Today I mostly .....

[Aaron]

It was neither raining or snowing today so I got back under the car for some more welding. I am getting to the point where I will have to stop refering to her as 'floorless'.
It is interesting, but frustrating to note how the rain seems to find its way down the a-pillar and into the sills and chassis, collecting in pools in all the places I need to weld. Definately a fault I will need to fix.

I've also been sorting some of my spares. See if you can spot what is wrong with this brake caliper...

[Zelandeth]

Fitted upside down on the wrong side? The bleed nipple not being at the top is what immediately jumped out at me.

-- -- --

We've been blanketed in pretty thick fog here for the best part of a week so not exactly ideal weather for driving around in a tiny three wheeler with only basic lighting from 1973. However the weather finally broke today so I was able to get TPA out for a run.

Used my highly technical exhaust gas extraction system to prevent the garage (and then the house as it's poorly sealed) from filling up with exhaust fumes while she warned up while I was playing automotive Tetris to clear the access to the garage.



Glad to report that with my revised distributor condenser in place (but far from tidy) running has been vastly improved. There never used to be a hugely noticeable difference between 70% throttle and 100% aside from a bit more induction noise. You can actually feel the difference across the whole throttle range now and she just generally feels smoother.

It's very obvious that it's done something by virtue of it having brought the idle up by about 350rpm. Still low enough the clutch doesn't start to drag though, so at this time of year I'm inclined to leave it alone. A bit of additional heat into the cabin and keeping engine speed high enough for the generator to actually be on charge are both good things.

I didn't actually take a note of where the throttle sat at 60mph before, but it feels like it's less far open now.

Temperatures were hovering around 1-2C outside and while it didn't get it up to feeling warm, the heater was able to keep up sufficiently that the cabin wasn't uncomfortably cold.

A couple of opportunities for photos were spotted while I was out so I took the opportunity to grab a couple. I know 99% of the photos I have of TPA are just sitting in my driveway or just in a supermarket car park so I'd like to fix that.

Think I've done a reasonable job of keeping things which allow you to immediately identity these as photos taken from 2020 out of frame.















Generally seems to be running well. Only gripe today was the indicator stalk coming loose again. It's just a bit of a poor design, held onto the bars by large self tapping screws into the bakelite of the switch assembly. Rotation is stopped by a peg in the centre, but it's a very loose fit. As such even with the screws as tight as you dare it can still wobble a bit. Over time it then works loose.

The proximity of two terminals prevents you using a nut and bolt as it would cause a short. So I think a little bead of Sikaflex under it and on the screw threads will be employed this time. I think so long as it's secure enough not to wobble around it'll be fine...just needs a bit if help to get to that stage.

The alternative I'll look at first will be to see if I could use a non conductive washer or spacer and a nut and bolt...but I'm pretty sure I already tried that when I fitted the first one to KPL and discovered that the answer was simply "no." Can't remember for certain though and my fabrication skills have improved a bit since back then.

Despite the indicator switch making a bid for freedom this was the first time I've been out in this car and quite distinctly decided "No, I'm taking the long way home as I'm having a nice drive and enjoying myself."

Think the first time that happens is a nice turning point in the ownership of any car. Have largely stopped worrying about what every noise is or what's going to fall off next, and just had a nice drive out.

Economy on the last tank came back at 33mpg, so we seem to have pretty solidly settled in the low-mid 30s. Which sounds about right to me... I'd expect high 30s anywhere else, but MK is murder on economy so I always expect to see slightly lower than average figures elsewhere.

[Andrew353w]

Just a thought regarding your M.P.G. figures: Air-cooled Dafs return a comparable M.P.G. on town running, as the transmission is constantly changing down when a manual car would probably hang on to a higher gear. However, on a long high-speed run they excellent themselves, returning much better figures. My 33 ran from Derbyshire to north London at high speed (60-70 mph all the way) and returned a figure of 40+ mpg, so maybe you need to do a sustained run at higher than town speeds.

Maybe time to take your "brave" pills......

[Aaron]

I hadn't noticed that it was upside down when i photographed it.
The odd thing is the pins that retain/locate the pads.

