All righty...Go grab yourself a coffee because this is going to be a long one.
Those of you used to my regular updates may have noted that I've been quiet for a while. This was down initially to a distinct lack of energy after arriving back in the UK (jet lag can get in the sea please), being exacerbated by having major construction work starting on the house the day after we got home. Not the smartest move I've ever made there. Then ImgBB were having issues so I couldn't get the associated images to go with posts up - and then I'd fallen behind so I needed to find a chunk of time where I could sit down actually in front of my desktop PC (because I ain't trying to wrangle a post this length on my phone) and actually have the energy to try to get us caught up.
I'd really have liked to have a nice quiet week to get my poor body clock back onto something vaguely resembling a schedule aligned to GMT, but having the house look like this pretty much as soon as we were home had other ideas.
It's not immediately obvious there, but this work has involved:
[] All four sections of roof stripped back to bare rafters.
[] All felt and battens throughout replaced.
[] All soffit boards (all 90 metres of them!) replaced as they were totally rotten. Of course just to add to the fun the bottom of the box on the originals was asbestos so dealing with that added to the costs.
[] All four gable end rafters which were totally rotten replaced. Largely rotten because the previous owners decided that rather than replacing the soffits when they started to fail that no...just painting them would do. So it just helped trap *more* moisture in the roof structure. Having been here for eight years now finding things this doesn't surprise me in the slightest any more. It's just made all the more ridiculous by the fact that between the costs of the scaffolding, materials and labour they were about 75% of the way towards the cost of just having the fluffing things replaced properly anyway. Just makes you want to bash your head against a brick wall finding things like this sometimes.
[] All new gutters. They were warped and cracked all over the place and had never been properly fitted in the first place.
[] All new ridge tiles - including the one and a half which have been missing probably since the 90s.
[] A shedload more replacement tiles than either us or the contractors expected - aside from them being really brittle, the fact that the roof had bowed badly on the north facing aspect because the battens were largely missing had cracked a load of them.
[] Replacement Velux window above the stairs because it was utterly rotten and unbeknown to us had apparently been leaking for years.
We're sitting at somewhere around £31K of work at this point if my math is correct, and they're not finished yet. We're currently waiting on the last batch of ridge tiles to come in and for weather for them to get the ridge tiles that are already fitted elsewhere pointed. Hopefully will actually be finished this coming week...I'd really like it to be. The guys only need me for about 30 seconds at a time to answer questions or to provide drinking water etc, but it means you're basically unable to get stuck into anything because you need to be available at a moment's notice for the whole working day in case you're needed. It manages to turn into a black hole which consumes vast amounts of what could otherwise be useful time.
It has been interesting (in a nerdy sort of way) while the work has been ongoing though finding more random evidence of the involvement of the BBC in the construction of our house.
We already knew about this of course, but it's just interesting to see details like that popping up when the soffit boards were removed. Sadly that timber was utterly rotten at both ends so is long gone now.
So a lot of the afternoons of the first week were spent finally starting to properly put together two web pages for the Invacar. Using a suitable development machine of course because I'm me...
Still bugs me that the display on this thing always looks awful in photos...this is closer to how it actually looks in person, though obviously it's pin sharp in reality.
Contrast for an LCD panel from 1988 really is decent, and quite attractive with that deep blue colour.
I just find when I'm trying to get the bulk of text together for things like this having a setup where I have as few distractions as possible works best for me - so a single tasking OS, no internet connection and a decent keyboard make that a good option.
The main page itself is still a work in progress. While the text is basically done, given that it's covering an abridged history of Invacar Ltd, the government Invalid Vehicle Service, the decline of the scheme, the finding, resurrection of TPA and then the trials and tribulations of two going on three years on the road the page is a bit of a monster. So proof reading, tweaking, adding images, bookmarks etc is going to take a bit of time. I've got a friend helping me fact check it too as I don't trust myself to keep all the information on the history side of things straight in my head.
I decided quite early on though that the main page for the Invacar was always going to have an accompanying FAQ to stand alongside it. There are a lot of questions I get asked about these cars more or less every time I speak to someone in the general public, so it seemed to make sense to just try to address these on their own rather than requiring folks to go trawling through a page that's probably something in the region of 30K words long. This page I am pleased to report is
now live over here. There are a few purposes behind having put that page together. One is to try to counter some of the urban myths and misunderstandings that are out there about these cars. It's also trying to address that fact that while there is quite a lot of information out there scattered across the internet, it's very fragmented. I am hoping that in due course I can turn my attention to writing out a slightly less abridged version of the history side of things as well, as it would just be too much to cram into a non dedicated page. The aim is to eventually have as much *useful* information on those vehicles packed into one collection of three or four interconnected pages as possible.
