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Picture of CAN cable being plugged into Infinitybox POWERCELL

Routing the CAN Cable

June 10, 2016/1 Comment/in Wiring /by admin

Picture of the Infinitybox 3-Way CAN Cable

Now it is time for routing the CAN cable through the 1967 Mustang. As we’ve described before, our Infinitybox system is different from a traditional wiring harness. We distribute switches and outputs throughout the car using our MASTERCELLs, POWERCELLs and inMOTION Cells. Instead of running power through large wires from every switch to the outputs, we pass data through small wires.

Our system works using something called CAN. That stands for Controller Area Network. It is the vehicle bus standard that was created to allow different controllers to communicate on a common protocol. You can read more about it by clicking this link. CAN has been around since the early 1980’s and is used in all modern passenger cars and commercial trucks.

The OEM’s use this technology to reduce weight of harnesses, simplify wiring and get more functions that you could from just a simple relay. Our Infinitybox system brings these exact features and benefits to anyone building a race car, restoring a vehicle or manufacturing commercial trucks.

Just because a system has CAN doesn’t necessarily mean that it can communicate with other CAN systems. The term CAN is pretty generic. It is the protocol that is the important part. For our aftermarket systems, we use a proprietary protocol that follows the CAN 2.0b standard. This lets us get much more control and features in our systems. For our commercial vehicle systems, we use J1939. This lets our hardware communicate with other J1939 peripherals and systems in the vehicle.

The CAN signals are passed between the MASTERCELL, POWERCELLs, inMOTION Cells and other modules through two wires in the CAN cable. Once a second, the MASTERCELL sends a command out to all of the cells attached to the network to check in. The blue heartbeat light on the cells is the confirmation that the cells are communicating. When you step on your brake pedal, turn on your ignition or turn on any other switch connected to the system, the MASTERCELL instantaneously sends out a command on the CAN network to the target cell. This signal is sent and received in a few milliseconds.

In the CAN cable, there are the two CAN wires. There is also a red power wire and a black ground wire. This is how the MASTERCELL gets is power and ground. This link will take you to a separate blog post talking in more detail about the anatomy of a CAN cable.

If you have a 20-Circuit Harness Kit, you get a 3-way CAN cable. This has a CAN plug on each end and one spliced about 1/3 of the way along the length of the cable. In you have one of our 10-Circuit Harness Kits, you get a 2-way CAN cable. This has a CAN plug on each end.

Our customer started at the back of the car. They plugged the long end of the CAN cable into one of the CAN ports on the POWERCELL. Both of these ports are identical so it doesn’t matter which you choose. They ran the cable along the driver’s side of the car up to the MASTERCELL, through a channel under the door sill. They plugged the CAN plug that is in the middle of the cable into the MASTERCELL then ran the short length to the front POWERCELL.

In your kit, there are two accessory plugs that are very important. The both look like this. Please note that the plugs in some kits may be yellow. Others may be cream-colored.

Infinitybox CAN sealing plug

There is a difference between the two plugs. One is just a seal to plug the unused CAN port in your system. This must be installed to keep dirt, debris, moisture and water from entering your cell. The second is a CAN terminator. It is marked with an “R” on the top. This is also a seal to plug up an unused CAN port but it also does something important. There is a resistor in the connector that balances the impedance of the CAN transmission line. This terminating resistor must be plugged in to the cell that is on the longest length of CAN cable from the MASTERCELL. You system will not work correctly without this terminating resistor. In the case of our customer’s 1967 Mustang, the resistor is mounted in the rear POWERCELL. This picture shows the CAN cable connected and the terminating resistor installed.

Picture of POWERCELL with CAN cable in 1967 Mustang wired with the Infinitybox system

This picture shows the CAN cable connected to the MASTERCELL.

Picture of MASTERCELL installed in 1967 Mustang with CAN cable connected

This leads to one of our favorite pictures ever. Take a look at this.

