Kill Switch (EOC): Where did you install your activator? And what did you use?

[bestclimb]

your welcome, much of the best info in there is from some of the other posters. And the idea for the kill switch came from a tuner board I forget which one. I don't know where the fuel injector relay is on a 4th gen civic (2nd gen crx) but I suspect the system is similar.

[Quezacotl]

I have mine installed on panel, near the shifter, under the radio and ashstray

[myrefugeisintheLord]

Originally Posted by Quezacotl

I have mine installed on panel, near the shifter, under the radio and ashstray

Any pictures?

[bestclimb]

I am of the opinion that the kill switch should be on the shifter. It turns EOC and pulse and glide into a two movement thing. clutch motion, and shifter motion. Then do it again (but different) to restart. On the shut down you just push the button as you are pulling to neutral.

I also think it should be a momentary switch, no chance of it accidently getting left in the off position when you really need to restart the engine (Though if you are doing it right you should not NEED to restart the engine)

[myrefugeisintheLord]

I would agree. I'm definitely putting mine on the shifter.

It would still be good to get as many pictures of EOC kill switches that we can. No matter their location. Pictures help to encourage the imagination, and for some people, the dash is the only way they can go. It won't be as big of a pay off in savings (added time coasting with engine drinking fuel).

By having it on the dash, it would take just as long to kill the engine as it would to use the ignition switch. Only difference would be less wear on the ignition, and no cut-out for the MPG gauges. For some, that's enough. Plus there's an added bonus of no risk hitting the switch while shifting. Pick your battles and ammo.

And yes, a momentary switch would seem to be the safest route if it's on the shifter. But on the dash, I'm not sure having a momentary switch would be safer. On a bumpy road, curve, in traffic, etc, having to make sure your finger is holding the switch down the entire time the engine is shutting off, may add more risk? Flip the switch, use that hand for more stability on the steering wheel for another second, then back down to flip the switch again. ???

I hope this kind of a thread will help people compare options and make the best/safest choice for their situation. And to get the link to the "How To" that would help them achieve what they are after.

Edit: So..... will this thread get to be added to the Wiki - Kill switch page?

[D.O.G.]

Thanks for starting this thread myrefugeisintheLord and thanks to those who've posted photos.

I hadn't considered mounting one on the shifter before reading this thread, but I fitted one yesterday and I love it.

Unlike many, I've used a latching push button (push on / push off) with an indicator light mounted on my vacuum gauge (line of sight), so I'm reminded when it's on or off.

I have two reasons for this:

First, my engine takes a little while to stop. This way I don't have to keep my hand on the shifter until I'm sure it's not going to restart by itself.

Second, I have a long steep hill on my commute where I've had to pulse the brakes to keep speed down while EOCing in the past. Now I can leave the injectors off and use engine braking, keeping the brake vacuum pumped up and charging the battery for free.

[Pawtuckett]

I tried a couple different options before settling on the center console.

This was my first location:


I first tried a momentary push button switch mounted in the shifter knob. Unfortunately, the switch needed to be held down for about two or three seconds, which was too much of a bother for me. So....I swapped in a flip switch (very similar to the one you'll see below in the final pic) and that worked well for a while.

After a period of time, I started having weird engine cutting out problems. The switch is wired to the ground wire of the PGM-FI module on my car, so it's killing the injectors within the cabin instead of going into the engine bay. After a few weeks, I realized that my switch must be the culprit. Turns out that the contacts had been broken slightly and resulted in a bad connection between the ground wire and the switch. Turns out that using hot glue to hold the switch in the shifter knob was a bad idea. Every time I grabbed the shifter knob, it was flexing those connections ever-so-slightly. Enough that over time, the connections went bad.

I decided to change the position of the switch to a more stationary position:


This works beautifully now. No bad connection and all I had to do was slide the switch in to a hole I drilled out. No glue or nothin'.

So, while I had a bad experience with a shifter knob-placed switch, you may have better luck with it.

[pletby]

I mounted mine in the centre console passenger side where my hand would fall easily to. It's close to the floor well below seat height so the passenger never interferes with it. I find that by the time I've shifted into neutral and drop my hand to the switch the engine has just spun down enough to press the button. Will post pic when I get the chance. It's a switch I picked up at Home Depot, lost switch info long ago.

[PaleMelanesian]

Not mine, but cleverly done by Cali. He used an automatic shifter knob on his manual car and replaced the Overdrive button with a kill switch.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...vic-18242.html

[ncc74656m]

I want to throw my hat in the ring, sans actually having done any of this.

