I can't remember if I wrote about the heated seat wiring before or not. Basically, when testing my panel wiring and going through all of the circuits to make sure things work, I discovered that the heated seat wiring was problematic. Anytime I'd flip the switch to turn them on, the fuse would blow immediately (I have the power going through a fuse block with blade fuses). The wiring is really complicated because of how the relays work to switch the seats from low to high - they switch between running in series to running in parallel to pull different amounts of power through the resistor in the seat pad. Because of that, I figured I had just swapped some wires in my setup, so I dug the relays out from between the spar carry through space and spent days trying to understand how it should all work. It doesn't help that the seats didn't come with a wiring schematic. I finally found someone on VAF who had drawn up a schematic for the same heating pads. That helped a lot. In the end, in addition to a swapped wire, my biggest problem was that the DC panel jacks I had mounted on the seat pans were not insulated, so they were causing a short to ground. I couldn't find any jacks that were both insulated and also beefy enough to handle the amperage of the seats, so my nice and tidy setup had to go.
It's not as slick as just having a receptacle in the floor, but with the wiring changes I needed to make, I just decided to throw on some molex connectors. All of the changes worked and I now have fully functioning heat. Making small wiring changes like this sure takes time now that most of the wiring is all zip tied down and in places with limited access. Hopefully this is the last time! I had to splice wires in a number of places to swap them around. I think it's fine given it's just power (vs data), but if I ever have trouble, I'll just pull the spliced wires out and re-run new, uncut lengths.
Back to the FWF wiring! Things are really starting to get tight. The starter wires have to route from the left side over to the starter relay on the right. Given the big elastomer puck on the nose gear, that's easier said than done. I clamped the starter wires, as well as the CHT sensor wires to the engine mount.
Then the wires swing down towards the firewall.
I made a 90 degree bracket to clamp things to the engine mount right by the nose gear. From here, the starter cable swings around the elastomer puck and over to the relay. So another full day and one more wire to show for it!
