TheTurtlesHead's Fuse Box to Boot Relocation Guide

So I woke up the other day and decided, that despite promising myself I wouldn't start with all the loom-tucking and hiding, I needed to get involved! So, the first thing I thought I would tackle is relocation of the fuse box! I know that many people put it under the headlight, and Hodge has his in his glove box. However, I am quite fond of being able to throw crap in my glove box to stop it bouncing around the car. I also didn't fancy having to remove a headlight to get at a relay/ fuse that has gone wrong, as I have had a fuse and a relay die on me when I was out before. So, I had a look and decided that the most logical place was the space behind the rear seats, where the sub normally goes. So, without further ado, here is my fusebox to boot relocation guide!

Disconnect and remove your battery. To remove the fusebox board from the case, first remove the two 10mm nuts you can see here, and the larger 13mm nut inside the red box at the top of the picture, it just clips open, and the nut is inside. Also pull the rubber and plastic seal, gently from the box as you pull it out.

Next, undo the 2x 10mm bolts that hold the fusebox to the engine bay.

Next, undo this nut and cable on the bottom of the fuse box, it's the main power into the fusebox from the battery.

Next, undo these two plugs that are attached to the lower part of the fuse box. they are also clipped to the box itself, to remove, insert a screwdriver like shown and gently pry the clip loose, they're easy, unlike some clips on a supra!

Its worth noting that my entire engine bay loom is hidden, as I went for a full wire-tuck at the same time as I did this. So where I refer to you poking the wires for the loom extensions through the hole where the washer bottle pokes through, I am referring to where I would ru nthe wires on a standard, un wire tucked car

Also if anyone can tell me how I make the pictures appear in the post that would be great! Cheers!

Ok, so now you are going to want to modify the fuse box so that it will sit flat on the floor of the boot. Do this by taking a hacksaw to it, and removing the material shown in the pictures. Obviously don't cut it with the board inside, thats asking for trouble

Next, make yourself a template using CAD ( Cardboard Aided Design!), to fill the hole on the bottom of the fuse box.

Cut out a piece of plastic, I used clear lexan, using the template.

Silicone to the fuse box, sealing it up nicely!

Next stage is to remove the loom that runs from the big wadge of wires by the battery/ fuse box, over the top of the inner wing, then through a hole, down through a big yellow grommet into the footwell. There are two plugs on the end of this in the footwell (Green and White) that you will have to disconnect, and both the aircon plug and side repeater will also have to be unplugged. once you get it out it should look like this, but yours will be all wrapped up in loom wrap/tidy, unwrap it so it looks like this!

Next stage is the daunting one, cutting the wires from the fusebox. Do it one at a time, and as you cut them, number them on both cut ends with a corresponding number, I use a piece of masking tape with the number on it in biro. The only two that you do not need to number are the two largest white ones, they are alternator feeds and are both the same, so mixing them up is not important. Cut the loom about 3 inches from the fusebox, you will be left with something like this. I would recommend you unclip the black plastic loom holder that runs around the rear of the headlight, and pull the loom out of this, as it gives you more length of wiring to work with, making it easier to solder

OK so now you return to the loom you just removed from the footwell. There are 5 wires that run from the footwell to the fusebox on this loom, we can save having to extend them by about 2m, by simply unwinding the loom, removing them and turning them round so they flow the other way, back into the car, from the plugs and towards the rear. Here are the 5 separated from the loom.

Ok so next, we need somewhere to put the new fusebox loom through the bulkhead and into the car, we are going to use the smaller yellow grommet in the footwell, above the larger one we already removed. Here you can see the grommet and the two holes (Ohhh eeer mrs!). first port of call is to snip the grommet, make a hole about 2cm in diameter, as the amount of loom you are going to end up with is quite large, 1-2cm should suffice, and we want the grommet to have to stretch a bit, thus giving a nice seal

Right, you are obviously going to need some wire. I have a friend who is an auto electrician, so I worked out how many wires I needed to extend,the distance is 4 meters , and took the fuse-box to show him, so he could size the cables appropriately. Firstly, you need a main power feed to the fusebox. As I intend to put my battery in the boot at some point as well, I used a large core wire, so that I can switch it over to a main starter feed in the future Something like a 0 Gauge should suffice for this if you intend to do the same Ok so you will need 8m of, I think, 8 gauge for the 2x alternator feeds. I bought a 100m Roll of about 1.6mm cable for the smaller wires. The medium-ish wires I bought 24 meters of 2.5mm core cable. And as there were 5 wires that were sorta extra-medium, I went for 20m of I think 10 gauge wire. You will also need two terminals for the ends of the main power feed, some loom wrap, insulating tape, and if you want to use it, heat-shrink. These are some of the wires I bought, minus the 10 gauge stuff Sorry i'm a bit vague on what wires I used, my auto electrician just supplied appropriate ones!

