One Wiring Mistake Almost ENDED My Drag & Drive Build

Ajouté : 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Welcome back to the Bryce Blitzcars YouTube channel. And today we are working with the one, the only, the man of the hour, the Slow Quest, back as you can see, the centerpiece of the operation because Six Summer is roughly 6 weeks away from the day that I'm filming this. I think it's like 6 weeks and 4 days. So, the car is untested on the track, on the street. I did put 50 mi on it. Ran like a dream, but I found a new issue and it is because I did something wrong. Big shocker. I I never do that. We're just going to be doing a bunch of maintenance on the vehicle. Oil change, fluid check, nut and bolt, make sure it's not going to kill me if I go down the track. And then one of the big things we need to verify is if you look, it's going to be really hard to get a shot. Let me try my best. Right there.

[00:00:41]We made a custom timing marker on the side because if you come over to this side of the car, there is genuinely no way to see the timing marker on the driver's side. So, we made a passenger side one and we're starting to debate if it's even right cuz you keep pulling spark plugs. They're supposed to have like 28° of timing in it. But for whatever reason, every spark plug that we pull out looks like it has one degree of timing. Like it's so light on timing when we pull a plug and read a plug. We need to double uh we need to double check that we actually have the right amount of timing in. We know how much timing is in it when it goes down the track cuz if it's got 28 in it based on the spark plug, it could take like 50, which is crazy. So, I don't [laughter] know. It's got to it's got to be at least a little bit off. So, we're going to verify that. But the thing that I really screwed up that I'm going to focus on for this video and fixing is this right here. So, I'm going to show you guys this and illustrate this to you, but I really messed up when it came to making these alternator wires cuz it goes all the way down the side of the car straight to the battery here in the trunk. So, this is I mean at least 15 ft of wire. And then our main lead is also running all the way up to see if you can see it way in there. You see that panel underneath? [snorts] Come on camera. See that panel underneath the passenger side? There's another wire running all the way up there. And the problem is I looked at a chart that you know was made by or sorry made by Powermaster but used by Powermaster and they were like yeah you're on the edge of two gauge assuming I was using 13 ft of wire. Looking at it now I've got like a 15 or 16 ft wire. So I'll show you guys the voltage drop but there is major voltage loss when we are at high load going from the alternator up to our components that I need to fix.

[00:02:19]I did drive it in the street and it wasn't draining like it did last summer which took us out. So, that was cool, but it was like down almost a whole vault as opposed to what I thought it would be. So, we need to dig into this and get this fixed. So, I have the car running with everything on, lights, fans, radio, everything we use for a regular street drive. And I've got a voltmeter. I'm going to see what the voltage is at every point going through.

[00:02:43]And I'm going to show you how bad I screwed this up. So, you can see here, I'm stabbing the alternator. It's a really solid, steady 14.7 volt. Exactly what it needs to be. But then we go to this fuse down here. I use an ANL style fuse, which you're not supposed to do.

[00:03:02]Didn't know that. Screwed that up. Then, if we go to the other side of the fuse, we've already lost a tenth of a volt through the fuse. Now we're at the back of the car where the battery is. And we're going to see how much we lost just getting back to the battery through that charge wire. Look at that.

[00:03:18]4/10 of a volt just going through our charge wire to the back of the car. And it gets worse. Now, this is going to be more difficult. It's in a bad spot, but this is where all of our components hook up to down here. Let's see if I can get a good read on this.

[00:03:32]>> 14.1.

[00:03:33]>> So, down to 14.12 all the way up here. So 6/10 of a volt.

[00:03:39]And it's cold right now, too. It'll be worse when the when the idle gets down about 300 RPM. Gets down to about 14.0.

[00:03:46]So, and this is due to my mistake of running two gauge wire instead of zero.

[00:03:51]Learned my lesson the hard way. I got to step all this up for me to feel more comfortable going 1,000 miles. And I'm almost certain that it is absolutely the charge wires because if you see that right there, that is actually a ground direct to the alternator. So, we're grounded with the two gauge straight to the cylinder head. And then on the battery, you can see I have a main ground leading up to some of the components, which doesn't really handle too much amperage. But for a chassis ground, I have the battery going bang straight down to the frame rail. I mean, these are not even a foot long wires.

