Dakota Digital install with American Autowire harness- ETA adding TCI 4L60E control to the install

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kkgp81

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1978
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K10
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Well that was an adventure. Even with my "man paws" as the wife says, I was able to get those nuts tightened down behind the VA unit without moving it. It was literally 1/8 of a turn at a time with an open ended wrench, but got it done,


LOL yeah. I was trying to simply pull a smidge more of the harness from under the dash into the engine bay and its tight. even in place I am not sure I could get a wrench on the nuts. Either way its a very cool product for the purpose.
 

kkgp81

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Texas
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Kelley
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1978
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K10
Engine Size
350
Update on the Vintage Air side of things:

I am using a painless AC/Fan relay setup. It has 3 relays to work through the operation. I think 2 turn on a fan each off the thermal connection and the third turns on a single fan when the AC is activated.


I ran and connected the wires from the relay to the fans. I used some of those “waterproof” or weatherproof connections for this.
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I then hit the trinary switch- one blue leg to the chassis ground. One blue leg to the fan relay. One black leg to the signal coming from the signal inside on the controller, and one black leg to the AC compressor.
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Starting to clean up the other side of the support structure. Mostly just cleaning up the wiring. One note here is the orange wire which is the 12v acc signal for the fan relays. I still need to term this but AA includes this in the wiring harness which is great.
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Another set of wires from the corner over to the motor- includes 2 fan relay for the thermals. It’s odd that it’s done this way in the painless harness but maybe it’s kind a redundant system where at least one relay will close if a loose wire event happens. Also in here is the AC compressor trigger.


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SquareRoot

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This is all too familiar! I'm so glad mine is done. Make sure you take the time to create a schematic of every wire and device location as you go. It will be worth it's weight in gold down the road when something goes haywire.
 

kkgp81

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Location
Texas
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Kelley
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1978
Truck Model
K10
Engine Size
350
This is all too familiar! I'm so glad mine is done. Make sure you take the time to create a schematic of every wire and device location as you go. It will be worth it's weight in gold down the road when something goes haywire.

I have a folder going for this one the same as my other 86 I’ve done this to. Make notes on each drawing and have them all in a folder.
 

kkgp81

Full Access Member
Joined
Jan 23, 2023
Posts
115
Reaction score
154
Location
Texas
First Name
Kelley
Truck Year
1978
Truck Model
K10
Engine Size
350
Major milestone- the smoke test…

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