Thread: Need advice on suicide pin control module.

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Hi, I'm building a glass 32 Ford with suicide doors ( 3 window ) which also has a 5 speed manual transmission. I want to figure out how to trigger the suicide pins to engage only after the vehicle starts moving , but not disengage until the engine is turned off or if I manually overide them. I am using an Auto lock shaved door kit and suicide pin kit.

If you have any suggestions or if you can point me somewhere I would greatly appreciate it.

one of the electronic boys should be able to tell you how to wire up a speed control spedo sensor to activate the relays to lock your pins. I used to work with an Electrical engineer who was into cars, a show quality El camino 454 you could tell him what you were thinking of doing and he could make something work, sometimes took a second try but he always made it work

You didnt say what 5 speed that you have but a lot of later models have a neutral safety switch that could be used to signal the interlock relay. When the trans was in neutral, the relay would retract the pin; when in gear, the relay would engage the pin. Of course, you would have to build in a delay so that the pin didnt retract while you were shifting.

If it were an automatic, it would be easy to just use a park switch.


mike in tucson

I don't know what they use, but my T Bird and Ford 500 has doors that lock when you hit a certain speed, which was very low, say about 5 mph. in either reverse or forward.

just a thought, but i put a remote door lock on my brothers el camino not long ago and it was made to lock the doors when he put it in drive and unlock when he took it out of drive and he didnt like that at all. he had me to change it so it only worked with the remote. the lock and unlock at 10 mph is the hot set up and that would have to be off of the trans. or drive shaft.

Originally posted by paul274854
I don't know what they use, but my T Bird and Ford 500 has doors that lock when you hit a certain speed, which was very low, say about 5 mph. in either reverse or forward.

they use a computer with a sensor off of the trans.

Hi, thanks for the responses. It's a Borge Warner T5 mated to a 5.0 L . I have thought about the neutral safety switch idea , except the pins would cycle at every shift, and even with a delay timer they would cycle when sitting at a stoplight. I thought about having it hooked to the ignition , but if I had the door open to work on the car while the engine was running I might forget and close the door with the pin extended, then damage the car.
The easiest would be to have a two way rocker switch hidden under the dash , and just activate them manually. The problem I have with that is I might forget to engage them , or get lazy and not engage them .

Here's an idea....what about a microswitch attached to the lokar floor mount emergency brake ? That way if the emergency brake was off , the pins would engage. If I was woking on the car with it running , I'd have the emergency brake on anyway. With a standard trans you pretty much use the emergency brake everytime you get out of the car , no ?

A person would have to be careful that a passenger getting in the car had their door closed before you let off the emergency brake with the ignition on.

get a trans. shift ball with a sw. built into it.

coogan

I always notice that everyone installs the pin in the door rather than in the cowl. This always puzzled me because I would notice a huge dent or scratch in the paint when they forgot the lock was engaged and then accidentally shut the door.

I installed mine in the cown with the pin going into the do when it is engaged. This way if I forget, or the lock is engaged accidentally, the only thing that happens is my door doesn't shut. The pin simply hits the interior door panel. No harm, no foul.

Just an idea.

As for the auto-engagement, you could use a combination of a relay which pulled power only when the parking brake was not engaged.

One thing for sure...you definitely need the pin locks. Speaking from experience, it is no fun when the body tweaks and the door pops open at speed. But hey...suicide doors are worth it!

Carolina Customs web site explains the module for this pretty well and shows pic of such.
http://www.carolinacustom.com/pages/..._kits_page.jsp

Hope that email addy crud is correct enough to load for you, but if not, just go to www.carolinacustom.com and look up suicide safety pin kits.

Looks like a good product. Juliano's and Autoloc all have them.
I think it said this required an electric speedometer to work properly though.

Huey