[00:04:20]So, I don't think the grounds are the issue here. I'm almost certain. But, I'm going to take out pretty much everything you see here in two gauge red, step it up to zero, and and try to fix my error along with, you know, oil change and timing check and things like that. We're going to get ready to hopefully hit the track soon. This is something I never showed you guys cuz I did this well before I started this channel. And I always kind of dog myself. I'm like, dude, I've been doing weird car stuff for a while. I should have made the channel earlier. I'm glad I didn't cuz this is where you can see we have, let me This is a whole big red chunk of wire. We've got ECU, power, ground, ground feed up, alternator wire, and the main power stud wire underneath the glove box compartment there. This is uh not the way to do this. I I shouldn't have done it this way, but this is the way it's done. So, this is kind of how it's wired. Look at this mess up here.

[00:05:05]It's just bad. Half of the wiring on this car is really bad. The other half is like professional quality cuz this is my learner. But, I'm going to keep ripping this apart. You can see got the back seat half out and see if I can hopefully get these wires out and measured today. Well, I found a massive mistake that I'm glad we're catching now cuz this could have been really bad. So, we had a piece kind of like screwed in here on top into this other factory piece that's meant to hold wiring harnesses down to hold the carpet down.

[00:05:30]And as we were screwing the piece in, I see right there. Let me zoom in so you get a good look at it. We actually drilled into the wire itself in multiple spots going down the wire. You can't see the other ones now, but I saw a few other ones. So, this may have been the culprit for some of our drain is the wire was damaged. So, I'm going to redo this 110%. I am not going to leave this like this at all. Well, I've got most of this stuff freed up now. I've got the back seat completely ripped out. I've made a mess here. And I'm going to do something I never wanted to do. And I'm going to show you my mistakes on the underside of my glove box here. So, you can see we do have this is a coach Controls Coupe 23 kit. These are great.

[00:06:12]Um, this acts as like a easy PDM kit without having to spend all the money on the super expensive like race pack stuff or I forget what brand Vanderhof uses, but those are really pricey. This is a good budget alternative. Here's where I screwed this up though. So, I ran out of inputs and outputs on this unit and I committed a sin. Um, I resorted to a bus bar because I'm like, "Oh, look. There's only four or five things coming off of here. Who cares?" I already have this throughput stud that I mounted that is, you know, here's the starter wire and these are the fans and other really high amp load things that really should be straight to battery with our main battery lead coming up that goes also to our MSD box and everything else and also runs power to our actual PDM unit here.

[00:06:54]Don't do this. Never ever ever do this.

[00:06:58]Okay? And this is what I've learned. If you run out of inputs on your PDM unit, whatever you're using as your power distribution module, get a different one. Don't do this. I also did this with grounds up here, as you can see. Don't do this. I'm showing you this because because I'm kind of embarrassed at how terrible this is cuz it's bad. But I will never do this in a car ever again.

[00:07:21]And you should never do this in your car ever. If you're in this situation where your PDM is not enough, replace it with one that is enough, spend the money now so it doesn't cost you later because this has cost me headaches to cut corners like this. So never ever ever do this. And I'll make it very clear as well. If you see me doing something in the future, I'm not doing this ever again. Also, I learned the hard way. I got the main feed wire loose. I had my wife grab the camera. I just need to make sure you can see the lengths I go to to put this stupid car together. This is peak athleticism. Want to see the position I was in. Do you want to see it? This is the position I had to get into to get this this nut off to pull this wire out, which I'm going to do here in just a second. Look at this. To get the nut out, I had to get underneath. I propped my leg up on the window.

[00:08:07]I grabbed the door like this and I got it off the backside. I'm fishing the nut out right now. She's off our throughput.

[00:08:15]Athletic specimen of a car creator. And just like that, we have successfully removed our first incredibly long two gauge wire.

[00:08:25]Like I said, I know this ground is small, but I think this ground is good.

[00:08:28]I think it's fine. Mainly because a lot of components are grounded to chassis, which like I said, we have a two gauge to the frame rail. So, not terribly worried about the ground. I think I'll leave the two gauge ground. Let me know in the comments you guys think it's a bad idea. But look at this.

[00:08:41]Oh my.

[00:08:43]Yeah, that distance with the two gauge. Not good. Wait till I pull out the alternator wire rather. and you're going to be in the comment section calling me the biggest idiot of all time and I probably deserve it. I got lucky. The alternator wire was actually easy to get out. You can see it's the big one here.

