lasater

Yeah, me too! Seriously it's getting pretty close. Craig Gibson is doing an amazing job on it and as we all know, the items at the end of a job seem to take forever. He finished the engine harness and it is now installed. I have never seen a more professional looking harness anywhere. He covered the entire harness in a heat resistant wrap we got from DEI. Heat has been a major concern on this car and there are lots of other areas that he put the DEI heat shield products on: below the FAST 102 intake manifold, the exhaust pipes from the collectors to the cats and the floor area over the cats to name a few. The plumbing is just about done on the engine except for some details on the steam line to the radiator. The new headers have been ceramic coated and installed and they really look great.

Right now Craig is tracing the body wiring harness from the firewall to the interior of the car. This is where the fun REALLY begins. Making all the stuff work is the big job: the ignition, gauges, fuel pump, relays, doors and windows, etc. This is the stuff that makes my eyes roll back into my head. I'm glad he's doing it.

LSxPoweredSorento

It has definitely been a fun ride so far. I wish I would have gotten a chance to be involved with this project sooner in the game. Cliff has done a fantastic job with his car so far. The level of work that he had to do for the swap is infinitesimally more than anything I had to do to put the LSX in my Kia Sorento or the 3800 Supercharged and V8 engines into mine and my friends Fieros. Something that is always difficult to overcome is and being brought on a project in the middle of somebody else working on it. Not that Cliff has not done an amazing job it is just difficult no matter who the person working on it before was. Although there are those times where it can be an incredible Nightmare and also the person's fault like one of the 3000 Fiero swaps I did and which my buddy decided against my suggestions to start working on it by himself. He ended up cutting all of the wires and the ECU and all of the plugs on engine harness off right at the plug themselves. Pretty much making that harness useless because I would have had to put new pins on the end of everything. This would not be a difficult task except for the fact that those harnesses use Molex pins that too quickly crimp require a special crimper that costs about $550. I am definitely not in the place to be able to afford a $550 wire crimper.
​​​​​​ As for the HHR right now it is down to getting relays tied into the VCU and body harness to do some of the tasks that were controlled differently from the other PCM. For example circuits that require a positive voltage to run now rather than a ground. This is handled by a relay that handshakes the sourcing vs. Sinking output or vice versa. I also have a few small details the tie up in the interior such as rewiring in the door pops, adding a check engine light, and finishing the connections on the RFID keyless push-button start.

lasater

Like I said, this stuff makes my eyes roll back into my head. I'm glad he's doing it.

Oldblue

It won't be long! You're gonna be look'n
In the rear view mirror and nothin' but clouds of tire smoke! With a huge permanent grin on your face!!
Then it won't be because you can , it'll be 'cause it's so much fun!!!!

John Joseph

Looks awesome! I wish I could do that to my ride lol. There's a shop here in Ventura that specialized LS swap and we have Magnuson Superchargers here too.

Cat Man HHR

Where do you start when building a lay out board to do a wiring harness?

lasater

I'm no expert at this, Craig is doing all the electrical but basically you start by laying out your harness on pegboard so you can situate it the way it fits on the engine or body. Zip ties work well with the pegboard to hold the harness in shape. Then you can remove/add/shorten/lengthen the wires as you need. Once you have what you want you can re-wrap it with electrical tape or heat wrap. In my case Craig is wrapping the entire harness with heat resistant wrap. He found some really hi-tech stuff from DEI.

lasater

In my never ending quest for HHR Insanity, I've gone one more step. Let me back up a bit. Since I changed the Camaro rear end to a bulletproof Currie 9" I no longer need to worry about breaking things as much.

I just ordered a nitrous system from from Nitrous Express. They are custom making a set of hard lines from the solenoids to the plate for a cleaner look. It's getting a firewall mounted purge solenoid to continue the clean look. Since I no longer have the windshield squirter nozzles connected to anything I'm venting the purge gases to these areas in the cowel. I'm mounting the 15lb. tank over the driveshaft just aft of the roll bar and venting the blow off tube straight down through the floor. The system will handle up to a 400 hp shot and my Aeromotive fuel pump will feed enough gas to do this much but honestly, I don't see me going over a 200 shot.

Anyway, it should be a real kick in the pants.

RJ_RS_SS_350

Dang Cliff, insanity is right!! You better install some go-go-gadget wings, 'cause this thing is gonna fly!

old guy

And to make the car even faster? The rear side windows will be covered in racing stickers and decals! Man, I can only guess how many stickers it will take to fill those windows! Seriously? Great build. I've enjoyed it. Thanks for posting it all.