Also on the web page side of things if you've looked at the site before you may note that it looks slightly different. I'd had feedback from a few folks over the years that they found the white on black quite hard to read. While it's not something I've ever struggled with myself, it was something it was pretty quickly possible to tweak a bit. So I've removed the stark black background and pattern that's been in there since 1998 and replaced with with a slightly less obtrusive dark grey pattern to hopefully tame the contrast a little bit. Initial feedback suggests that this has helped quite a bit.
I do have plans in mind at some point to give the whole site a complete revamp and re-style. It's fulfilling a completely and totally different purpose to what I had envisioned when I originally put together v1.0 of my template back in a computing class in 1998/9, and even the current template really hasn't changed since 2002 when I realised that frames were a thing. I'd really like to introduce CSS to the template as well as that would make making minor tweaks to things site wide far less of a hassle, and would unlock possibilities such as being able to offer a light or dark theme to suit people's preferences without having to actually code two completely separate versions of the site. That however requires me to properly learn how to use CSS...which last time I attempted just wound up with me getting frustrated and giving up on the idea.
I do actually have some of the graphics and bits and pieces put together for what I'm for internal purposes referring to as V3.0 for the site, I just need to make them all work together properly. No, I will not be going for a modern flashy, flat looking thing either - the increasing tendency for UI design to seem to try to hide what are interactive elements (Tesco, I'm looking in particular at you with your self checkout kiosks, your UI is absolutely horrendously unclear) bugs me no end...and really isn't my style. No, my intention is to once it's finished to have the site present itself as a reasonably convincing emulation of a technical reference manual being viewed from within a Windows 3.1 application. I still don't know why 3D buttons had to go out of fashion...I did consider basing the theme around Amiga Workbench originally - but in fairness until you got to OS3.5 a stock Workbench installation was pretty ugly looking. RiscOS (which is probably my personal favourite) was another candidate - but that would be really hard to implement in a way that felt faithful given that it intentionally had a very minimalist UI, with the bare minimum of on screen clutter, a huge amount of functionality being locked behind fully context sensitive menus hidden behind the middle mouse button - kinda hard to implement on a web page - and equally completely and totally alien to anyone who's not familiar with the OS. No, a Windows 3.1 based theme will both seem pleasingly "retro," will be visually clear, and should be easy to comprehend for folks whether they have ever actually used the system in question or not. It will involve quite a lot of work though, so goodness only knows if or when this will ever happen.
In terms of fleet news...well there really hasn't been any! The Caddy is booked in for an MOT this coming Thursday...that's about it for my own fleet news.
Something did follow me home last weekend though.
Sadly just on loan for a few days. Though I must have nearly bought one of these cars about a dozen times, and every time I drive this one I remember why. I know from a purely practical standpoint they're not great...they're not fast, they're not great handling cars, they're noisy and the build quality is variable throughout but tends towards unacceptable. However they always just feel like charming old cars to me, and there's just something that is oh so right about sitting here.
I just find them enjoyable cars to drive. This one felt rather more relaxed as speed too once I actually noticed this switch.
I think this is the third time I've been out in this car and previously I'd managed to utterly fail to notice it had overdrive. Oops.
My "fee" for borrowing it for a few days was to investigate a few electrical gremlins.
[] Dead radio.
[] Dead rev counter.
[] Missing rubber grip on clutch pedal (replacement supplied).
[] No dash lighting.
The dash lighting took precisely five seconds to solve. Giving the panel lighting rheostat a bit of vigorous twiddling pretty much immediately restored operation of the circuit. Just about visible in daylight at the right angle.
At night it's more obvious that it's working.
Well, just about! Not exactly the brightest dash lighting, but it does the job.
Much cozier than anything modern.
Subsequently having spoken to the owner it sounds like the headlight switch itself may have been giving problems before - though I was completely unable to replicate the reported behavior. As we've got a replacement switch in the car I'll swap that out next time I see it just as a precaution. Headlights aren't one of those systems you want to be questioning whether will work reliably when you turn them on.
Clutch rubber pad replacement was exactly as simple as you would expect. Not even all that awkward, which given how deep and narrow the footwells are did surprise me.
The issue with the radio became pretty immediately apparent once I pulled the head unit out of the dash.