[rid54]

Yes, the pins look wrong.... First pair stuck, sawed off, and new pair fitted from the other side? Creative, but not state-of-the-art craftsmanship perhaps.

[Aaron]

yes, problems I found when i tried to remove them
they were bent (obviously not stiff enough to hold the brake pad securely)
i couldn't use a hammer and punch

[Zelandeth]

Just a thought regarding your M.P.G. figures: Air-cooled Dafs return a comparable M.P.G. on town running, as the transmission is constantly changing down when a manual car would probably hang on to a higher gear. However, on a long high-speed run they excellent themselves, returning much better figures. My 33 ran from Derbyshire to north London at high speed (60-70 mph all the way) and returned a figure of 40+ mpg, so maybe you need to do a sustained run at higher than town speeds.

Maybe time to take your "brave" pills......

Definitely curious to see what sort of economy we see on a decent run. Not really many brave pills needed...she's nowhere near as terrifying to drive as people seem to expect. I imagine the DAF would probably still have the edge as she's pretty low geared.

-- -- --

The run out yesterday went largely to plan but was marred slightly by the indicator stalk making a bid for freedom shortly before I got home. The stock mounting arrangement for this is at best "flimsy" thanks to it relying on two self tapping screws fastened into the plastic of the stalk assembly (bakelite?).

Using a nut and bolt isn't really an option due to the proximity of the terminals for the indicator switched circuits to the hole in the body where the fastener lives.



If you find a bolt with a really shallow head you might just about be able to get away with it, just. Nothing I have in stock is small enough though.

I've a couple of ideas in mind, but the first one I wanted to try was tried today...Drill the holes out, tap them properly and stick a bolt of a carefully measured length in.

Step one...drill out and tap the holes.



Result was a nice clean thread.

I went with a standard M6 thread as I had fasteners that size in stock, and it seemed a decent step up but without risking taking too much meat out of the assembly I was trying to secure. Also was the biggest I could get away without having to also drill out the holes in the metal back plate.



A healthy dose of thread lock was added before bolting things together.



I took the opportunity to tap out the holes in the backing plate that the plastic cover attaches too so I could get that securely fixed and get rid of two rusty fasteners.



Much better.



Washers were fitted there to both keep the end of the bolt where I wanted it (precisely level with the end of the threaded hole) and to allow me to actually tighten things up without the bolts disappearing into the recessed hole in the backplate.

Really need to get some paint and touch in the space where this switch used to live.

Likewise I need to get a bit more loom tape in and extend the covering on the loom to the stalk the last few inches to the back of the switch.

Nice to be rid of a couple more of the list of rusty fasteners in the cabin too.



Historically the baseplate always wobbled around a bit when the switch was used. Reckon this is why it was able to work loose over time. It now seems to be rather more solid from the looks of things.



Hopefully this will stay put this time. If not I've got a few more ideas up my sleeve...but they're rather more of a bodge. whereas I feel that this is more just an improvement on the original setup. I need to pick up more dog food tomorrow so will probably take her out to carry out that trip unless the weather is horrible so we can see if it works then.

[Zelandeth]

I never realised quite how much the indicator stalk was wobbling around before. Now it's properly secured the action is so much more positive. You can also now reliably cancel the indicators with a tap of your finger now - you used to have to make a very deliberate action to do that. It's a small detail but it makes the car far nicer to drive.

First time I've been out of town since sorting the condenser and cleaning/gapping the points today. Once on the A5 the difference was plain as day. Holding 60 is definitely way easier now. 70 has always been *achievable* with a long enough level road, but actually cruising at that speed wasn't really viable. Now however she's quite happy to reach and maintain 70 with a bit more left in the tank if needed. The oft quoted 82mph max (though no one seems entirely sure where this came from as it's not in any of the official documentation) feels a lot less optimistic now.

Still can't quite believe how composed she feels at that speed. No wobble, no horrible vibration, nothing feeling like it's going to fly apart at any moment...she just thurms along quite happily. Sure she moves around a little in the wind and when you pass a lorry, but nothing alarming. It really doesn't feel like you're doing anything which is over-stretching the capabilities of the car.

