- Hi guys, Zac from High Performance Academy here, welcome along to
today's member's webinar, thanks heaps for joining us.
Couple of interesting wiring bits and pieces to go through with you today.
We're gonna look at depinning and pinning a couple of common connector styles.
So I've got a couple of OEM connector styles here and a couple of more
aftermarket connector styles as well.
Gonna have a look at what we need to get the pins into and out of them safely
as it can be a pretty common thing that you might actually want to be reusing some
of these connector bodies.
Before we get into that though, we have a little bit of a catch up about what's been
going on here at HPA over the last week.
So we have been thoroughly deserted here in the office.
Andre, Ben and Jono have all shot away to America to the PRI trade show.
So they're gonna be getting a lot of footage and a lot of really really in depth
industry interviews over there that's gonna help us put out a lot of content over
the next couple of months.
So apparently they're having an amazing time, I'm seeing a lot of updates come
through on our staff chat that make you pretty jealous to be honest,
so good on them, really looking forward to seeing some of that content come out.
They are having a meet up while they're over there as well 'cause we know that
HPA have got a pretty global audience but we are tucked away down here
in the beautiful corner of the world that is New Zealand so they are planning
a meet up over in Indianapolis on the 7th or the 9th of December.
The guys will confirm that one in the chat, and if you are interested in going along
to that, the guys are gonna throw up a link where you can RSVP.
Just a bit of a meet up, catch up with the guys, say hey, wee talk about where
HPA is going, what we're up to, I'm sure they'd absolutely love to
see you there.
Other things going on here at HPA, our SRZ project or the SR20 that we're
building and putting into our 350z race car for endurance is well well
underway and it's really coming along really well.
The car is away at a fab shop at the moment which is just through the
Kawerau Gorge over in Cromwell at a fabrication shop called Hillside Fabrication.
These guys have been absolutely fantastic to work with so far, really really keen,
really open so everything is going really well.
In fact if we just pop over to my laptop quickly, we've got a couple of pictures
here that they've sent me today of, last week we got the motor actually
slung in to the engine bay.
But they have gone ahead and welded up some engine mounts now.
So we've finalised the position of the engine and they've made us some really
really nice engine mounts here.
Done a pretty stellar job of them by the look of it.
So that's gonna keep everything nice and well in place for the endurance racing
that this motor is likely to see.
Going to be pretty stiffly mounted as it's actually gonna be quite a tight fit
with the turbo on here and the intake manifold on the other side to the false
firewall in the Z33 engine bay.
So we have gone with a urethane mounting solution here.
That is gonna give us a little bit of isolation from the high frequency
vibrations but things are gonna be pretty stiff, 'cause we don't want this
moving around too much and things hitting the engine bay.
One interesting thing that they did find was when we had the old engine
out and the old engine mounts removed, the sub frame underneath here was
actually quite noticeably crack through the bolt hole location where the original
engine mount for the original Z33 engine was sitting.
So that could be because the 350z in question had actually, the motor in that
had actually done pretty high ks and it was a bit of a, you know it was a dyno
mule and a test mule as well so a lot of those ks were pretty harsh.
So we've had that, they've tig welded that up for us and they're going to put a reinforcement
plate on top of the cross member as well, help spread some of that load around
this section here, make sure we don't strike that problem again.
As of right now they're working on the gear box mount for our TTI sequential.
Getting that nice and high up in the transmission tunnel so we can create
a good linkage solution to get a nice gear shift feel on that so that's gonna be
another fun project in and of itself.
I have been beavering away here working on the professional motorsport wiring
course as well.
This has been a massively requested course and ideally I would've actually liked to come
in and make this course straight off the bat when I started with HPA but we
really needed to go through the process of getting our wiring fundamentals course
and then our club level course done as it is a little bit of a progression step
to this course.
So we're gonna have some amazing really really valuable information in there for
anyone that's wanting to build wiring harnesses to a more professional
motorsports standard as that sort of is my actual background.
Picture I've got here is of a concentrically twisted harness section.
This was a sample harness section that I build in the course and I'm talking about
how I'm going about branching this out.
And in particular in this instance I'm talking about the fact that a lot of
the time your branched sections here aren't going to be amazingly pretty
or tidy, it is the nature of the beast.
Quite often you're going to have to have wires coming out from a central section
of the harness and that is absolutely totally OK.
These sections still have to be strain relieved but they don't have to be
amazingly tidy.
We are going to wrap this all in Kapton tape to keep it well strain relieved
and then there's going to be a sheathing and booting solution that goes
over top of that as well.
A couple of other really really good key bits of info we're cramming into
that course for you is about potting a sensor or actuator that you're
wanting to use in a race application that doesn't have a connector that is
really suitable or up to the task.
Quite often what you find with the OEM style of connectors is that they'll withstand
the chemicals and possibly even the heat that they might see in a race application
but it's those vibrations that an engine being driven really hard put out,
that actually caused them to fail so potting can be a really good solution
to this problem.
You actually install a flying lead onto the connector pins and use some
epoxy selling compound to completely enclose that join that you've made in there
which is actually a soldered join, as controversial as that can be.
We go with solder there because it's a really reliable connection method
once it's been totally encased in this potting compound.
Means we're not gonna get any of those fractures from vibration
and then you can finish the whole thing off with Raychem SCL
for a nice boot as well.
So those are a couple of demonstrations we'll be going through in that
professional level wiring course.
So look out for that one, we are aiming to have it out by the end of the year
and there will be a good introductory offer on that as well.
So watch out for that email, a lot of work is going into it and I
genuinely think it's gonna be a bit of a banger.
Really looking forward to actually watching through the final edits myself,
cause I think it's gonna give some really valuable and reliable information out
there to the people that want to be building those wiring harnesses to
that higher level.
Information that can actually be a little bit tricky to find in other places.
It does seem like the motorsport wiring world can be a little bit closed off.
It can be hard to find good reliable information on techniques that are
used at that higher level so that's what we're definitely trying to get out there.
We have had a giveaway over the last couple of weeks for a Plex display
and their knock mon V2.
That has actually now finished up so we'll be drawing the winner of that
in the next week and putting out an email letting that person know,
and we'll have a follow up about that as well.
I can't mention what the next giveaway is going to be quite yet but I can say
keep an eye out for it 'cause it is going to be an ECU and it's going to be
a real good one.
If I didn't work here I would absolutely be doing everything I could to enter it,
'cause it is gonna be a really really sweet giveaway.
That would be the majority of what's been going on here at HPA over
the last week.
So yeah so we've got the three guys away, gonna try and get things a bit
cleaned up and have it nice for them when they come back.
And really looking forward to that and getting stuck back into things
and getting that wiring course out as well.
So if you just give me a minute here, I'll get things set up,
just a quick re read through my notes, drink of water and we'll head into
today's webinar.