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I'm trying to manage lots of stuff in life, like keeping multiple plates in the air at the same time.
I've blogged every day this month until yesterday. I've started (sort of) walking on the treadmill. Had a reasonable day at work today. And I worked on the Beetle, yay!
The next thing I need to do to the gas tank is seal it, but that requires an a couple of hours with the sun out that I'm not doing anything else. I need to pour in the sealer and rotate and tip the tank over in different positions for a while. Supper got done too late to do that today.
So I worked on the starter instead. One of the weird design quirks of this car is that the current to run the starter solenoid goes through the main supply wire to the front of the car, to the ignition key switch, then back through the wiring harness to the starter itself. That vintage switch is switching 30 amps every time you start the car, which is the equivalent to the entire electrical system.
To reduce the load on that switch, I'm installing a bypass relay that powers the starter solenoid from the fat wire coming straight from the battery which means that the main key switch is only switching a fraction of an amp. This sort of thing is sometimes called a "hard start" relay, but that's not its purpose.
I've always meant to put it on the car, but the reason I'm doing it now specifically is that I'll be cranking the engine over for a while to get the oil system pumped up and primed before starting the engine. I may have to crank the engine for a bit.
Here's the relay on the starter and mostly wired up. I need a larger ring terminal for the blue (ground) wire to go to the starter stud and provide a current path for the ignition switch starter current.