Picture of power and CAN cables running to the back of a 1967 Mustang wired with Infinitybox

This is the entire bundle of wire running from the back of the car to the front. Yes, there is a separate starter cable running from the battery to the starter solenoid and there is fuel wire sender wire bundled in with the CAN cable. Outside of that, the two 8-AWG power cables and the CAN cable are all you need to control everything in the back of the car. This wire is run through the channel under the driver’s door sill.

There are a few more points to hit about the CAN cable.

First, a lot of customers ask if they can lengthen or shorten the CAN cables. Depending on where you mount you cells, you may need different lengths. The answer is “YES”. This link will get you more details on CAN cable lengths. We also get questions about custom, pre-made CAN cables. We also do that. Contact our sales team to discuss details.

Second, there are some considerations that you need to make when you run your CAN cables through the car. The CAN protocol is very noise immune. There are things that we do in hardware and in software to make sure that this is a very reliable signal. That being said, you want to keep your CAN cables (and all of your other electronics in the car) away from the high-voltage coil wires for your ignition system.

Lastly, there is an addendum sheet that comes with any kit that uses the 3-way CAN cable. The CAN cable provides power and ground to the MASTERCELL. Depending on the way your car is assembled, there may be slight differences between the ground potential at the front POWERCELL and the rear POWERCELL. These need to be isolated. You must cut the red and black wires in the one of the lengths of your CAN cable. Click on this link to view this addendum.

Click on this link to contact our team with questions or comments about this post.

Plugging in POWERCELL battery input harness in Infinitybox system installed in 1967 Mustang

Power Input Cables

June 9, 2016/1 Comment/in Wiring /by admin

Here’s the next step in wiring the 1967 Mustang with our Infinitybox system. You need to run the power input cables from the Mega fuse holder and connect them to the POWERCELLs. There are 4 power input cables included in your kit. They look like this.

POWERCELL Battery Input Harness

These cables have the mating connector that plugs into the circular 8-mm sockets on the POWERCELL. These cables are 8-AWG and are jacketed in high-durability TXL insulation. Each POWERCELL gets two of these cables. This lets you supply a total of 120-Amps to the POWERCELL.

Remember how the POWERCELLs work. They are mounted locally in the car. Your functions like lights, fans, pumps, ignition and starter connect to the POWERCELL. The MASTERCELL sends commands to this POWERCELL through the CAN cable to turn these function on and off. In addition to the CAN cable that sends commands, the POWERCELL needs to get power from the battery for your switched functions. These primary input cables supply the power to the POWERCELL.

For this process, make sure that you have disconnected the positive cable from the battery. Plug the round connector on the end of each of the primary input cable into the POWERCELL and run the cable through the car. All three of the round connector ports on the POWERCELL are the same. You can pick any two of these to plug the cables into.

The other end of this cable needs to connect to the terminals on the Mega fuse holders installed earlier in this process. Cut the cable to length, strip it and crimp on the 8-AWG 5/16″ ring terminals that are included with your 10 or 20-Circuit kit. Make sure that you are using the right tool to make these crimps. Poor crimps cause many problems down the road. This link will take you to a simple tool sold by Del City that can be used for all of your primary power cables and battery cables.

We also strongly recommend covering the exposed area of the ring terminals with heat-shrink tubing. This will minimize exposed metal areas that can lead to short circuits in the car. Del City or Waytek are great sources for heat-shrink tubing.

If you need to, you can lengthen the primary power cables. You can use an 8-AWG crimped butt connector to splice in another length of cable or you can solder the strands together. Done correctly, either are a acceptable way to lengthen these cables.

This picture shows plugging the primary power cables into the rear POWERCELL in our Mustang project.

Plugging in POWERCELL battery input harness in Infinitybox system installed in 1967 Mustang

This picture shows the two primary power cables plugged into the front POWERCELL.

Front POWERCELL Mounted in 1967 Mustang

This picture shows the primary power cables connected to the Mega fuse holder block in near the battery in the rear of the car.