Yeah, not being attached to anything wouldn't help! Obviously hasn't ever been hooked up either.
The wiring tail in the car was for a standard ISO connector, whereas the socket on the head unit is a finer pitch.
Helpfully the fitting kit turned out to be stashed in the armrest storage compartment.
Which also gave me the opportunity to happen to this appalling mess.
Sadly I failed to grab a photo once it was tidied up. However once actually wired up, we had a working radio.
Something more period appropriate will be going in shortly, but this is now working at least.
While I was sorting the spaghetti behind there I discovered the lamp holder which should have been clipped into the indicator light for the rear window demister just floating around behind the panel.
Which I naturally returned to where it should live. So that can now be ticked off the list, even though it wasn't on there to start with.
Have to wonder how many years it is since that worked.
The rev counter is a little more tricky. Everything looks fine at the coil end of things, though it's spliced into the loom somewhere other than actually at the ground terminal of the coil. So a dodgy contact is still on the cards.
I figured I'd pull it out the dash...but the rev counter doesn't quite fit past the indicator stalk housing.
I literally needed about another 1/8"...so that was left alone for a couple of days.
Using the car I very quickly added another item to the to do list in the form of the mirrors. They were both loose on the doors and the glasses were loose in the units, meaning that the both wobbled around all over the shop and rattled endlessly. The sort of thing that would drive me around the twist in very short order.
Both of these issues were easily resolved though. The first simply by snugging up the screws holding the units onto the base, and second by replacing the foam pad behind the mirror glass which had decomposed.
The mirrors now no longer rattle, nor do they wobble - well, no more than you should expect in an MGB anyway.
As we had some heavy rain forecast I wanted to do some temporary patching over one of the tears in the sunroof (through which you could see straight through to the cabin).
The sunroof really needs to be replaced, but this will help keep the worst out. It's definitely reduced the amount of wind noise anyway. Shame as the roof was only replaced back in 2016, but has already shrunk and perished worse than the original one had.
A few days later and I was pretty much ready to hand the MGB back over to the owner. Just a couple of minor things left to do.
I wanted to look a little more deeply into the stereo wiring. I noticed while putting something in the boot that there were a set of probably early 80s pod speakers in there in addition to the recessed ones alongside the rear seat.
However I was only aware of having seen a single pair of speaker wires when I hooked up the stereo.
Hmm...speaker wire dangling out from under the rear seat. Yeah, that's always great for inspiring confidence.
A quick test quickly revealed that noise was indeed coming out of all four speakers. So someone has previously paired them together. Fair enough...have done that myself before in years gone by before head units with four outputs were readily and cheaply available. I wanted to take a closer look to see if it had been done behind the head unit or just daisy chained from the speakers.
Yeah...I had to go looking closer didn't I?
Which once I looked closer also revealed some truly high quality wiring connectors.
Which probably explains why the left channel was cutting out sometimes when you hit a bump.
There were other such wonders as a three way fused spur...to a ground connection and a permanent 12V feed just floating around with an uninsulated spade terminal right by the front of the heater box. A black wire of course just for extra giggles.
Eventually this lot was evicted from behind the centre console.
Which left the area looking like this.
Would have been tidier if I had inline connectors in stock but I'm sadly out of them just now.
Not a massive problem in this case though as there's plenty of dead space behind the centre console in this car and none of this is visible once it's tucked away where it lives.
There's no longer any visible spaghetti poking into the passenger footwell. Will call that good enough.
I tidied up the wiring to the passenger side interior light switch too...it was long enough to touch the floor, held up by one decomposed bit of tape and running through two very rusty screw terminals (it's the yellow to light blue wire in a couple of pictures above - then changing again to a purple wire a few inches out of shot). I shortened it to a more sensible length, replaced the two screw terminals with one Wago, and securely zip tied it to the heater control cable to keep it safely away from people's feet.
I suspect the speakers in the boot have just been connected directly to the speakers in the back of the car, so I'm leaving that alone for now. The sound quality is pretty dire so if a speaker upgrade is put on the cards in the future I'll see about unhooking the extras at that point. For now I'm leaving things be.
The rev counter was further investigated.
Nothing I could find amiss behind the panel, and I'm not sure what else to do at this point without having a known good tach head to try substituting the one in the car for. It might be repairable, but I wouldn't want to try without a replacement on hand in case I made it worse! There's not much else to test with this one - it's a current sensing tach, so all the coil current runs *through* the rev counter, so there's no way the signal can be lost...as any break in the circuit would result in us having no spark.
