Fuse box location questions

[brans72]

I have a AAW 22 kit and looking for ideas where to place it cleanly. Fire wall is shave and thought about under driver side dash off to welded in studs and run wiring near fender so you can not really see it coming out of car. Any body wanna leand a hand on ideas or post pictures of how and where you posted your fuse box? Thanks Brandon

[wmhjr]

Look through my build thread. I made an aluminum bracket and mounted both the AAW Highway 15 box and the MSD 6AL-2 box in the glove box. Smoothed firewall, coil under the dash, etc.

[esenior]

I have a plate under the dash, just to the right of the steering column that I use to mount my AAW kit to.

[Jim Nilsen]

I put mine in the glove box , right on the glove box door so it hinges out for easy access. Not that I ever want to work on it but it is nice for add ons and checking things if needed.

Remember that you will be the one working on it later so make it easy on yourself.

[brans72]

Jim mind sharing a picture? Brandon

[gearbanger]

You know, I am dealing with exactly the same thing, and I am thinking about putting it in the trunk either on a filler panel behing the back seat or mounting it under the filler panel between the trunk lid and the rear window.

[wmhjr]

Just be careful about trunk placement. Unless you're using something like ISIS, going to the trunk will require additional cabling because some of those circuits may need to go for example from the engine compartment, back to the trunk, and then forward to switches in the dash. Likewise, some of the circuits on the dash may need to go from a switch on the dash, back to the trunk, and then back up to the dash or cockpit area. Additionally, consider how difficult it may be to work around the placement in the event of an issue. Even though I designed my electrical system up front, there were still a couple of adjustments that I needed to make after the fact - and I'm expecting a couple more. If it is difficult to get to the panel/box you're asking for trouble. I would have loved to have hidden the box behind a panel in my trunk, but it would have been an inefficient design. It's hard to beat the glove box area or somewhere in the vicinity of the dash because of the relative central location to all circuits and the ease of maintenance.

[brans72]

Bump we need pictures guys.

[wmhjr]

OK, Here are some that might help...

You can see the vertical part of the bracket and the fuse box through the opening in the dash at this point


Another pic looking straight in. On the left you see the fuse box mounted vertically to a backplane part of the fabricated bracket. On the right you see the MSD 6AL2 ignition box. NOTE: When doing this and routing the ignition wires as I did it's important to get better shielded wires than what comes stock from MSD. Call MSD and they'll give you specifics. Otherwise, the fact that I've routed the wires between the 6AL2 and the distributor along with all kinds of other wires can cause some issues.


Here you see behind the glove box area. Just above the kick panel vent opening you see a grommet/seal that allowed me to route wires from inside the cockpit into that area. You also see the bracket that the fuse box and ignition are mounted to.


A closeup shot of the grommet/seal used. An identical one was on the upper passenger corner of the firewall which is hidden by the passenger side fender. This allowed the wires from the engine compartment to be routed cleanly and out of sight into the interior/cockpit.


Don't know if this helps.

[gearbanger]

See I have vintage air, and I just don;t think I have the room to do what you did. The VA and ductwork takes up a ton of your firewall space.

I agree that there will be some inconveniences but having a trunk the size of a coffin, I am thinking that will be alot better than laying up under the dash if you had to work on something.

[Jim Nilsen]

here is something to give you an idea. I am having to clean up my attachments to even have room for pics.

[wmhjr]

See I have vintage air, and I just don;t think I have the room to do what you did. The VA and ductwork takes up a ton of your firewall space.

I agree that there will be some inconveniences but having a trunk the size of a coffin, I am thinking that will be alot better than laying up under the dash if you had to work on something.

I think you might be mistaken. I took up no more room than the actual glove box itself took up stock, so if you have a functional glove box you have more than enough room to do what I did.

As for the trunk, I can't say strongly enough how bad of a location I think the trunk is for the fuse box in a non-track car. First of all, when I need access to the fuse box I sit on my passenger seat and open the glove box. I then have complete access. Nuff said. It is the absolute easiest electrical system to work on that I have ever touched. If I were to do it again I'd slightly shift the box to the right to get just a hair better straight screwdriver access to the circuit screws. I am using an AAW 15 which is slightly smaller in length/width (did that for a reason) but even the HW22 will fit in there. More importantly, think about the circuits. There is a LOT of extra wire involved in putting the box in the trunk. Consider for example all the switches. So, now a headlight and high beam need to go from behind the dash, all the way back to the trunk, then all the way back forward, through the dash, etc. If you're running ISIS it's a different story. But with a traditional wiring system, good luck with that. Then, think about maintenance later. So all that wire is under your carpet and you find you have a wiring issue. So, you're troubleshooting. Exactly how many colors of wire do you have? So the green wire coming from the HL switch back to the fuse box which then has to go back forward (just an example) is REAL hard to differentiate. Which one that you trace is from the switch? Which one from the box? And to work on it you have to remove the seats and pull the carpet? And if you have to work on dash wiring, the fact that the box is in the trunk still does nothing to avoid being under the dash. Of course, in my car it's 4 1/2" bolts and the seat lifts out. Takes about 3 minutes. Then think about subsequent modifications. You decide to wire in a wideband A/F system later. With the trunk box, you're probably ripping the carpet up yet again. If it's in the dash, the hardest part is getting the sensor wire up to where you want it. I am not making this up - it took me a total of about 15 minutes to wire in my Innovate LM2. Maybe 20 minutes if you also add in the time I spent securing the sensor wires cleanly under the car.

I really like what Jim did. The only reason I did not do it is because I was a little conservative and wanted to avoid flexing all the lines all the time. I was probably overly cautious, and really like his design. Either way, especially after having completely wired every single part of my car (a friend and I) and touching every single circuit - on a car which BTW has a power top but no power windows, no A/C, no heater, no fan - there is no way I could either consider nor recommend moving the box to the trunk.

[wmhjr]

here is something to give you an idea. I am having to clean up my attachments to even have room for pics.

Jim, as usual your work and detail are superb.

[gearbanger]

Yeah, I can see what you are saying. I will have to look harder at putting it under the dash. I really want to keep a glove box though. Even with vintage air, you have to use a plastic half glove box that attaches to the glove box lid.

[brans72]

very nice layout Jim gives me a idea, just now gotta get it to work.

[gearbanger]

I finally got invloved in this and after drawing the schematics, I decided the wiring would be quite a bit more involved if I mounted it in the rear. And, I really would have to get in the trunk to reach the fuse panel in a GTO. You could probably reach it pretty easy with a bird or camaro but the trunk is huge in these a-bodies. So I was about to make a good heavy bracket out of 1/8x 1.25 steel that bolts to the top of the pedal bracket and to the bottom lip of the dash. It orients the fuse box face down and fits it right behind the ash tray. Everything will be easy to access and the wiring should be easy to do as well. Thanks for making me take a second look at this guys, I had already given up on under the dash.

[gearbanger]

I just wanted to post back what I did on the HWY 22 location. From the diagrams that I did on whether to put it in back or front, it was going to to 22-23 wires going from the front to and from the trunk if I mounted it in the trunk versus 7-8 if I mounted it under the dash. So I wanted to try and do the dash but it wasn't really that big a deal to me anyway.

I did come up with a nice mount that locates the panel face down where it can be easily wired and accessed for maintenance, and retained the glove box, ashtray, stereo, etc. It also creates a nice "floor for the are behind the dash so a/c hose, wires etc can't sag down and show if you don't get them tied up out of the way just right. It's hard to tell by the pics, but the box is fluch with the bottom of the dash, and sits right beside the pedal bracket and right behind the ashtray and the stereo. It was tight but fit perfectly.

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