How I love running wire...

Last night I worked on getting my NGK AFX Wideband O2 kit installed. I have an appointment later today to have a bung welded into the exhaust for the sensor, so I wanted to have everything else taken care of ahead of time that way I can get it installed and not have to get the car up on ramps to take care of the sensor installation at home.

I did some digging online and found that there is an unused switched spot in the fusebox behind the passenger footwell kickplate...I never even knew that was there! Pull back the floor mat, and the plate just pops right off. Very cool. I wound up going to CarQuest to get something that fits over a fuse lead that allows you to add a circuit without having to do any cutting on the car's stock wiring.

I never found a good writeup on where to find a good ground location. I had just about resigned myself to running the ground wire into the engine compartment and grounding it near the battery, but with having that fuse block and the BCM right there, I knew that there had to be a ground terminal nearby. I pulled off the plastic door sill trim piece and found it. There is a pretty hefty connector bolted to the frame that has around 8 ground wires all going to it. I figured that was a safe bet ;o)

To get the O2 harness into the engine compartment, I took pictures and then took the pins out of the connector. With the battery out of the car, I just pulled the electrical tape off of the large wiring harness that passes into the passenger compartment. A foot of electrical tape, a snake, and a little cursing later, I had the wiring harness pulled through. I reconnected everything, reinstalled the battery, and put the O2 sensor harness connector back together. I hung the harness from the corner of the hood and plugged in the sensor so that I could do the "free air calibration".

It came right up and the calibration was easy. I left it hanging/on for 30 minutes to ensure that the calibration was accurate.

After the bung/O2 sensor installation today, all I need to do is pull the extra harness back into the passenger compartment, button up the fuse box, figure out where to mount the AFX's display box (probably the biggest thing...its fugly, so I am tempted to mount it in the glove box...realistically I will just be using it for data logging, so once I have HP Tuners configured to match the displayed AFR on the AFX box (tongue twister?), I shouldn't need to have the box out and visible.

The only other thing that I want to do before I consider this wideband O2 and HPTuners installation complete (other than the tuning, of course), is detach the ODBII port from the stock location and do a semi-permanent installation of the HP Tuner's ODBII cable that runs to the glove box...I want everything out of the way and not visible. I can't say that I am a fan of doing data logging while driving with the ODBII cable dangling between my knees.

My poor dog, Wesley probably felt abandoned last night. His 'Mom' is out of town and I was down in the garage for several hours. I'll make it up to him later this week once I have this out of the way :)

Sore hands? Check. Upset pet? Check. Magically functional car voodoo? Check.

Feels like a real car project to me.