Being absolutely honest, at 70 the Lada buzzed and vibrated more than TPA does.

Random photo from while she was out and about today.



Definitely an effective way of making modern cars look huge. Still reckon she's a good match for a lot of my journeys as 95% of my trips are on my own.

Also managed to spot a nice coincidence a few miles later on.



I always enjoy catching things where the numbers line up like that. If I miss 12345 I will be most irked! 12354 is the big milestone though as that will mark 1000 miles since she was brought back to life.

I know the whole "it just keeps feeling better the more it's driven" thing is a bit of a cliché where classic cars are concerned...but it is honestly how it feels lately.

The appearance of the TI-30 calculator a while ago sparked a bit of discussion in a few places. This one...



Got to love a classic LED display.



Just a shame the camera can't capture the colour properly.

I used to collect a few things like this years ago, but it's been a good 15 years since I really looked at things like this, and I gave quite a lot of them away a while ago...however following the conversation I got thinking about it again...and ended up rummaging around eBay. This arrived this morning.



This cost me a whopping...£0.99 and £5 postage. There was another mid 90s Casio one in the package too but that's a pretty generic example. If anyone's interested I'll snap a couple of photos. However it was this one that caught my eye. I've not been able to find a date on it anywhere, but from the styling, weight and fact that it's a full 15mm thick makes me think very late 80s. Oh...and the ZX-80/81 style membrane keyboard too.



Yes, it is *precisely* as awful to try to type on as the aforementioned Sinclair products!

The moment I saw that though there was a distinct moment of "Yep...I need that!" Don't usually find these things of too much interest unless they're particularly interesting from a technical standpoint - I really want to get one of the Casio ones with the funky three colour displays (CSF-"nnnn" model series as I recall), and am watching a few on eBay now I've remembered they exist. I've always wanted to take a proper look at the display tech on those...have always assumed they use some form of pigmented LCD or polarisers with some sort of coating which only interacts with specific light wavelengths (sort of like those coloured dichroic halogen lights that were popular back around 2000). I've never actually seen one of these in person though, so am really curious. This one was obviously a pretty early example of this type of this type of product though so was worthy of interest.

...There's a job lot of another five late 70s/early 80s calculators on the way as well.

See what you lot made me do? I hadn't touched this hobby in the best part of 15 years until this week!

[Zelandeth]

The windscreen wipers on the Jag have been becoming increasingly glitchy of late. Normally a sharp thump on the scuttle would get them working again - until last time I needed to go out in a hurry when they decided to play dead entirely. The behaviour seemed to suggest the motor wasn't making it quite all the way to the fully parked position (which is slightly further over the screen than the normal wiping range).

Given I knew the drains had been clogged for goodness knows how long the motor had most likely spent some time under water so I was hoping it was going to be a simple case of dirty contacts or dried up grease in the linkage.

Figured it was worth pulling the grill over it off and seeing if I could see anything obviously amiss. Looked like it would be a simple case of pulling the wiper arms, undoing a couple of bolts and lifting it off...right?

Of course not, because Jaguar. Having unfastened everything I could see it still wasn't interested in budging more than a few millimetres.



Peering under the edge it became obvious there was a load of hardware attached to the underside, with no obvious way to detach it. Attempting to get a wrench into the bolt only resulted in me dropping it into the void under the grill.

Eventually I figured out that the whole wiper assembly remains attached to the cover and you just have to sort of wrestle it out through the not-quite-wide-enough gap.



Those spindle gear boxes look suspiciously like the same ones used in the Invacar...given the amount of BMC parts bin hardware in there it wouldn't surprise me.

Nothing hugely obvious amiss, though the whole drive assembly and spindles were really dry. So everything was drowned in penetrating oil and I then splodged as much grease as I could be hand into the spindle boxes (pretty easy as they're not sealed) without pulling things to bits any further as I was being mindful of having to go out pretty soon to collect groceries.



I'm under no illusions that I won't be back in here, most likely I'll need to dismantle the motor gearbox itself to give it a thorough clean and re-grease as the original lubrication has probably long since turned to plastic. As it is though the wipers now move at about twice the original speed and appear to be playing ball...the issue has been intermittent though so only time will tell.

