Lights on

Here's the story. The wiring is this scary monster that no one wants to deal with. I know many car guys around here. None of them would advise me to mess with the wiring. Frankly, I am the same.

However, during my planning stage of the build I evaluated my options:

1. Do it the Factory Five way. Take all the donor wiring and shove it wherever possible. It's easy. It should work. It just does not sound right.
2. Do it the right way. Take a box. Put all the wires in it. Mail it to Art at wirediet.com. Enjoy your life. But I am cheap and don't know any better. Hence, I ain't doing it this way too.
3. Do it the hard way. Well, if the guy in US has a business that does it for big money I can do it myself. This is a sort of logical progression of thoughts, no? Too bad you were not there to tell me otherwise. I am going this route.

The idea is simple. The donor car is a complex car that has a lot of electrical systems. Moreover, the donor car has a lot of mechanical systems with additional electrical systems controlling them. Now, my cobra has significantly less mechanical and a fraction of electrical systems. Take air conditioning for example. Obviously, the hardware is not required. That alone means that the clutch and pump wiring is not required. But that's not all, Ford has a monitoring system in place to keep the pressure in check. Also, we have wiring for ECU that ensures that the motor runs well with the additional load and that the cooling fan is operating at proper speed. I did not mention yet that the blower motor is not reused and all the controls and knobs are in the garbage bin too. I think it's clear. There's a bit of unused wires. Extrapolate it to include Ford's fancy sound system, convertible top, day time running lights, air bags and collision detection, power seats, power doors, power windows, and even, wipers and windshield washer. This now sounds like a lot of extra wiring. The wires are heavy and bulky. This is where the diet is required to loose some unwanted weight for the sake of going fast.

This is what I have to start with

 It looks manageable from this angle

  

I also armed my self with the official Ford wiring diagrams. It's amazing how Ford makes it's documentation available to everyone for a small fee. I paid for 3 day subscription to access wiring diagrams on motorcraftservice.com. I basically went through all the diagrams and printed the relevant ones.

Next step was to ensure that I don't mess it up. I wanted to be able to get the engine running. This would mean that all the essentials are there. More importantly, the OBD2 would give me hints at what is broken.

It is not pretty but it does not have to be. It just has to work.

And work it did! Let's tone the hype back. After all, all I did was connect all the plugs together as they were originally in Mustang. If it worked there it'll work here. Time to have a beer anyways.