Chapter 18 - Spaghetti and Meatballs!

Hey all, Brian here logged in as my Dad. My picture file is all filled up so I'm signed on with a different ID...Here's a little on what we have been up to!

It has been quite a while since I have updated on this site although that silence should not be construed as a lack of activity. I was intently quiet during May as it became clear early this spring that yet another Unique Homecoming would pass without the ‘Legendary Spence Car’ in attendance. If I recall correctly, I have promised on several occasions that “we’ll make it next year, for sure!”

I know that I realistically have nobody to blame, but all readers should understand that I am genetically predisposed to taking on monumental projects and very significantly underestimating the time needed for completion. With my folks retiring and moving 25 miles up the road, there are now two such engineers in control of the work schedule and as such progress is slow but satisfying.

Complete with my lack of a realistic timeline we embarked upon the installation of the conversion from a carbureted V-8 to digital fuel injection…Simultaneously combined with a swap from manual transmission to an computer controlled automatic. Never mind the front suspension swap, rear end narrowing, and complete rebuild of the car that has also accompanied this most recent project.

The Accel Digital Fuel Injection (DFI) v7 fuel and spark management system is a technological wonder, using an exhaust gas fuel sensor, intake air temperature, throttle position sensor, and intake manifold pressure (along with half a dozen other lesser sensors) to manage injector and ignition timing. There is a literal “dashboard” on the screen of the controlling PC to manage everything from idle speed to the radiator cooling fan. For the installer, all of this magic is controlled through 75 or so extra wires, relays, and connections that must be integrated into the standard wiring harness for the Cobra.

Beyond DFI, we installed another bit of high tech electronics called the Baumannator Transmission Control, manufactured by - not surprisingly – a company called Baumann Engineering. Similar to DFI, the transmission operates off of sensors of its own, namely throttle position, output shaft speed, and hydraulic pressure. The key bit of understanding to this installation pertains to the integration of another 20 or 30 wires to the now crowded Cobra wiring harness.

Armed with my schematics and a extra dose of patience I began to slowly make sense of what looks from afar like wiring spaghetti. In truth the process was quite easy, but extremely tedious and time consuming. As I heard on this site before, it is not hard to install wiring cleanly, it just takes time.

Once the DFI and the TCS were installed, the time came to integrate the into the existing wiring harness. After all of my painstaking wiring work, the original harness began to look a little less aesthetically pleasing than I had remembered. So what the heck, I unwound the tape from a few of the harness sections and even eliminated some redundant leads and tidied up the ground wires.

As the attached pictures show, along with the tail light leads running to the rear of the vehicle, the Spence Car now sports a completely stuffed 1” diameter convoluted tubing covering the ‘spinal cord’ of the car that runs between the engine and the computerized ‘brain’ that is housed in the trunk. In all the wiring task has turned out very well, it looks nice and most importantly it all works!