With everything back together I headed for my grocery collection slot, via a fuel station (again).

Stopping at the first junction after that I noticed the dash lighting seemed really dim.

Um...yeah, that would do it.



The alternator appears to have lost interest in charging. I legged it home and switched cars. Further investigation revealed no working ignition light either...so either bulb has gone or we've got an issue with the brushes most likely.

Of course when I went back to the car half an hour later to park it it behaved perfectly again.



Yep...sticky and/or worn brushes methinks.

Won't that be fun...the alternator is one of the nice easy to get to things...



Oh...no I actually meant the other thing. You can barely see the thing. I changed the belt for it a couple of months ago and that was a full day's job pretty much!

Never a dull moment...

I did finally get a bit of time to start putting the basic text for a website update together (first time since 2017!), got a ways to go but have made a start at least. Decided to use something lacking in distractions to assist in concentrating on what I was actually working on.



Really do like the keyboard on this too. It's definitely physically the same board that Acorn used in the Archimedes range (A3000/3010/3020 at least), which was always my favourite to type on of the machines from that era. Amiga wasn't bad...Atari ST came miles behind with their horrible mushy mess. Funky shaped function keys couldn't even redeem it. No idea when I'll actually get the update finished and uploaded, but at least I've made a start.

[Zelandeth]

So, have I fixed the issue with the Jag's wipers? Nope...Worked perfectly until I turned the wipers off for the first time, then refused to start again until I thumped it again.

Fine. We'll pull the wiper motor apart, clean and generally service it then. My money is on it just being a dirty or sticky switch/brush. Given that the wipers work absolutely perfectly once they're started without any juddering or lack of torque I reckon it's a simple dodgy contact.

The plus side is that with the removal of four bolts (well, three in my case as one is sheared), removal of one plug and pulling off the washer feed tube the whole assembly just lifts off the car. So I've brought it into the house so I can work on it tomorrow inside when it's forecast to be tipping it down all day.



Parts manual is already coming in handy with a nice diagram showing what to expect when I start stripping it down.



Hopefully shouldn't be a major headache to sort. At least it will give me the opportunity to *properly* clean up and regrease things rather than the slap-dash job I did yesterday.

The calculator thing has definitely snowballed again. This little bundle was bought a few days ago and is on the way.



This was mainly for the Sharp one as it's a style I've not seen before. Though the TI-1250 is a nice addition as I've already for a TI-1200 (same thing but sans memory functions), and the Casio LC-828 will be a nice companion for my really battered LC-826.

In addition I also just bought this off eBay.



That will be the first one in the collection to use a neon display which will be a nice box to get ticked off.



We do have a fault with the display whereby the top segment in all the digits is missing...Hoping this will just be a duff transistor (given the display will almost certainly be multiplexed that would make sense to me). Based on a little research I believe that this is a Kovac K-80D, dating from 1972 it looks like. Should be an interesting little addition to the collection - and actually a bit nice to have a fault to hunt down. Probably the only reason it went for less than £15, anything with a more exotic display than a VFD tends do be quite pricey.

[Zelandeth]

Continuing the theme of "can you daily an Invacar in 2020?" TPA was out and about again today.



Had a good chat with a gent in the car park at the Westcroft Morrison's who was very curious as to the differences to what they thought were the facts about Invacars, and the story of how we'd been able to get some of the survivors back on the road. They own a VW based trike, so not a huge surprise they were drawn towards unusual looking three wheeled vehicles.

I really do need to figure out a better arrangement for our driveway at some point...With how well TPA is running these days I actually want to use the car, but it's a 15-20 minute production every time I want to get the car in or out - and if there aren't two available parking places on the road to temporarily stuff two cars on I'm basically stuck.

When we got to the evening I figured it was about time I tackled the Jag wiper assembly.

Afraid not a huge number of photos as I pretty much from the start was covered in grease so it wasn't really practical to get too many as it required me to wipe my hands and remove my gloves every time I picked the phone up.

Breaks down into a surprisingly large number of pieces.



