****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I love This.The wiring harness in my 99 Honda prelude burnt up. I was on the highway with the ac on, wipers on full blast when basically white smoke and then wipers and AC fails forever. I brought my vehicle to the honda dealership. 1400 dollars in labor and me having to junkyard find a new harness and fuse-box. And guess what? The ac and wipers still don't work engine cooling fan and AC cooling fan do not turn on. Turns out grounding signals in the ECM are not getting sent for the cooling fans, wipers or ac thermostat. I buy a new ECM. The car will not start with missing sensors undetected by the new ECM. So I put the old ECM back in and now at least my car starts and everything besides the cooling fans, wipers and AC works. 2000 dollars gone without solving my only concern. Was about to give up on the car to the junkyard even though it has a new paint-job and a beautiful interior.LIGHT BULB. Why don't I just locally rewire the systems I need?Here is what I did.I ordered 100ft of 12 gauge 12vdc speaker wiring. 20 bucksTHIS APO box. 60 bucksBullz audio inline fuse holders(20pack) 10 bucksand 20a and 30a blade fuses (20pack). 4 bucksA pre-programmed cooling fan kit with thermostat and 20a relay. 30 bucks(Derale 16738 180 Degree Farenheit Single Stage Electric Fan Controller)Drok 12v aquarium thermostat (1amp switching) 25 bucks5 pack of bosch style 12v 30amp relays 15 bucksFor this amount of cutting and stripping do yourself a favor and get a sharp pair of milwalkee dikes, best 20 bucks I ever spent.I cut the wires on both the load and output of the APO box. I set the dip-switches for 13.5v the maximum for my car this means as soon as the alternator turns off the apo box shuts the load side off, viola! No hacking into existing ignition wires and it shuts off when the car is off. Using an inline fuse holder and a 20amp fuse I connected the load positive to the battery, via screw terminal and quick disconnect on the apo side. The negative straight to the negative. I mounted this close to my battery near my air intake in an empty space, so I wanted to run an actual ground directly to my battery. On the load side of the apo I made my own 12ga 3 way splitter with quick disconnects. So a total of 4 female disconnects for positive and negative. The apo box load I attached male quick disconnects to both.The first wire goes to the thermostat.I already had a cd player with a 1din plastic space holder so I cut a lip that could be bent down the same size as the tiny drok thermostat the plastic is think so it did not break. I wired the thermostat up to a manual switch which is connected to one of the 3 plugs on the load side (it draws only 1a) Grounded to the body. Instead of drilling through the firewall, I found a small hole in the plastic air vent to be the best place to run the wires. Seal with silicone after done! on most cars you will need to remove the window wipers and protective plactic vent cover to access it. If you drop the glovebox you will see the plastic vent where you wires are. Its very easy to do a nice tuck to the center console with no bothers. I had to extend the wire for the probe on the one I purchased, which meant I had to re-calibrate it to accurately read temperature when It was all said and done but that was very very simple. I went cheap so my thermostat reads temperatures in C only but it works exactly like it is supposed to as a matter of fact my ac works better than the stock ac the car came with.The second wire goes to the cooling fan thermostatI then installed my cooling fan relay kit hooking the relay power directly to battery with its own 20amp inline fuse, I mounted and grounded it to the body in front of the radiator where it can stay nice and cool. I then hooked the signal wire up to the thermostat. and the other end of the thermostat goes to the positive of the apo, when the temperature is reached AND the apo load is on. Current is drawn through the relay which has a direct connection to the battery. You might be able to see how I am using this apo not to switch heavy loads itself, but to trigger relays which have their own fused direct connection to the battery. I cut the positive wires heading to my ac cooling fan and ac compressor, with quick disconnects I attached a 30a fuse and relay back to the battery. I attached the thermostat signal output to the switch input of the relay. Now if my battery voltage is below 13.5 my ac compressor will not turn on! Basically that means when the key is turned off, everything I have added will also be switched off automatically. The Drok thermostat cools when the temp reaches 15C and over, and it cools down to 10C. It will then reactivate when the temperature becomes greater than 15C. I put the probe zip tied tightly against the low pressure inlet bare metal and used thermal tape around it to further protect it. After checking it against a mercury thermometer and adjusting it to compensate for the length of wire I added, It works just perfectly. Most people would just attach the probe to the air-vent somewhere or try and replace the factory probe located inside of the condenser located near the glove box. This is a pain is the ass, and unnecessary. probing the low pressure side is the best way to ensure you are not overworking your compressor.The third wire goes to the windshield wiper motor relay.A 3rd and final 20a relay is used, with a fused direct connection to battery the APO feeding the signal wires activating the relay.In the case of my car I have a 5 wire wiper motor input. from left to right there are 3 pins on top and 2 below 1 through 5. Wire number 4 (bottom left) is supposed to be always hot lead from the relay. The wiper switch on your steering wheel grounds either pin 1 for high speed, or pin 2 for slow speed. Wires 3 and 5 are signal wires. The timer function waits for 3 to 5 v on these wires the voltage charges a capacitor which discharges in a set amount of time and grounds pin 2 momentarily. This is your vehicles intermittent wiper function (although your vehicle may be different!)Basically I x-ed the intermittent function (for now) The low and high wiper grounds work without a hitch and with the new relay with a fresh connection and low battery protection provided by this APO I feel like it works better than it used to.Its a little shotty but the red lights actually match the clock and instrument panel of the stock car, I took 2 pics below to show it with the "work" light on and then off.After trying to have these issues resolved at the dealership. Spending 2000 and getting nowhere.Then getting the DIY fever, only Spending 164 bucks on Amazon and 2 days on the weekend of my time; fixing every problem Is so satisfying.This APO is tiny, it fits easily in many places and gives you alot of options for switching loads on devices. It is easy to use, it has 4 voltage settings and It probably has unlimited DC applications but overall I am very satisfied with the use I have found for it. Would definitely purchase again for other projects.