Assembled Mega Fuse block in 1967 Mustang wired with our Infinitybox system

Each POWERCELL has three power input ports on it. You are going to use two of these. To keep the cell sealed, you must plug the power input dummy plug into the unused port. This is included in your kit.

Sealing plug for POWERCELL battery input port.

You can also use one of our POWERPLUGs in the open port.

Power Plug

The POWERPLUG is a very easy way to get fused constant battery power from the POWERCELL. You can use this to power accessories like engine controllers, transmission controllers, audio and LED tail light controllers.

Now that you have the primary power cables properly connected to the primary fuses and the POWERCELLs, you can move on to the next step. Stay tuned for the next post. If you have questions in the meantime, you can contacts us by clicking this link.

Infinitybox 1967 Wiring Install- Location of Mega Fuse Block

Mounting Fuses

June 7, 2016/1 Comment/in Wiring /by admin

Here’s the first step in our 1967 Mustang wiring project. It is mounting the fuses that protect the power feeds going to the POWERCELLs. In our 10 and 20-Circuit Harness Kits, we give you a block of Littelfuse Mega fuses to protect the 8-AWG cables that power the cells. In our Express Racing Kits and with our inMOTION cells, we give you a JCASE holder instead of the Mega block.

These fuses serve a very important purpose. They protect the 8-AWG cables from short-circuits or low overloads. The fuse in any circuit is supposed to be the weak link, electrically. They are thermally operating devices that are designed to open and clear the circuit if too much current flows. Wires can be fuses too, which is a bad thing. If too much current flows through a wire, it will heat up. As the wire heats up, the insulation can melt causing fire or other damage in the car.

As mentioned above, the fuses ultimately protect against two things. The most common is a short circuit to ground. If the insulation on the wire were to become damaged and the conductor were to touch the chassis, you have a very low resistance path to ground. The insulation can become damaged over time by rubbing against a sharp edge or can be connected to ground quickly in an accident. You can also accidentally drop a tool across an open set of terminals and make a good short to ground. (We’ll admit that we’ve done that before.) The second thing that the fuse protects against is a low-overload. These are usually resistive connections to ground. They are not as common as a short circuit.

Car batteries have a tremendous amount of stored power in them. A low resistance path to ground will allow a lot of current to flow. This current flow causes heating in the wire. As mentioned above, the fuse is designed to open (blow) before the wire gets hot enough to cause damage. The Mega fuses in your kit are sized at 60-Amps. A 60-Amp fuse is the proper rating to protect an 8-AWG cable.

We have many different blog posts about fusing. Here is a good one for your reference.

In the case of this 1967 Mustang, the battery is in the trunk. The customer mounted the Mega fuse block against the trunk wall, towards the driver’s side of the car. Here’s a picture of the fuse block mounted in the trunk.

Location of Mega Fuse Block in 1967 Mustang wired with the Infinitybox system.

You want to make sure that the Mega fuse block is securely mounted in the car. There are mounting holes on the top and bottom of the holders. We recommend using nuts and bolts with lock-washers to mount this to a flat surface like the one shown in the picture above. Self-tapping screws will work too but aren’t as reliable as a bolt & nut with a lock-washer.

You want to have reasonable access to the primary fuses in the car. Over its lifetime, you should really never have to change these fuses. If you ever were to blow one, that means that something bad has happened. You have either been in an accident and one of the cables has broken to ground or the insulation on one of the cables was worn over time.

You want to mount the fuses as close to the battery as possible. The purpose of this is to minimize the length of unprotected wire in the circuit. The unprotected wire is the wire between the power source and the first fuse. We give you the Mega fuse block, the ring terminals, the 8-AWG cables and a 4-AWG cable in your kit. You use the 4-AWG cable to connect the battery to the buss bar on the fuse block.