Once we got into the motor itself it became pretty obvious that (exactly as I expected given the issues I'd had with the scuttle drains) that it had been sitting in water for a while.





Thankfully aside from the visible gunk you can see there the only evidence we had of this was a single very sticky brush (blue wire)...which would precisely have matched the symptoms that I was seeing. When I first opened it up the brush wasn't actually touching the commutator at all. The brushes have a bit of wear on them but look fine. A little bit of cleaning and working of the sticky brush got it moving freely again. The grease in here wasn't actually bad at all. It had gone a bit dark in a few areas but was still behaving like normal grease, I honestly expected it to have turned into soapy plastic by now...might well be that someone has been in here before me. The only bit that was chalky was on the reciprocating slider, so that was cleaned and regreased - I just kind of slathered all other moving parts inside the casing within reason.

Getting to the park switch would have involved removing the ring gear, and I didn't have to hand a small enough set of circlip pliers to get the retaining clip for that out. However testing it with a meter showed that it seems to be working fine anyway so I'm leaving it alone for now. I was pretty much expecting this - while I wasn't 100% sure I would have sort of expected a fault with the park switch to result in the wipers never stopping rather than not starting.

While it was a bit fiddly, didn't take long to get things put back together.



...At which point I stood up and heard something go "clink" onto the floor and roll off towards the kitchen.



Which after a bit of head scratching (it doesn't seem to be shown in the parts manual diagram) I figured out was a thrust plate designed to take up endfloat in the motor shaft...so I had to take pretty much the whole lot back to pieces again. Annoying.

Slightly later than originally planned, we got it back into one piece though.



Sadly far too late in the day to get it back to the car to test it by then though. We'll give it a try tomorrow...fingers crossed this will have sorted it though. I think it will though, reckon it was just that brush sticking due to the water ingress from the blocked scuttle drains.

[Zelandeth]

I went back into battle with this thing this afternoon. Started at about 14:30.



Dismantled it...Couldn't see anything obviously amiss...Double, triple, quadruple checked that the switch actually worked and that there was actually continuity all the way to the harness socket in case we had a wiring issue.

Reassembled...Exactly the same. Rinse, lather, repeat...EIGHT TIMES.

Until...



I said six in the video, but this was the eighth attempt judging from how many pairs of gloves I'd gone through!

That was the first time it hadn't just taken off the moment I turned the ignition on.

The only thing I did differently that time was actually making absolutely sure that it was in the parked position when I reassembled it (I had the meter hooked up in continuity mode, beeping at me during the whole process).

I'm not sure precisely what difference this makes, but the one thing I can think of is that maybe if it's not hooked up in the parked position that the relay logic used to control things might get confused. No idea...All I can say is that this time around it seemed to work...and I spent a good five minutes further turning it on, off and switching speeds after I turned the camera off and it kept behaving. I'll put the rest of the mechanism back together tomorrow. At least I had the sense after yesterday's failure to only reassemble the mechanism itself prior to the test rather than the entire assembly.

The parking mechanism deserves a little bit of a mention as it's a little bit strange.

I've not had many wiper systems apart, and most of those have been on buses...but usually I'm used to the parking system being based around either a microswitch or a hall effect sensor which is triggered by the ring gear on each revolution - it's just ignored by the control system until you switch the wipers off.

The hardware in this case is a conventional microswitch and a little metal arm on a circular collar that's pushed around by the ring gear. What's strange about it though is that it's actually held clear of the switch by a spring when the motor is running. To make contact with the park switch the motor has to reverse direction, at which point the metal ring with the actuating arm on rides up a ramp on the back of the ring gear so it can press the switch. *That* is why the wipers always change direction and complete a stroke or two backwards before the wipers park...it's necessary to get the motor into the "parking mode" due to this strange arrangement.

I haven't been able to find a decent photo or diagram on the internet anywhere and the parts manual appears to show the earlier motor style, so I might try to draw a diagram showing this arrangement tomorrow. I honestly thought I had taken a photo of it but my phone claims otherwise. It's not too hard to see how it works visually but it's not the easiest thing to describe.

Given it now appears to be working, I'm not pulling it to bits again for the sake of a couple of photos!