I'm a fan of "Go OEM or go home." Which isn't to say you should be factory bone stock, nor only OEM parts, but I like to think how I'd do it if had designed the car myself, and it was done from the factory.

In this case, since most shift knobs are a soft plastic or even a rubber/vinyl substance, it'd be very easy to cut out a recess in the knob for the switch - small momentary switches are easy enough to use and durable (think computer power switch) - and then run the leads right down the shifter, into the boot, and then wherever they need to go from there. Buried into the shift knob like that means you'd have to be trying to engage it.

I strongly encourage using heatshrink (it's cheap, easy, and a good way to protect wires), as well as wire loom - look for braided wire loom, they have fiberglass for heat resistance and nylon available for regular purposes. All of this keeps the wires from getting abraded and failing, which could short out your injectors and shut them down.

You can also look into strain relief boots and the like. If possible, I'd always try to engineer the design to fail on rather than off, so even if you short out or lose connectivity, the injectors just assume they're supposed to keep working.

For reference, there's a good story about the F-16. Early in its life, the F-16 suffered from problems with instrument failures and other issues due entirely to the wire harnesses chafing. The F-16 being fly by wire, without those cables, instruments and controls can just stop working, and in one case, a pilot was flying in a cloud bank and was unaware he was inverted. His plane indicated he was losing altitude, and with no visual reference, he did what a good pilot does and pulled up - driving straight into the ground.

Can this happen to us? Well, no, not exactly, but as pointed out above, having them off at the wrong time could potentially be fatal.

Originally Posted by CigaR007

Just be careful when deciding on the location of the kill switch. It has to be accessible but not too accessible. It could be very dangerous to kill the injectors by accident while upshifting/downshifting during an emergency maneuver.

Safety is number one in my book.

I was in a situation once with my current car where having a manual definitely avoided a collision and probably saved lives. Though I wouldn't have been using a kill switch at this time, it highlights the necessity of having power available at a split second.

Coming from an on-ramp with a relatively sharp curve to it (and thus, no sight onto the highway in the direction you're heading), and a fairly short space to accelerate and merge, you kind of need to carry some speed through the ramp or have a lot of power on tap. This being the Bronx, drivers tend not to care much about whether or not you can merge, and they don't even always move over a lane to let you in, regardless of availability. (New Yorkers, we're nice people.)

As I came through the end of the ramp's curve, though I now had a view of the road ahead, I somehow got preoccupied checking over my shoulder to verify I had room to merge. I was clear, and when I turned back, I had somehow missed a car STOPPED in the immediate right lane. From memory I jumped to the center lane and prayed nobody got in there before I moved as I didn't have a moment to look again.

As soon as I moved into that lane, I saw ANOTHER car stopped in the CENTER lane with some guys trying to push it. I guess they heard me coming, and they bailed, but one of them sprinted into the left lane, and there was no left shoulder. There wasn't enough distance to stop, and not enough room between the car in the middle lane and right lane to move over again at speed in my opinion.

Luck, experience, and maybe skill - my friend calls me "Miss CIA" when I drive because it reminds her of a movie government agent - all came to my aid. Maybe, as your name suggests, myrefugeisinthelord, G-d was keeping an eye on me, or at least the guys pushing the car.

I punched the brake locking the wheels (no ABS), threw the car sideways to the right, slammed it into second gear (don't worry, it ALWAYS grinds like that!), and jumped on the accelerator. As soon as I felt some 'forward' momentum moving towards the right lane, I repeated the same maneuver in the other direction to the left, save the shift since I stayed in second.

Lady Luck, a miracle, and an angel all conspired to let me miss both cars, all of the guys pushing the car, the barrier, and stay on the road. In any circumstance, I would have stopped had I been thinking to make sure nobody got hurt, and even possibly offer help with the stalled car, but I don't think I processed any of the event until I was a mile down the highway. I knew it happened, but there was just zero rational thought happening then.

When I got home thanks to adrenaline let down, I ended up crying for half an hour for no particular reason, and then immediately fell asleep.

I can only assume the eye's natural blind spot was the cause for me missing the cars in the first place, because I can't really otherwise account for how I missed them otherwise. I would never suggest I also somehow made it through all that on skill alone, and all I can say is "Yeah, that really just happened."

"Once again, Zatara, G-d sees you out the corner of his eye." Jacapo - The Count of Monte Cristo

Wow... that was a long post.