[00:08:58]But as I said earlier in the video, it has to be 13 ft to still be usable for two gauge. So, I pulled out the tape measure as most men do when they're curious as to how long something is.

[00:09:07]Now, keep in mind this isn't even straight. I could pull these straight and probably make it give or take five or six inches longer is what he always tells her when he's compensating for his lack of girth, but that's okay. So, let's just walk this down. So, this one here is just the main battery cable, which I'm going to replace. That's only 2 ft. We're good there. Now, our main feed line up is this one on the left, and that is 12 ft. Again, straight it out, you probably get it out to 13. So, our main feed line going to our power stud is on the upper limit to such an extent that it also won't work. And now, this is the alternator wire. If you follow it up the tape measure, you can see even with it not stretched out and just sitting here, we're looking at 17 ft of wire. Like I said, 13 is the quote unquote limitation for this. So, I made a massive mistake. And now it's time for me to atone. The harder part is going to be figuring out where to run the wire cuz I think I have to put it underneath the car. Going through the car, as I showed you with the hole, I don't think works. I think the main feed line can still work that way without the need wire. It has to go somewhere else. And I I I'll figure it out. I'll let you know when I do. I'm underneath the car. Like I said, we thought we had an issue with the timing marker being slightly off.

[00:10:15]And I'll put these images on screen for you that I took cuz it's hard to see with your own eyes. So, this is the first picture I have. I'll put on screen for you. You can see our new timing marker that we made is at dead on 30° of timing. And without moving the motor on the other timing marker, you can see we're in between our two white lines we have drawn there. Pretty much dead on in between. Now, I'm at an angle, so it might be towards that bottom line with the three dots. Turn the motor over so we can take a look at where that is. And it looks like it can be really hard to see on camera. I apologize. We might be 2 to 4° short actually on our timing marker. Again, I'll put the picture back over so you can get a reference as to where it's supposed to be. And this is where those lines line up. So, looks like we're actually at probably 26, maybe 25° of timing when we're at 30, which would make sense as to why our spark plugs look like it's so lacking on timing, because it is. We thought we had 28 in it. We might add 24, which is fine. We just know that we have to read the spark plug. And our timing marker is now down 2 to 4° roughly, which also means our last pass was a 1062, our fastest pass at 28° of timing. That means it actually had like 24. So it needs 6 to 10 more degrees of timing, which means we have got more and more and more power for this thing, which is great. That means first day out with this thing, we might run that 1050 number that we want to see. And on top of that, the drivability of this car seems to be better with higher timing.

[00:11:32]So, we can get up in the 30 range and make it drive better for the street.

[00:11:34]That's good. This is all good information. Got the car up. Just finishing doing a nut and bolt check.

[00:11:38]Only found a couple things loose in the suspension. Some of these original factory components that we've tried to reutilize just loosen up a little bit over time. Nothing concerning. Not even like a quarter turn, but still just things that we look at while we're underneath here. And I want to show you the oil filter situation cuz it's really unique. It's going to be hard to see. I apologize, but obviously the headers are custom made. You can see we made the headers with just enough space to squeeze the filter out in case we had to do it on the roadside. So, this is kind of a pain, but it's done. I didn't record it cuz it wasn't too interesting.

[00:12:09]I just wanted to show you how we had to make these headers. I mean, look how they sweep all the way out to the frame rail just to squeeze in. It was a lot of work. And this right here is really cool. This is something new I'm trying that I've never done before. So, if any of you guys have ever done like big battery cable work, zero gauge, double zero, you know it's a pain in the butt.

[00:12:26]and to keep it on hand is really expensive. Anywhere from like five plus, you know, for the cheap stuff that's good. The good stranded cable that you want, you're talking5, $65 a foot. And that's if you buy it in bulk. Now, I called Powermaster, the alternator company who does the alternator on all of our cars. And I said, "Dude, what do I do about this? You know, I need to run the zero. Should I buy it in bulk? Where do you buy it from? Who's the best source?" And they told me to reach out to Battery Cables USA. Not a sponsor, by the way, but maybe they should cuz here's their stuff in a box right here.

[00:12:56]So, what you can do on Battery Cables USA is you see I ordered some extra lugs. You can actually just measure your cable, measure the ends, tell them what you need and how long it needs to be, and they'll make it crimped for you, send it to you, crimped, ready to install, just run it. And it actually costs the same as just buying raw cable.