This picture shows the 4-AWG wire connected to the buss bar on the Mega fuse block. The customer crimped the included ring terminal on the end of the 4-AWG wire and connected that to the buss bar. The other side of this 4-AWG cable connects to the positive side of the battery. This connection can be made directly to the battery, to a primary disconnect switch or to our inRESERVE battery management solenoid. Please note that we strongly recommend a battery disconnect, either a manual switch or our inRESERVE kit.

Also, note that they used heat shrink tubing to protect the exposed part of the terminal. This is recommended to reduce the chance of shorting this side of the fuse block to the chassis.

Primary battery cable connected to Mega Fuse block in 1967 Mustang wired with the Infinitybox system.

Just a quick warning about connecting the Mega fuse and 8-AWG power feeds. You want to connect all of the POWERCELL feeds back to the same Mega fuse holder. This Mega fuse holder should be connected to the battery either directly or through a disconnect solenoid. You must not connect power to your Infinitybox system to the starter cable at the starter motor. This is our recommendation and that of most other electronics manufacturers. There are surges and transients associated with the starter motor that could interfere with your ability to start the engine if you are powering the system from the starter cable at the starter motor.

Once the 4-AWG cable is connected, you need to connect the four 8-AWG feeds that go to the POWERCELLs. Each POWERCELL needs two of these feeds. In the case of this Mustang, two of the 8-AWG feeds route to the POWERCELL in the trunk. The other two 8-AWG feeds run to the front of the car to connect to the front POWERCELL. This picture shows the 8-AWG cable connected and the covers snapped in place on the Mega fuse block. You must keep these covers in place to protect the terminals on the fuses from getting accidentally shorted to ground. (Again, we’ve done that before with a wrench.)

Assembled Mega Fuse block in 1967 Mustang wired with our Infinitybox system

Make sure that all of the bolted connections are tight. Don’t over-tighten these bolts. The recommended bolting torque is 10 foot-pounds. Once that’s done, you’ve finished the job of mounting the fuses. Stay tuned for the next step in the process of wiring a 1967 Mustang with our Infinitybox 20-Circuit Harness Kit. Click on this link to contact us with comments and questions.

Mustang Install

June 6, 2016/0 Comments/in Wiring /by admin

One of our customers just sent us a series of pictures showing a very clean install of our Infinitybox system in a 1967 Mustang. We wanted to take this opportunity to breakdown the process of wiring your car with our system into its basic steps. This Mustang Install series will give you a chance to see the simplicity and ease of wiring with Infinitybox. Plus, you will get a chance to learn about some of the features and benefits of our system over traditional wiring harnesses. We will start the series with the installation of the 20-Circuit Kit in the car. There will be follow up blog posts that will go through these steps:

You can click on any of the steps above to read more details of the wiring process.

The car is a 1967 Mustang done up as a resto-mod. All of the suspension components are modern. They are using a 4.6L modular motor. It will have new heating and air-conditioning. With all of the upgrades, the customer wanted the most modern and flexible wiring system for this car.

Our 20-Circuit Kit is replacing a traditional wiring harness. Instead of one centrally located fuse & relay box, there are separate modules installed in the car where they are needed. All of the switches wire locally to the MASTERCELL mounted under the dash. The tail lights, brake lights, fuel pump, turn signals and audio in the rear of the car wires to the local POWERCELL. The head lights, high-beams, ignition, starter solenoid, horn, fan, parking lights, turn signals and dash power come from the POWERCELL mounted in the front of the car. The only cable running from the front to the back of the car is power and the CAN cable connecting the cells.

Keep watching for updates on our blog to see the details of this Mustang install. You can contact us with questions or comments by clicking this link.

Picture of a Land Rover Defender 110 wired with the Infinitybox system.

Land Rover Defender Wiring

March 1, 2016/0 Comments/in Cars /by admin

Our Infinitybox system has been used in all kinds of cars and trucks. One of our customers just posted pictures of his installation progress on The Defender Source forum. This is an on-line community completely dedicated to guys restoring Land Rover Defenders. “Azarur” is doing a complete frame-off restoration of his Land Rover Defender 110. He has a very detailed build thread that covers all aspects of the project. He’s working on wiring now and has just posted some great pictures.

