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We used DR-25 heat shrink on the alternator charge wire because… well… why not?When a bare wire passes through a bulkhead or firewall it must be grommeted. Do not forget this critically important step. Especially as this is a power wire directly off the output of the alternator! If a bare hole’s sharp edge cut through the insulation of this wire and were able to touch the conductor inside, you would have the alternator directly connected to chassis ground. That would probably be a very exciting moment, followed by some very terrifying moments.
The Toyota alternator charge connection is just a big lug on the alternator.We used an appropriate sized ring terminal, and added a nice little red heat shrink boot to minimize the possibility of accidentally causing a short circuit.
With the alternator wire connected, we had just about completed the last of the wiring work. You might recall that we had a Racepak Smartwire Switchpanel. Racepak sells convenient pre-terminated cables in fixed lengths that go between the Smartwire and the Switchpanel. We quickly connected that up and it was now time to do the super scary thing – it was time to throw the main switch and power up the Racepak Smartwire!
ZOMG! We had finally done it! We had arrived.The car was finally powered. Nothing was on fire (yet). We could breathe a sigh of relief! For a short while, anyway. We went off to the Racepak website and downloaded the DataLink II software that is used to connect to the Smartwire for programming it.
With the USB cable connected to our laptop and the Racepak Smartwire, we were able to read its configuration. Everything seemed to be going OK!But not so fast. Since quite a long time had elapsed between when we received the Smartwire and when we fired it up, Racepak had issued some new firmware for the device. So, before we got too involved in its programming, we made sure to update that by carefully following the instructions in the Smartwire programming manual.