[00:13:14]So, if you just do your measurements, maybe add an extra foot for safety and buy lugs in case you have to cut it down, it shows up like this. It is crimped with the correct ends on at the correct length. Sealed shrink sleeved everything. And you can see it's single zero. Their ultra flex welding cable. So this is their highest flexibility wire.

[00:13:33]And you can see this is zero. Look at the way this zero moves. If anybody's ever worked with zero, you know what a pain in the butt this is. But look at this. This will be really easy to run throughout the car. This is what they recommended to use for automotive use like this. So this is really cool. I'm super excited to see if this works cuz I'm sick of dealing with zero gauge stuff. So, if we can just measure and order it, this is amazing. I'm going to get to work on installing those. Right now, I want to show you really quick the step up in wire size. This is the two gauge on the right that we were running versus the zero. So, it's not like it's huge, but you can tell there's a lot more copper strand in there. I mean, you can really see it when you put it side by side and look close. This should be a substantial difference, which is really exciting. I say it a lot. I don't know why wiring stuff excites me. I think I'm insane. I think I should be locked up institutionalized for my thoughts. So, as you can see, I got us on the throughput back there, which again is it's just so hard to look at. I hate it.

[00:14:22]But I've got this wire run how I want it to be run all the way here up the vehicle. And I've got it tight to everything I want it to be close to.

[00:14:28]Looks like it runs through pretty clean.

[00:14:30]But like I said, I ordered everything about a foot long. Here's the lug it's supposed to go to like this. And you can see with it sitting here, it's pretty much exactly a foot long. So, I played it safe in ordering this stuff cuz I've never used battery cables. I didn't know how they did their measurements. But now I see they're measuring from, you know, lug opening to lug opening. So, next time I can just order the exact length and get it perfect and not have to do this. But, I ordered extra lugs and I have the tools. So, I'll cut this down and we'll see what the other wire looks like when I'm done with this. So, I'm going to attempt to do this with just some Amazon tools that I have. So, first I'm going to mark the wire. I'm going to mark it right at the lug cuz technically speaking, well, right where the point is supposed to be, the lug's going to stick out a little bit further. So, the lug kind of gives you extra length. Gives me room for error. If I screw it up, I can do it twice. I got these Amazon cutters.

[00:15:12]Put it right on my mark. Make sure we're pretty straight. Just eye it up. Good squeeze.

[00:15:18]There she goes. Off with the end. This is reusable, although it's short. Could be used for something in the future. So, that's kind of nice. So, now you can see the wire is the right length with the lug on. It's going to be, you know, just a bit too long, but that's fine cuz then I can redo the end if I don't like the way I do it. Right sleeve off Amazon.

[00:15:33]Slide that over in advance so I don't forget. Amazon stripper tool. This is why I went with battery cables USA. You can see the stranding in the copper is correct. Not that thick strand stuff you get from like any, you know, farm store or something. This is proper stranding.

[00:15:46]And this is all I'm going to use. This is an Amazon kit with a set of dyes and a hand crimp tool. I should be able to do this. I usually put this in a bench vise to make it easier, but should be able to do this by hand and have no problems. So, let's get the end on here.

[00:15:57]This is such fine strand wire. It's honestly hard to pack this into the lug.

[00:16:00]Took me a second to slam that lug on, but honestly, it's such a tight fit lug.

[00:16:04]I don't even know if I need to crimp it.

[00:16:06]It's like I don't think I could pull that off with my hand. I It took me a minute to get it on there, but the lug is on. And as we can see with it in this location, we have a little bit of a bubble here cuz I left it a little extra long, but it still runs and works perfectly. So, this should work great. I genuinely don't think it needs the crimp. It's so tight, it's crazy, but we'll do it. And obviously, I'm exaggerating a bit. I would never not crimp a zero gauge wire. That would be ridiculous. Let me find the right die set for this out of my kit. Like I said, I typically do this in the bench vice cuz it's easier to get leverage on it.

[00:16:35]But with how tight this lug is, honestly, I'm not worried about it. This is hydraulic, so you just got to pump the handle and it closes down. Get her set the way you want. And then as it starts to crimp, verify you like the way it looks. Again, this is a tool you can get off Amazon. People wedged on there hard enough. [sighs and gasps] Don't want to over crimp it and break it cuz this thing has a lot of power. Yeah, it should be plenty. And as you can see, nice clean crimp. A little bit of copper hanging out. I kind of should have pushed the uh wire in while I was crimping it, but again, I'm on the bench vice. But good clean crimp. Give it a pull test. Always pull test your wires.

