Yes, thank you very much!!! That picture of the battery with the relays is scaring me away fast though! Why so many relays?
Fantastic looking job!
Did you notice any MPG gains?
Hello Matt,
Thanks, man.
The objectives were to minimize unnecessary lengths of hot and ground wiring (concerns with voltage drop and proper grounding were highest on the list), and centrally located for easy access and troubleshooting . So, I figured, why not on top of the battery? There was enough room but I had to come up with a design that was both compact but easy to troubleshoot. I stuck with red/orange for positive, black/green for ground, for example.
If you look at the top-right of
16_RelaysFuses.pdf, you will notice the black boxy object with a black nylon tie around it -- that's a six-wire trailer connector that I used to centralize the
control wiring for the accessories (air horn, cooling fans, auxiliary driving lights, lift pump, etc.).
The wires coming off the top (looking at photo) of the connector go to switched or unswitched power sources (tap off headlight circuit to energize relay for driving lights, tap off ignition-on circuit to energize lift pump, tap off ignition-on circuit to energize cooling fans when temp controller closes the circuit, etc.).
The wires coming off the bottom (white, green, brown, and yellow visible) of the connector go to the each accessory's respective relay terminal 86 (follow the black relays from right to left: green, brown, yellow, white wires "drop off" to their respective relays).
The relays' terminal 85 is grounded (
20_RelayWiring.pdf attached) which is a short wire to the aluminum grounding bar (I would have used copper bar if I had one) onto which the relays are mounted and, in turn, is bolted onto the battery's negative terminal post.
The relays' terminal 30 is connected to the battery's positive terminal via the in-line fuses (orange wire in
16_RelayFuses.pdf).
The relays' terminal 87 and 87a are connected to the load/accessories (red, white wires).
I've also attached a .pdf of the heavy duty 12volt relay (
17_HeavyDutyRelay.pdf mounted on the bracket for the ABS module that has since replaced the one mounted on the aluminum grounding bar used for one of the cooling fans (the first one that kicks in). The relay is also visible at the bottom center of
20_RelayWiring.pdf.
18_RelocatedTempController.pdf and
19_RelocatedTempController.pdf are self explanatory, looking down from the passenger side.
93_Avalanche_DualCoolingFans.pdf show how our 2006 model did away with the engine mounted cooling fan/clutch.
I never took mileage measurements because I was too engrossed with troubleshooting and fine tuning the system. I noticed, though, the significant drop in engine
fan noise to the point that I could hear more of the
engine noises -- that took a while to get used to. Then, I said to myself, "Self, it's a diesel after all..." The engine also seemed to spool up faster.
Regards,
Franko
