ideola

I've been researching wiring options for my track car project. After choking on the price of the newly announced PDM units from MoTeC, I started looking for an alternative, and found ISIS Intelligent Multiplex Systems. It is less than half the cost of the MoTeC PDM setup, and about 25% more than a conventional harness from Painless, with many many advantages in terms of weight, programmability, flexibility, etc. etc.

I also found a very healthy thread (12+ pages) on http://www.pro-touring.com that gets into the usual pro-con discussion. Rather than distill all of that information here, I'd suggest that anyone interested take the time to peruse that thread. There are a couple of links to documented installs, along with two very informative videos.

More to the point, that forum is currently running a group buy on the ISIS 3-cell starter kit. The group buy is open to participation through 14 August. I am 98% certain that I will be participating. Just thought I would extend the opportunity to the Rennlist community, as this could be a very attractive alternative to anyone working on a complete frame-off build like I am...

ideola

Anyone interested in participating in the group buy should contact wellis77 on pro-touring.com using his email address: wellis999 AT gmail DOT com

Geoffrey

I can tell you that the MoTeC PDM is awesome and if you are building a GT type car, it makes a lot of sense to install one.

ngoldrich

I have the PDM32 Geoffrey mentions and it is awesome.

I just watched Two Guys Garage on speed and I believe they used the ISIS system building a GTM supercar (kit car).

Looked pretty cool. The system they showed was programmable and modular however still used fuses.

Motec now has club level PDM's as well...

Norm

ideola

No doubt the PDM stuff is awesome. The price is too! Even the "club level" PDM15 retails for $2K, and that is just for the PDM, no wiring or cabling. The ISIS 3-cell kit retails for $1K. Add in the dash harness and programmer interface, you're at $1.3K. So, 50% order of magnitude difference in cost...pretty attractive for a guy like me who's not looking to build a dedicated racer.

There are two main Littelfuse fuses per output box to protect the battery and wiring, not at all the same thing as a conventional fuse block, and there are no relays. Fully programmable, plus they're coming out with a very nifty remote wireless touchscreen controller.

A.Wayne

Shameless Geoffrey ,,,,,,,

ideola

Hmmmmm....wonder what's in here?!?!?

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Master Cell || Power Cell


Fuse Block || inCODE


The whole shebang...well, except for all the wires-n-stuff


I included a standard Bosch relay in the photo to give you a sense of the size of these things. They're not little. Would be a challenge to hide in a car that you wanted to keep looking stock. But I don't care about that for the UWB...these should be great for a race car.

Jeff Lamb

Looks pretty cool. I will probably install the ISIS or the Motec PDM setup in my race car but I haven't really researched either one yet. Out of curiosity, how much do those ISIS components weigh?

Jeff

Mahler9th

Interesting stuff. Looks like it is targeted to more complex vehicles with more circuits than a typical Porsche racing car used for typical amateur racing. Same for the Motec stuff.

I designed a simple race car wiring scheme for my 951 back in the day... but I never implemented it because I sold the car and bought a 911.

I have wired three 911 race cars including my own... all have have a relatively simple Haltech Fi set up. Two using the factory CD box and mine has MSD. Including a couple of spares and circuits for video and a cool shirt, there just aren't that many circuits. In my case, I even have headlights for the occasional drive on the street after dark. Very straightforward circuit and harness design and very easy to install, including shrink wrap in appropriate places.

These products look great, but I don't think they will make a race car any faster or easier to service/maintain. Or safer, compared to a careful custom job... and the latter needn't take 40 or more hours.

Pretty cool stuff though.

ideola

I haven't gotten around to weighing the individual components yet, but the complete box as pictured in the photo above, which contains about 90% of what I'll need to wire my car, weighed 19# according to the shipping invoice. In comparison, when I removed a complete car harness from an early 924 and shipped it overseas, the box weighed 40#. Not sure what a 944 harness weighs, but I would expect it to be about the same, maybe a pound or two heavier.

Also, in case anyone has any interest at all, I've been working on the wiring diagram for my build, which will involve a DTAFast S60 Pro and a Racing Technology DASH2 display. With a little help from the boys at ISIS, here is what I've come up with so far. Note that this diagram doesn't depict the "chassis" circuits (lights, etc.), just the primary systems for running the car. Here is the latest GIF image (click the image to go to my picasa album and use the zoom feature there to see it at full size) and link to the source Visio.

ideola

Here's a much improved diagram...lots of minor corrections, added essentially all of the circuits, cleaned up the routing, and tried to match as best as possible the color codes on the ISIS ins and outs.

DOWNLOAD -> VISIO SOURCE FILE
DOWNLOAD -> HIGH RESOLUTION PDF


Just to be clear, my car (a highly modified Porsche 924 Turbo) has a rear-mounted transaxle, and I have also developed a custom axle-driven alternator setup, which explains why I have some of the components depicted at the bottom of the page (representing the rear of the car...). I'm still sorting out how to connect up the wipers and climate fan, and haven't yet decided how to map a bunch of the switch inputs into the Mastercell, so those bits are still incomplete.

A.Wayne

Pretty interesting setup Ideola , I notice a hook-up for a horn , I thought this was a track only car ?...

Remember to gnd the S60 case and best to have the ecu gnd straight to the battery ..

ideola

Thanks for the tip on the S60, I think I recall seeing that in the instruction manual.

Actually, this car will be see combined street & track duty. I'm not planning to race competitively, it's mainly a big learning toy for me. In any event, I may not bother with the horn, but I depicted it on the diagram since it's one of the default circuits for the ISIS setup.