Ok so now you can being the joyous task of routing the wires through to the rear. First remove your sill trims, ecu cover plate in the footwell and rear seats, then undo the screw that holds the inner rear quarter trim to the floor, this will enable you to pull it up gently and slide the wires behind it

Ok so now solder a ring terminal onto the end of your main power feed. Crimp, solder and Heat-shrink Neat, and strong! undo the 13mm nut on top of the positive battery terminal, remove the old fuse box power feed, and place your new one on. Next feed it either through the large oval hole in the inner wing where the washer bottle neck sits, or over the strut top, and through the hole at the rear, depending on whether you are loom-tucked or not!. Either way it needs to get to the footwell grommet! Next go through the grommet first( You will kick yourself if you forget!, I did!) then through the hole into the footwell.

Now it needs to run along under the carpet, on the floor or top of the sill, (Your Preference). Then up under the inner rear quarter trim,(This is why we removed the screw! You'll see what I mean when you do it) , out of the handily placed hole next to the rear seat belt mount, and up to where the fuse box will sit. As this is a main feed, I did not follow the route the main bulk of the cables will, I did not exit at the handily placed hole, but carried on up to the rear, underneath the inner rear quarter trim, and out at the cavity behind the rear seats.

I was waiting for a thread about this. Best of luck with it mate. There's a few guys in the US that have relocated into the boot where the stock sub box is, behind the seat and it looks great still keeping the cabin practical.

If you need any help at all, feel free to drop me a line and I'll give you my number.

Now, comes the tedious bit, feeding the wires through and soldering them! Because it would be ludicrously expensive to colour code the loom, I used all one colour to extend the wires, you can see already how this would breed confusion! So, I fed one wire at a time through, (Two actually as my wires were two in one!), soldered it, and marked the wire at the fuse-box end with the number of that wire, using the masking tape method, DO NOT FORGET TO NUMBER ANY WIRES AFTER YOU HAVE FED THEM THROUGH! . Its just a case of feeding, soldering, numbering, feeding, soldering and numbering. This is easily the worst bit of the whole thing, just put on some music and soldier on!(No Pun intended!) I used heat shrink to insulate all my wires, you can use insulation tape, but its not as neat. You will need to use a blow lamp to solder the larger alternator wires, unless you have a seriously beastly soldering iron!

Once you are all done, wrap up the loom, and feed it down to the grommet in the footwell, either using the overwing or underwing route, once again this depends if you are wire tucked or not, I would personally go through the washer bottle hole, over the arch liner, and into the grommet that way.

Your almost done tossing about in the footwell, just need to replace the original loom that you removed earlier, that uses the larger of the two grommets. feed it back through, and plug it back in. Don't forget to feed the wires you liberated from it earlier, along the same route as the wires you have already extended. Now is a good time to extend these 5 wires to the same length as the others.

It's done mate, just doing the write up, but cheers anyway! I have your number buddy! When do you want to talk about renault 5 bits? I took a load of pictures of my mates stash the other day for you!

I was waiting for a thread about this. Best of luck with it mate. There's a few guys in the US that have relocated into the boot where the stock sub box is, behind the seat and it looks great still keeping the cabin practical.

If you need any help at all, feel free to drop me a line and I'll give you my number.

So now you have all the wires safely through the car, pull them out of the door of the car, set up a table and chair, and get soldering again! As before, do one wire at a time, slowly and carefully, take care to match them number for number. Once you are done it should look something like this!

Ok so now you can put the fuse-board into the fusebox again! Hooray! Loop the cabling underneath the inner sill trim, and out of the hole by the rear belt mount, and place it into the fusebox. I would mount the fuse-box using either pop rivets, or as I did, riv-nuts. If you don't know what riv-nuts are, they are basically a threaded rivet that can be placed into a hole to create a captive thread/nut. Obviously don't leave your cabling as untidy as me this was before it was wrapped up. A top tip is to bend your lump of wires into the shape you wish it to conform to, and hold it there as you wrap it with loom or insulation tape. This means it stays in the shape you want it it, held there by the tape

Ok so, finally, solder on the final terminal or the main power feed, and connect it to the box. I added a little heat shrink to stop it from shorting on the bottom of the car. I was worried that it might, but there is load os clearance, so I needn't have bothered really!

Refit your upper and lower rear seats. The foam will squash to accommodate the cabling, if you are worried about it, cut a little of the foam away to allow for it!

Finally, cut the boot foam to accommodate your fuse box Et voila!

