Second coat of Rustoleum went on the passenger seat hardware tonight. As someone pointed out in another thread, it's nice using oil-based enamel -- if you have to wait two days between coats, no problem. Fume control while painting is being handled excellently by the bathroom vent fan. Makes me think it will be easier to fabricate small fiberglass parts than I originally thought -- no need for an outdoor workshop if I can just cover the bathroom in protective plastic and turn on the fan before I work.

Also made a tiny bit of progress on the RKE installation tonight, before I had to get back to my homework. The RKE module includes a way to send a ten-second signal to the parking lights when the "unlock" button is pressed. I added a relay to give my car this functionality. This makes a total of four relays -- one for the lock signal, one for the unlock signal, one for the starter kill, and one for the parking lights. There's also a "trunk pop" option which involves -- you guessed it -- another relay! (Obviously I am not using this since I don't have a trunk actuator -- yet.) I don't know where the manufacturer of this system expects folks to get all of this extra space for relays. Modern cars always seem to have everything crammed into as little space as possible. For my installation, I plan on getting a project enclosure from Radio Shack, cutting the appropriate holes in it, and mounting it inside the driver's cubby hole for easy access.

The great thing about this system is that every pulse it sends is negative. I was concerned with having to install diodes everywhere, but since all I have to do is make connections to ground, and most everything on the car is switched ground anyway, it's not as much of a fuss as I thought it would be.

Anyway, here's where I am with that:

SANY0114.jpg

You can see that, as usual, I am labeling the relay sockets. And just for fun, I used some of the old relay sockets that I removed from the car a little while ago.