That wiper motor came very, very close to getting launched into low earth orbit this afternoon!

That video was recorded at about 17:30 I think. I might have gone ahead and reassembled everything today but it was tipping it down so my enthusiasm for being outside was pretty slim.

In other news the latest addition to my little collection of vintage technology arrived this morning.



This is a Kovac K-80D circa 1972. Aside from one segment out on the display (given it's the same one on each digit and the display is multiplexed I'm guessing - and hoping - we've probably got a single dead transistor) this thing is absolutely immaculate. It honestly could have just been taken out of the box today.

Of course the first thing I did was take the cover off to have a look inside.



I've usually have expected a calculator from this era to have a vacuum fluorescent display to be honest...Things generally jumped from Nixies straight to VFD/LED and then to LCD. The handful of models I've seen using digital neon displays usually have used Panaplax displays, which are planar seven segment neon displays usually with several digits in one envelope. I certainly can't recall ever coming across one before which uses a seven segment neon display with individual tubes for each digit. I'm sure there are a few, I've just not encountered them so I'd say it's a pretty rare setup.

Let's take a closer look at that display, because it's probably the most unique part of this calculator.



These are Rodan MG-17G neon indicator tubes in case you were wondering.





Digital cameras can never properly capture the colour of a neon discharge.



The window over the display is lightly grey tinted to help improve the display contrast.



Looking closely at the battery meter I think gives a good impression of how clean this thing really is. The complete absence of lint and gunk in the recesses around it tells the story I think.



It just about qualifies as hand held!



Okay. Maybe not. I think I'd label this as "portable desktop" in terms of form factor. It's the best part of a kilogram when loaded with batteries anyway so you're not going to go and stick it in a pocket.

Definitely glad to have this one in the collection, especially for the trivial price I paid for it. I'm used to anything with a more unusual display technology going for more money than the £14 I think it was that I paid for this.

[Zelandeth]

Had a little package arrive for the Invacar I'd forgotten about until it turned up today.



I noticed the last couple of times when out after dark that the indicator flasher was struggling a bit at idle when the headlights were on. To be honest I was rather surprised that it worked at all given it was in this state when I found it originally.



I'm pretty sure that I shook a not inconsiderable amount of water out of it as well.

Given a new one was all of about £3 delivered from eBay it just made sense to change it.





Indicators now flash even without the engine running with the headlights and brake lights on, so looks like problem solved. It's still a thermal flasher though so we should still get the old school variation in flash rate depending on system voltage (and ambient temperature) we're used to. The old one has been stowed in the "tired but serviceable in a pinch" spares box.


Next task, with everything now apparently working again it was time to put the wiper assembly for the Jag back together and onto the car. I was glad to find that the wiper assembly still behaved after I had reassembled it all.

However when finally putting it back on the car one of the hose stubs snapped off the check valve for the windscreen washers.



*sigh*

I uttered some quite unprintable things when that happened.

Realistically it was all of £2 for a replacement from Motorserv...just was annoying to have to go out and get more parts! This is just one of those jobs which has been determined to take as long as possible from square one.

Nevertheless once I've got the replacement check valve fitted tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to button that area back up and forget about it for a while.

While I was putting things away I stumbled across an LED P21 retrofit bulb I discounted using for actual vehicle lighting a while ago and realised that I did actually have a good place to use it.



That's far more useful than what used to be in there for a fraction of the power usage. We've found we do actually tend to use that light quite a bit in the evenings in the summer if we're sitting under the awning and/or when tidying stuff up. So having actually useful output from it is definitely a bonus.

This is a pretty accurate before photo if you were actually looking straight at it.



At this point we make another drift back into the area of vintage technology again as another package arrived for me this morning.



First up, the Texas Instruments TI-1250.



This was a (relatively!) low cost calculator dating from 1975. The TI-1200 (which I have one of already) is identical but doesn't have the memory functions - well...it actually does. It just doesn't have the buttons fitted!.

This one is pretty much immaculate. The only visible wear anywhere is on the label on the back.



Here it is modelling next to my TI-30 for scale.



Nicely this one seems to be mercifully free of the key bounce issues which plague both my TI-30 and T-1200.