Ok, so a little extra, the two plugs that sit below the fuse box that we removed earlier, if you want to hide them, and hide the igniter in the footwell, here is how. I recommend doing it at the same time as you do the fuse-box relocate. I don't have very detailed pictures, but ill try to explain as best I can.

So, start by removing your engine loom from the footwell, and bring it out into the engine bay. Next you need to unclip your igniter pack plugs, and unwrap the igniter wiring loom. Also unwrap the loom leading the the two plugs we are hoping to hide. Once you have them all unwrapped, unwrap the engine loom as well! So, now look to the back of your inlet manifold. You see where the wires all run into a plastic holder, we need to open this up. Undo the two 10mm bolts that hold the clip to the manifold, you can only see one, but the other is easy to get to, just reach behind and have a cheeky grope until you find it Then all that holds it to the manifold is one easy to reach clip on its front. Next carefully unclip the front off of the plastic holder, exposing the wires within, now take the igniter and fuse box wires we unwrapped, and feed them back up from there they normally exit this plastic clip at the bottom, and out the top, basically reverse them! Next clip the clip back together, and replace any tape you had to remove at it's top The picture below is immediately after this stage, when I started taking photos!

So now its just a case of extending the wires for the igniter and the two plugs. Do one plug at a time, there are no two matching wires on any of the plugs, so you can cut a plug and not have to number the wires, so long as you do one at a time. Now the wires are difficult to feed through the rubber sheaths that cover the engine loom, so use this trick I came up with, see pictures. Shove a biro casing through the rubber, poke the wire through the biro, and pull the biro out, ta-dah! You can only do one wire at a time, unless you open up the end of the biro, but its way easier than struggling to force wires through! Use some WD40 or saliva to lube up the rubber! Remember to shove the wires through both rubber boots before you solder them, or you will end up swearing violently at the boot as you try to shove a massively oversized plug through it, I did because I'm a pillock!

Once they're soldered, they should look something like this

Finally, refit and rewrap the ecu loom, its a little harder than usual to get down into the footwell, as its a little bulkier, but its not impossible, just take your time and be careful not to damage any wires Here is the loom rewrapped and refitted!

OK so now you have the plugs for the igniter safely in the footwell, so thats hidden. You also have the wires from below the fuse box here. Now if you are doing a fuse box relocate, you will find that when you initially cut the fuse box wires, you will cut the other end of the wires connected to these plugs. so you can plug the other half of these plugs into the plugs you have just relocated to the footwell, and extend the wires to reach the fusebox in the boot I know thats confusing, I have tried to put it as best I can!

If anyone is confused about any part of this, feel free to PM me, I will try to answer any questions! If there is sufficient interest, I wouldn't mind undertaking a few of these conversions for people. I would have to work out a price, and apply for hobbyist membership, but if you wanted it done I would do it basically

It's done mate, just doing the write up, but cheers anyway! I have your number buddy! When do you want to talk about renault 5 bits? I took a load of pictures of my mates stash the other day for you!

Ahhhh got ya. Look forward to the final installments then

Not sure if the 5 is going ahead mate. My son got some quotes for insurance for when he passes his test and it out him off slightly. For a totally stock car the cheapest quote he got was 11 grand. WTF!!!!!!!

Just as a point of interest mate, keep an eye on the ignitor, Jevansio relocated his into the footwell and had loads of misfiring issues. When we looked into it we found the ignitor was overheating because there was no vertilation in the footwell. We moved it up to behind the upper glovebox and the issues were cured.

Very good write up, been hoping someone would do one of these - thanks

Great guide, use the "] imageurl [/img " tags to post the pictures (without spaces).

Quick question, what size/ amp wiring did you use for relocating the igniter?

Excellent guide mate and fair play you are a braver man than me. The picture of all the wires in your hand gives me shivers, I hate auto electrics. Good work.

Great attention to detail

This is probably a stupid question but how much roughly does the box and wiring weigh?

I would guess only about a kilo maximum for the extra wires, it's not much at all! Fusebox… 500g or so? Not sure TBH On another note, started the car up and went for a drive for the first time earlier since I completed this. All electrics appeared to work, the battery was charging and there were no shorts, blown fuses or hot wiring! So, I can provisionally say that it was a success so far!

Why?

very nice guide, sticky?

(and damn you for showing me another thing to do on my car;))

Very neat job, looking forward to seeing the pictures of the bay - before and afters would be nice as a comparison. Everyone will be jumping on this now!

Great thread should be a sticky for sure:thumbs::thumbs:

This is a superb write up and I admire your endeavour greatly but I have to ask the question - why go to all that trouble just to relocate a fuse box? What are the benefits?

This is a superb write up and I admire your endeavour greatly but I have to ask the question - why go to all that trouble just to relocate a fuse box? What are the benefits?

Because it looks hideous in the engine bay lol