As I have mentioned before I am going to use flappy paddles on the back of the wheel to operate the gearbox. After doing the column, it was sort of progressive to sort out the steering wheel. My first issue were the paddles themselves. Well, that’s a bot mean to the paddles really, it was more that I have selected one of the smallest steering wheels available, so that fat bodgers like me can actually fit in the car, but this meant that when I held the paddle blocks on the back of the wheel I couldn’t fit my hands around the rim as the paddles were in the way. I contacted Neil and he said he could make me some smaller paddles to bolt on, as they are carbon bolt on bits you can have them any size you like, but that as a one off they might be quite expensive. I therefore decided to trim mine down and see if I could make them fit. If not I could always make ally ones myself.
So I mounted the paddle blocks as close to the release boss as possible and them trimmed the paddles down. Eventually, after about three or four goes of it just not quite being right, it was sorted. It is now perfect!
The next thing on the wheel were the buttons. The gearbox control unit, GCU, has neutral interlock on it to stop you going down into neutral whilst driving along. hence I needed to put this button somewhere, and I decided the wheel, mainly to make it match the 935 so the placement of all the buttons were kept similar. now you can buy button holder things, but I have to say I think they look naf and they don’t really fit my small steering wheel, so as ever, I decided to make my own arrangement.
I started out buy making a paper template. You can see from all the different colours I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted!
After trimming it to suit, I transposed it to a bit of carbon we had lying around. Its amazing what is lying around in the workshop really, lots of bits that were tried, disposed of as no good, developed and updated..
One tip is to stick masking tape to the carbon and draw on that. You can mark carbon with white paint pens but it tends to run and things like brake cleaner wash it off..
I then drilled it for all of the mounting holes for the paddles and boss and bolted it on. The buttons were next to go on and I just used the standard buttons from the items to be used, such as radio and GCU. The final button is for pitlane speed limit, which is only a single wire to the ECU. I know I prolly wont need it for a long time, but seeing as I am doing the car now, and to put it in now takes about five minutes I may aswel. If I were to put it in later when the whole loom is done, not only will it not look as good, but it will take a lot longer to do.
Of course the wheel now HAD to go onto the column and many more car noises HAD to be made!
The last, and by no means least, thing was to actually wire up the wheel itself. this was where the fun started. I had assumed, how nieve I am, that the limo, being wired up when I bought it, would be constant. ie black to black and so on. No no no. I thought I had the limo in wrongly but I checked both and they were in correctly. hmm it must have been operator error with the probe, nope. It seems that mine is just random! So after more time with he probe I had it all mapped out.
I wanted/needed to do a diagram so when it comes to the loom I know what is what, this obviously confused matters greatly as the wire in the column, say red for power, became green at the steering wheel!
So after sorting it all out back onto actually wiring it up. This is a pretty fiddly job as there is not much space. I think thought that it is pretty neat, especially considering we are not wiring pros by any means!
It was decided to leave the curly wires as they are screen, and it has been known for the radio to puck up interference. I know it is only a little bit of screening and they all get together for a party in the limo, but something is better than nothing right? I have now glued on a tywrap boss to hold all the wires, and it is much neater!
Tags: Gearchange, Wiring