It's noticeable that this doesn't have the "screensaver" mode that the TI-30 does which blanks the display aside from a single chasing dot to save battery power. Also when the TI-30 encounters either an error or an overflow condition it actually prints out "error" on the display like so...



...Whereas the TI-1250 simply flashes the whole display to signify such conditions.

This display is also about twice as bright as the TI-30.

Next up is the Casio LC-828. Again still with its admittedly rather battered box.



While the box may be battered, the contents are immaculate.



Launched in 1985 this is a carbon copy of the LC-826 from 1979, simply using more modern LCD technology allowing the yellow filter to be dispensed with and with the case graphics having had a slight refresh.



Display seems to be identical even down to the border around the function symbols.



Now for the main reason I grabbed this little trio though, the Sharp EL-8130A. I'd not seen one of these before.



First impression on picking it up: "This feels expensive."



It basically feels like a solid slab of brushed aluminium that someone has just carved a calculator out of.

I was expecting this to be mid 80s...but a bit of research shows this to date from 1977-79!

Look how thin it is!



That's 0.5cm right there.

Even the texture printed on the rear of the case looks classy and brings to mind leather bound books.



Guessing from that serial number this one dates from 1979.

I'm waiting on batteries to arrive for this before I can test it, though I've confirmed it does work. Still had the original (very dead) batteries in, being Sharp branded they're almost a museum piece in themselves.



The flat panel keypad looks just like your typical touch sensor, but has an almost leatherette sort of texture to it and does deform just enough to know you've actually pressed a key - miles better than that Tandy (Casio made) PDA I got hold of last week! It also has the option for a keypad beep, which with any membrane keypad seems a sensible option to have. Turning that on or off is what the key with the musical note on is for.



An interesting little time capsule from the era where there was a distinct race between makers to create the thinnest possible calculator.

Should hopefully have some more actual car content on the way soon!

[Zelandeth]

Finally had a package from the US arrive today - which was posted well over a month ago.



This was a very random purchase from a while ago which very much appealed to my inner geek.



These bags contained these bits of hardware. One switch and one indicator.



While these are both from the 80s I believe, the designs haven't really changed hugely since the 60s.

The number of components in this thing for a four way latching switch is absolutely ridiculous.





From an engineering perspective it is simply a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Now need to figure out something to do with it...Probably a master power switch for my workstation as I can use the split indicator (one side is red, other is green) for something useful then.

Yes, those are the same style as used in the Nasa control rooms from the Apollo era onwards (these are a slightly later style, but very similar). The one labelled Radar Acquisition is actually made by the Master Specialities Company who produced the original Apollo era kit, the unlabelled one is made by Unimax, but they're a very similar setup. Main differences are in the panel mounting method and the exact design of the ratchet used to latch it. The fact is that these were (and possibly still are) used in a plethora of military settings as well so they're pretty easy to find in the US.

I've always been a major Apollo enthusiast, so the moment one of the YouTubers I follow identified what the switchgear in the old MOCR (which everyone calls Mission Control) actually was I was on eBay hunting stuff down within minutes.

The seller I got this pair from has THOUSANDS of mil spec bits of switchgear and instrumentation in their eBay shop - I could quite happily have spent a small fortune in there as it's basically an entire shop full of stuff I WANT. I have precisely zero use for 99.993% of the stuff I'd buy, but that doesn't stop me wanting it! The only thing which saved me from going utterly overboard was that postage costs a small fortune from the US these days. If I'm ever in that area in a future visit to the US though you can absolutely guarantee that probably half my luggage will be full of stuff from that warehouse. I will seriously be like a kid in a sweet shop.

[rid54]

The ti calculators I remember well, they were the antithesis of the HP calculators that happened to be in the rage at the particular time and place (Polytechnic, Stockholm 1975). The fairly weird, but very logical reversed notation of the HP calcs, caught the interest of many students at that time and discussions raged over luncheons and afternoon beers about what was the best system. I, at that point, still used a slide rule, but when some of the thermodynamics calculations demanded more than 4 decimals, I had to give in to electronics. I bought a HP calculator...