A lot of wires with no labels and 3 surprises: 1) the existing wiring assumes the battery and central wiring hub will be immediately behind the front seat. Well, that changes. 2) the wiring used was not milspec. 3) all power and ground was run from battery to behind the panel in a single (18 AWG?) pair, then instead of a fuse block there are big solder joints with a bunch of leads heading their own ways. I need to replace that with normal runs to blade fuse blocks and the "field of tabs" ground blocks.
There was some milspec, but of the wrong size and in the wrong place - two long runs of 2 AWG running up the heater duct to the backrest, with one to the battery (described above) and one to a marine battery power switch located where the plans call for a fuel selector. I gather that the prior builder intended to use that marine switch as the DC master, and avoid having a battery contactor.
There were also a number of firewall penetrations that I don't understand - perhaps they had to do with the prior (incomplete) installation of a Mazda engine. I reused 3 of them, one being a pass-through for the field-of-tabs ground and the other two used to secure the aluminum firewall I installed over the fiberglass + plywood (as the project was delivered, the firewall was built as per the plans). My own planned firewall penetrations are limited:
- 2 AWG cable run to the main alternator, something lighter to the backup (8 amp) alternator.
- 2 AWG from the starter contactor (cabin side of the firewall) to the starter
- A pass through bolt ties together the ground field-of-tabs on each side of the firewall.
I plan to use the firewall wiring ports located low on the right and left sides, under the engine mount holes.