Day 82 – Air in

 

Crimping done and the new air filter turned up.  I put some heat shrink on the back ends of the lugs to make it look a neater job. Fitting all the cables was easy although I didn’t tyrap them in just yet because until I have the loom hung properly in place and all the fuel lines in the exact locations.  I might need to un-twist them so it all fits neatly.

The Air filter has arrived.  But unfortunately it wasn’t as straight forward a job as I first thought.  The pack came with one too many jubilee clips and not enough washers – not a major problem in itself. If you followed the instructions however there was no way the custom aluminium piece between the intake under the inlet manifold and the Mass Air Flow (MAF) sensor was actually going to fit.  Granted from the photos provided in the assembly instructions my MAF was a different model to the one shown and I didn’t have the breather pipe that was also in the kit.  So the answer was to fit the cone filter to the MAF and use the original pipe from the other side of the MAF to the Intake.  I will swap the original jubilee clips for the new ones so it looks all shiny.  I’m happy that the seals are all good and that it will work fine the only issue now is I need to make a bracket to hold the cone.  One is provided with the Kit but it was expecting and inner wing and the original mounting points from an Impreza which I no longer have - obviously.  So I will have to work out a fixing either modifying the bracket in the kit or make a bespoke one.

 

Now here comes a problem I had been dreading. I’ve lost a wire.  Somewhere in amongst the rats net of cables is the lead that connects to the ignition key to the starter motor.  But could I find it? Could I hell.  When I was laying up all the heavy current cabling there was a niggle in the back of my mind that I hadn’t seen it in the wiring harness (since it came out).  So now all the heavy stuff was in I wanted to get to a point where I could turn the engine over because it hasn’t run for over a year.  Yes, I know I could just get a piece of cable off the live terminal and touch the connector on the starter motor but I want to get it right and, as the wiring loom is next, it seemed right to do a “proper job”.  Each time I was in the garage I found myself digging in to the wiring diagram section of the Scooby service manuals and back into the harness chasing wire colours and relays that didn’t exist.  The immobiliser wiring wasn’t helping matters either. It took ages, to the point where I thought I was missing a piece of harness and started searching round the garage in the end I stripped a bit of the loom tape off the main cable loom and traced the cable to the point where I could see which branch of the main harness it was running down. To be fair I seemed to recall it being a white connector but it was black and the coloured cable was sheathed in black plastic and on the same branch as the electrics for the windscreen wiper (which will have to come back inside the car) and the loom which goes to the other side of the engine with the MAF sensor etc. So I will have to extend it.