While I had the indicator switch apart to get the rev counter out I greased it up, which has put a stop to it making an absolute horrendous nails-on-blackboard squeaking noise when you went to signal left.
On a similar note to the issues with shrinkage of the sunroof, I notice that the door seals seem to be similarly afflicted, which may well be responsible for the somewhat horrific amounts of wind noise (even by the MGB standards).
These seals don't have a gap in them, they're a complete loop, so it's not possible to just shuffle it around and deal with a bigger gap somewhere less critical. It's tending to try to pull itself out of the door aperture at the top as well, so it's not really doing much by way of being a seal in several places.
Do feel better for having tidied up the spaghetti behind the stereo though...the moment I dug far enough in to see those taped connectors I knew action was needed!
I also did a little to tidy up that speaker wiring under the rear seat. It was just safely tucked out of the way rather than making major changes. This is as I suspect we may be revisiting some or all of the speakers at a later date, so it doesn't seem worth investing any significant time in wiring that would likely just be replaced.
I also took it out and gave it a decently brisk test run to stress test things to ensure we didn't have any issues with cooling, fuelling etc. No issues were found, car seemed happy. So it was fuelled up, given a quick going over with the vacuum cleaner, then dropped back off with its owner.
I definitely need to have an MGB on fleet at some point. I keep forgetting how much I enjoy driving them until I have another shot of one. No they're not exceptional in any way, they're just fun.
Fast forward to that evening, when in a slight change of pace I set about coaxing this clock mechanism back into the land of the living.
This is a Tamura mechanism and seems to be of good quality. The only issue was that the gearbox of the little 1rpm synchronous motor had seized up from lack of use. Once I was able to get into it and give it a highly technical wiggle it picked up and ran perfectly. The motor is a completely sealed unit, if it wasn't I would look to dismantle it to be cleaned and lubricated appropriately. However as it was running completely silent I don't think there's a huge lubrication issue there.
Unlike flip digit clocks the mechanism here is quite simple, with the motor simply pushing a lever to advance the digit once a minute - there's no continual tension on everything, which has the advantage of being completely silent.
The only casualty we had from the trip across the Atlantic was one of the wires to the neon which provided the illumination. A very simple problem to fix at least.
The whole unit was then reassembled and proven to be working fully.
Whole thing will be coming apart again soon for a good deep clean, I wanted to have it proven working before I spent the time doing that though.
Unfortunately this has now highlighted to me that my 60Hz supply well...isn't. It's gaining the best part of a minute an hour.
So will need to have a think about that. Will investigate whether there's any ability to fine tune the frequency on my supply, but doubt it. Replacing the motor is a non starter as it's flipping tiny compared to any 1rpm synchronous motors I've been able to find so far.
Guess I could swap it out for a tiny stepper motor run off an Arduino or similar as the timing there should be more than precise enough...though that seems like overkill. Putting together my own 60Hz supply would be easier.
Bit irked that this inverter supply is so far off frequency wise...with all electronic control it's not hard to get a stable frequency, and it wasn't cheap.
Few days later I gave the unit itself a decent clean - original plan had been to totally strip it down, but it turns out that's quite an involved task as a lot of the wiring was done it seems after the components were fitted to the case.
Of course it rewarded me by deciding to play up.
First failure was the neon for the display illumination packing in. Somewhat to my surprise this turned out to be the neon itself that had died for no readily explicable reason. I didn't have another NE2 handy...so an NE2G was pressed in...same idea but with an argon/mercury gas fill and a green phosphor. It's a tiny little cold cathode fluorescent lamp. Actually looks quite smart.
They don't tend to last very well though as the phosphor degrades - though we'll see. I am running this one very conservatively.
The radio then decided to pack in...going silent but returning if the case was tapped. Classic dry solder joint behaviour. Let's go digging.
Some quality soldering in here.
However with anything that looked slightly suspect reflowed, it refused to work at all once back together.
Oh well, I'll need to go after it tomorrow with the multimeter then. Helpfully I do have the schematic as it was provided on a sticker on the base.
A little on the tiny side though. Nothing a few minutes and a scanner can't fix however.
We do seem to still have some life as there's a very faint pop from the speaker when you turn the radio on, so the signal stages will be where I start after the basic supply voltage checks. That requires me to go and retrieve the meter from the garage where I left it when working on the MG though, and it's tipping it down outside right now!
I think however that (finally) brings us up to date...Hopefully I can stay there again as this update took forever to duct tape together!