Here’s what he started with for the wiring in his Land Rover Defender. This is a mess.

Starting wiring

Azarur came to us looking for help and a better way to wire his Land Rover Defender 110. He’s doing a pretty extreme restoration of this 110 so he wanted to add the works, electrically. He started out with our 20-Circuit Kit. Then added inMOTION to control his power windows and locks. He wanted to be able to control the system from his iPhone so he added inTOUCH NET. He added inRESERVE so that our system could actively manage the battery. Lastly, he’s adding a Vintage Air Gen-IV to the Defender and he wanted to control that through inTOUCH NET so he added inVIRONMENT.

Here you can see all of his hardware laid out neatly.

Infinitybox hardware laid out

Here you can see how he mounted his inRESERVE solenoid and ran his primary battery cable.

inRESERVE Location

Here you can see his primary Mega fuses plus the JCASE fuse holder for the inMOTION Cell.

Primary Fuses

He has fabricated great access compartments for the MASTERCELL, POWERCELLs and inMOTION.

MASTERCELL and inMOTION Locations

The rear POWERCELL is mounted behind the subwoofer in the back of the truck.

Rear POWERCELL

The front POWERCELL is mounted under the dash above the transmission tunnel.

Front POWERCELL

This is going to be a great install when it is finished. You can see the entire build thread for this Land Rover Defender 110 at The Defender Source website. Search for a build thread titled “LR 110: Two years and thousands of hours“.

If you have questions or are looking to wire your car or truck, reach out to our team and we can help get you going.

1971 Mustang

November 23, 2015/0 Comments/in Cars /by admin

We love to get pictures from our customers, especially progress pictures showing updates on their projects. As cool as it is to see the final car, we love the see how a customer got there step by step. We got these pictures from Infinitybox customer Lee A. He’s been working on a 1971 Mustang for a while now. He’s proud to say that he’s done 95% of the work himself. He also says that this is his first project like this. It is awesome work for his first restoration.

Lee bought the car from his son in 2007 and immediately went to work. He did most of the work at the automotive craft shop at the Ft. Sill military base in Oklahoma. He had worked a deal with the base to give him shop space in return for teaching a body and paint class. His efforts taught over 300 people how to use the booths and gave them the confidence to get their projects going.

Lee used side mirrors form a 1987 La Sabre and seamlessly blended them into the doors. He shaved the door handles and removed the passenger lock. The engine is a 302 with a mild race cam and headers. He rebuilt a C4 transmission with all new items and high performance valves. The rear end is a stock 8-inch with 3.55 gears. It has all new suspension components and disc brakes in all 4 corners.

Lee did all of this work himself while dealing with nerve damage in his right leg from an injury that he sustained while serving in the military.

Lee has our 20-circuit kit powering the car. He also has inMOTION controlling his power locks and power windows. He has the front POWERCELL where the remote starter solenoid usually is in this vintage of Mustang. You can see it in these pictures.

Front POWERCELL mounted under hood of 1971 Mustang

This is a great shot of the POWERCELL next to that nicely chromed engine.

Picture under the hood of a 1971 Mustang wired with the Infinitybox system.

The rear POWERCELL is nicely placed in the trunk near to the battery. The MASTERCELL and the inMOTION cell are neatly tucked in behind the glove compartment door. This makes for very easy access to the MASTERCELL for diagnostics.

MASTERCELL and inMOTION Cell Mounted in a 1971 Mustang wired with the Infinitybox system.

Lee has really put the details into this car. You can see it in the fit and finish of the body work and even in the way that he has the wires braided and loomed. It is a very neat and clean install. We can’t wait to see the final product.

Thanks to Lee for sending us these pictures. If you have pictures of your wiring job with our Infinitybox system, please send them and we’ll get them up on our blog for all to see.

Rear picture of 1971 Mustang wired with the Infinitybox system.

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