[00:17:06]Let's see. Got the wire here. Grab it with two hands.

[00:17:09][clears throat and snorts] Twist it. Pull it. Oh yeah, she's good.

[00:17:14]Always do this. Every time I make a wire, I grab the end. Full force of a 225lb man. Can't pull it off. I think we're all right. Should be good here.

[00:17:22]And now you can see it's back on there to the correct length with the proper crimp. And I did this with less than $100 in Amazon tools and technically a gas station letter. And next, I have to do the difficult task of taking our 17 ft, I think actually 18 ft alternator wire and finding a way to track it all the way through the car. I have an idea.

[00:17:40]I'm not going to spoil anything. Let's see what happens. So, my major goal was to get the alternator wire out of this loom on the side. And I think I accomplished that. It's hard to see cuz it's buried, but if you look very close, you can see that thick red loom. That is the alternator wire. So it comes out of the same location as before, but instead I have it actually going underneath the carpet underneath the seat underneath back here and coming up by the roll bar where our roll cage bar actually comes up right here and meeting back into the main loom. So it's out from this rocker panel where where things are actually even currently being squeezed just with the one zero gauge in here. So and our alternator wire ended up being the perfect length. So you can see it's wired completely correctly. Alternator wire, main feed, I'm sorry, alternator wire, cut off switch wire, ECU wire.

[00:18:22]Then this is battery ground, ECU ground, and then main feed ground to the front with our battery going to one side of the switch and the switch wire running up to our main feed in the front.

[00:18:31]Everything loomed up, zip tied, and run up. So, all I got to do is grab my keys, key this thing over, and see if it made any fatal errors. I don't know if I have time to run it today, but let's at least see if I screwed it up. I'm going to flip the master cut off, and we're going to look for sparks or fire.

[00:18:50]Okay.

[00:18:51]No sparks, no fire, no funny noises.

[00:18:54]Everything appears to be all right for the most part. Click the key over and see if we actually have power or if I screwed something up really bad.

[00:19:04]All right, we've got power. Car is receiving power. Okay, that's good. That means I've got it mostly correct at least. I see lights are on. Things are flashing. Okay, so at least we have power. That's good. I didn't screw it up too bad. We also did an oil change. So, we're going to try to fire up really quick. We're going to see if the oil pressure is good here. I'll just keep an eye on it. We're going to key it over.

[00:19:27]Oh, there we go.

[00:19:29]70 lb oil pressure. Very nice. Let it heat up a little bit. Also, we're seeing 141 to 143 voltage. I've never seen that much voltage in this car ever. So that's that's really interesting. Actually seeing it tickle up to 14.4 volts on our dash gauge, which it has definitely never done before. So good sign. Not 14.7, but this gauge has always been just a little bit off. So I'll be curious to check the other things. I'm going to let this thing warm up for oil pressure and then when I come back tomorrow, we'll see if this is a done job by checking with a voltmeter. So I didn't have someone to hold the camera for me, but down at our peg there, we were seeing 14.4 and 4 volts under full load. So, we gained 4/10 of a volt technically. But the part that excites me is that on our actual dash, we always saw about 132 to 133. But now in our dash, we're seeing lower 14s, even 144 under full load, whereas before I did down to 132. So, we gained like over a volt, literally over a volt at the actual component side. Now, I was hoping somebody in the comments who knows more about electrical engineering can explain this to me. I don't get how we only gained 4/10 of a volt at the peg, but at the actual component side, we gained a full volt. I'm not 100% sure the science on that, but hopefully someone in the comments can explain this to me cuz I'd love to understand why. All I know is our components are seeing a full volt, if not even over a full volt more when under full load, which is exactly what we wanted to happen. So, overall, this is a complete success. I have the interior to piece back together. It's half done. Got to put the back seat back in in the truck and that's pretty much it. And then the next project will be something a little different but just as important for our drag and drive operation. So if you want to see that, make sure you subscribe and click the bell, click the like button and go in the comments and please explain to me how we gained 4/10 of a volt at the peg but gained a full volt at the component by changing those wires out to zero gauge. I don't understand and I'd love to know. So please tell me in the comments. Until the next video, go