets the information from the TOGGLE switch and not the PLUNGER switch. Props to Stingray from the VTCOA for this one: We need a diode. This is how you do a 'one way wire'. The diode allows the flow of electricity only in one direction. It's called a Zener Diode. "But what size diode do I use?" We can thank Stingray for that one too: a 15V, 1W Zener Diode. Diodes are available at most Radio Shack stores and any electronic supply houses worth their weight in solder. The diode is very tiny. And it comes with only a thin wire on either end. This simply won't do for a truck! I added small pieces of the same wire from the rest of the install to the ends of the diode. These were soldered in place, then heat shrink applied. I then added a section of clear heat shrink around the entire joint in order to protect the diode. You'll notice the spiffy arrow drawn on the piece of masking tape. That shows me the direction that electricity is allowed to flow. I tested this with a DMM (digital multi-meter) and a 9V battery. We need to make sure it goes in the wiring the correct way. Next up is a simple wire tap. This is the crimp-on kind, for 22-18 AWG wire. My new wire (16 AWG) is a bit thicker than that, but it will fit fine. A wire tap is easy: Slide the wire you want to keep whole (in our case, the #2 white/tan stripe brake light wire) into the wire tap "mouth". Our 'tap' wire goes in the other available hole. When the tap wire is seated and the whole thing is where you want it on the original wire, simply close the 'lid' on the wire tap. This pushes that metal plate past the sheilding and into the wires, forming a connection. The 'lid' then clips closed and locks everything in place. So, I run a length of new power line (16 AWG) from the brake pedal to the switch hole in the dash. At the brake side of the new line, the diode wire is connected- in the correct direction, of course. Here you can see me separating the #2 wire (white with brown stripe) from the others at the Plunger Connector. I slid the wire tap onto the #2 wire, and then added my diode wire to the tap. You can then crimp the wire tap 'lid' closed and make sure it latches. The Plunger Connector is then put back onto the Plunger Switch and latched *and* locked into place. You can then figure out where to run your diode line back up to your switch hole in the dash. Zip-tie as desired. Here we have all 4 wires out of the switch hole in the dash, and all trimmed to the same length: Having them all the same length helps for a clean install. Next, we'll add connectors to each of the wires. Remember: HEAT SHRINK FIRST! Put the heat shrink on first, then attach the connector. All the connectors on, and the heat shrink is shrunk. Now is a great time to test out the wiring and the switch. MAKE SURE YOUR SWITCH IS IN THE "OFF" POSITION!!!!! Attach the wires to their respective connections on the switch. Then re-attach the NEG terminal on the battery. You'll be able to hear the solenoid 'click' on and off when it gets power. Don't do it too many times; just enough to confirm that you have it wired correctly. In the diagram that is upcoming, your switch wiring may vary. My switches came from the UK and were all built "backwards": the LED light was illuminated when the switch was in the OFF position. I had to re-wire the internals of the switch (un-fun). If you do use a LED-tipped switch, you can check the wiring using a 9V battery, your DMM, and a couple of pieces of scrap wire. You should also check to see that your brake lights illuminate when the line lock switch is on and your foot is off the pedal. Conversely, make sure the lights shut off when you turn the line lock switch off. Since I'm here, I also checked that the switch with all the connections would still fit in it's desired location. Yep. It still fits. We're pretty much done under the dash. Don't put the panels back on yet; we may still need to get under there to check stuff. DOUBLE-CHECK THAT ALL CONNECTIONS UNDER THE DASH ARE RE-ATTACHED, CLIPPED AND/OR SAFETY LATCHED! Section 3 In this segment, we're going to talk about final wiring to the fuse box. Originally, I had the LL wired to the "Always Hot" terminal at the front of the fuse box. This isn't a bad idea, but who wants to lock up their brakes when the truck isn't running? REMOVE THE NEGATIVE TERMINAL ON THE BATTERY BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER!!! Here we have the power lines coming from the switch (see Wiring- Part 2), back to the grommet in the firewall: ...and here they are on the engine-side of the firewall: The pair is wrapped (as a pair) around the hood latch cable, heading up towards the front of the truck. At the LL, they break off- LL POWER gets connected to the red wire from the LL; ...and the MAIN POWER continues being wrapped up the hood latch cable. When you reach the fuse box, you'll need to have the cable make a 90 deg. turn and head towards the engine: LEAVE PLENTY OF EXCESS WIRE!!! We'll trim it all later. Now, the fuse box cover is sealed. How do we get the wire in there? That's easy! It's called: Dremel. LOL I used a small cutting wheel on my Dremel and trimmed a VERY SMALL notch in the back side of the fuse box lid (closest to the fender). I matched the 'lines' of the flange on the cover as I cut. If you don't have a Dremel, you can use a hand file. I used some 1/2" foam weather stripping (about $2 for a 10' roll at the hardware store) to keep the new notch weather/dirt proof: You can almost see the slit I cut in the center of the weather stripping using an X-acto blade. The slit allows the wire(s) to pass through and still provide a nice tight seal. Before trimming, I did a test fit: The weather stripping has an adhesive back. That gets 'stuck' to the trimmed edge of the cover. Now, how do we get power from one of the fuses? Sure, there's the ol' 'jumper' that gets inserted into one of the fuse notches and gives you a connector. Those are ancient, and can often damage the contacts inside the fuse box (I speak from experience). Plus, you would have to add a 2nd fuse to your jumped line. PITA. I searched around for a better way, and found one: www.accessafuse.com This guy came up with a very cool way to hard-wire stuff to your fuse box, AND the extra connector has it's own fuse! How cool is that? Now, our trucks take the MINI-ATC fuse, so we don't get the cool switchblade, but....it's still WAY better than anything else I've found. The extension tab can be bent slightly too, which helps. I ordered a couple of different sizes because I'm sure I'll be using them on different projects throughout the years (or replacing blown fuses....heh heh). All the AccessAFuse colors match the factory colors. So: Red = 10A Blue = 15A Yellow = 20A The secondary fuse (for the accessory) is smaller than the original. Here's the breakdown: (COLOR = MAIN FUSE = ACCY. FUSE) Red = 10A = 3A Blue = 15A = 5A Yellow = 20A = 7.5A The Hurst instructions say to run a 4A fuse, but I went with a little bit larger size. With all the electronic stuff going on in these trucks, I think a little extra is a good idea. The Hurst instructions are for a very basic vehicle, w/o a ton of other electronics. 7.5A isn't a huge stretch from 4A when it comes to vehicle wiring. I'm sure if you ran the 5A, it'd be fine too. Okay...back under the hood.... I've gone through the list on the inside cover of the fuse box and found that #30 is listed as a "SPARE". WooHoo! Spares are good! I insert the new fuse into the #30 slot and run my power line up to it: The wire is then trimmed and stripped to the proper length: AccessAFuse provides nice female connectors with the fuses, so I'm gonna use theirs. You can plug into any slot that's labeled "SPARE". I liked #30 because it was easy to remember. Using the connector, I CAREFULLY bent the extended tab on the fuse approx. 45 degrees. This will give the connector clearance when the lid is put back on, but not too much to risk a wiring short if anything happens to the wire. It's wise to do this with the fuse OUT of the fuse box. BE CAREFUL- the fuses can be 'split' if you don't support them when bending the extension. I added a short piece of red heat shrink to my power line before crimping on the connector. Why? After the connector is crimped on, I slide the heat shrink up as far as it will go towards the connector, then shrink it. This helps with waterproofing and strain relief. It's not necessary, but is totally pro. End result: Power line, connector, heat shrink, and cool new fuse in the #30 slot. Here's the final wiring diagram: Yours should be very similar, depending on what switch you use. CONTINUED IN PART 3 ©2007 Kevan J. Geier All Rights Reserved
