Today I mostly .....

Any topics of general interest (not lada related), post them here.
Aaron
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Aaron » Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:59 pm

all of them of course
I later found three of them hiding amongst the ridiculously huge pile of leaves, dead things and other crap that fell out of the heater assembly.
I only found the fourth one the day after i finished reasssembling everything.
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Riva1600SLX (floorless example, sadly not a spelling mistake)
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Nissan (it's only for towing the caravan) X-trail
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:19 am

Aaron wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:59 pm
all of them of course
I later found three of them hiding amongst the ridiculously huge pile of leaves, dead things and other crap that fell out of the heater assembly.
I only found the fourth one the day after i finished reasssembling everything.
I still want to know where the fourth one from my Niva's one went. The doors and windows were both closed and the seats were removed to make access easier. I heard it ping off the nearside rear window, beyond that moment however it simply phased entirely out of existence and was never seen again. Thankfully a friend had a (very, very, very) dead Riva on their drive I was able to rob a replacement from. Given the state that car was in it yielded a surprising amount of usable spares.

-- -- --

After disappearing for a few weeks the charging issue on the Jag has reappeared.

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The alternator is still producing power, albeit vastly reduced and is relative to engine speed. I've noticed over the last couple of weeks that the cut in point has been sitting unusually high, at about 1500rpm. Anywhere below that it would sit off charge. No slipping belt this time, it's actually an internal issue.

New alternator time methinks. It's probably a regulator issue (don't think it's a sticky brush like I had on the Saab as the ignition light on the dash is behaving normally), but given how much of a pain access is (I'm assuming it's not really any better from underneath) I'm disinclined to mess around swapping parts. Even if it costs me an extra £150 or so I'd rather just fit a new one. Otherwise Murphy's Law ensures a bearing will self destruct in six months time requiring me to pull it out again. Once it's done it's done. I could potentially overhaul the old one on the bench and sell it on later to recoup some of the cost maybe. Though given what a pain selling anything is these days it'll be far more likely to disappear onto a shelf in the garage as a standby spare.

Oh, and rear tyres definitely need to happen. They seem absolutely fine in the dry, but are utterly lethal in the wet. Had the first instance yesterday of it *properly* trying to go sideways on me while pulling out of a junction, even though I was barely touching the throttle. She's a heavy old girl with a lot of momentum when that happens! It was all managed tidily and without any real drama, but really does hit home quite how much respect you need to treat a car like this with. All it takes is a millisecond of carelessness in the wet to end up in a lot of trouble. Especially bearing in mind that on a damp road, in a straight line if you're on more than about 2/3rds throttle she will light up both rear wheels when the gearbox drops from 1st to 2nd - at about 60mph, which is a somewhat alarming moment to discover you have wheelspin. So I very deliberately ease off momentarily at about 40 to encourage the box to make that change in a less dynamically unpredictable manner. There are moments when an LSD is a liability rather than an aid. I've been pleasantly surprised by the ones that went on the front recently, so may well just stick with those again. I'd still *like* to get a proper set of 215/70s on there, but just can't justify the price given our current situation.
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:32 pm

New webpage now online for the Casio PF-3000 Calculator and Data Bank

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An interesting little device from back when the designers hadn't quite figured out what form what we came to know as the PDA would take.

Noticed one typo already I'll need to go back and sort later...but think it's mostly done.
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Aaron » Sun Jan 17, 2021 8:22 pm

Been a slow couple of days,
I decided to remove the front calipers
good news - they came off without much trouble
bad news - pistons are seized and pipes leaking
good news - i have loads of spare calipers
bad news - they are also seized
good news - I've managed to free off four pistons
bad news- they are on four different calipers
i've left them soaking with oil overnight, see how they are tomorrow.
Aaron, Grantham <br>
Riva1600SLX (floorless example, sadly not a spelling mistake)
Citroen (surprisingly quite good) C3
Nissan (it's only for towing the caravan) X-trail
Simson S51

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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by rid54 » Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:26 pm

Oil?! Interesting. Anything but, I'd have thought, would be the preferred remedy. "Brake cleaner", antifreeze fluid, technical ethanol... even hot water and one of these tablets you'd use in a dishwasher machine. All with the thought that the seals in the brake system do not like lube oil and it may be a pain to get rid of it, once the parts have been soaked in it. Usually some heat applied to the cylinder and some pressurised air applied to the hydraulic inlets will help with stubborn pistons (but not always...).

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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Aaron » Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:41 am

When I say oil, I mean of the WD40 type. I didn't know oil might be bad for the seals.
I have applied the pressurised air. That freed a couple off, but didn't work so well on the calipers with leaking pipes.
I will try heat if nothing else works, but I guess that is bad for the seals too.
I do however have plenty of new replacement seals.
Aaron, Grantham <br>
Riva1600SLX (floorless example, sadly not a spelling mistake)
Citroen (surprisingly quite good) C3
Nissan (it's only for towing the caravan) X-trail
Simson S51

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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by rid54 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 4:00 pm

Aaron wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:41 am
When I say oil, I mean of the WD40 type. I didn't know oil might be bad for the seals.
I have applied the pressurised air. That freed a couple off, but didn't work so well on the calipers with leaking pipes.
I will try heat if nothing else works, but I guess that is bad for the seals too.
I do however have plenty of new replacement seals.
I hope this little OT-loop is OK...
I was thinking about the possibility that the metal surfaces are porous or uneven (at the microscopic level) and oil could be adhered to the surfaces, and then cause problem with the new seals that I assumed would be installed. Perhaps a bit far-fatched, though...

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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Thu Jan 21, 2021 10:33 pm

While today has largely been extremely annoying there was some good news: This arrived in the post.

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Sadly we do appear to have suffered some damage during shipping. Looks like we have a display issue. This is showing an incremental count through all 12 digits.

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Showing all 8s shows that it's the same segments affected in all digits. Negative, memory and overflow indicators should all be lit too.

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The photos on the eBay listing for it show the display working properly so guessing this happened on the way here. Let's have a look to see if it's anything obvious.

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Oooh, look at that IC package...

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Now that's a bit special. Quite surprised to see that on a calculator as recent as 1975 that's not a more specialised type.

The display itself is a bit special too, a Sperry Panaplax II unit... that's worth a closer look isn't it.

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Looking at the right angle you can clearly see the ITO coating in front of each digit which forms the anode.

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That's lovely. While the digits are quite a bit smaller than those on the Kovac K-80D they are a lot brighter.

Doesn't look like I could have asked for an easier design to fault find on at least. The fact I can immediately see two banks of transistors...in groups of 8 and 12 suggests they are the display drivers. Should be easy enough to fault find there even without a schematic.

Very much liking it though and am glad I bought it, even if it is by far the most expensive one I've bought so far... finally getting one with a proper Panaplax display was worth it. I couldn't ignore the Anita name either.

It seems that besides the display issue it's working, though it's a bit hard to tell the arithmetic is behaving when you can't read 2/3rds of the display! Speaking of arithmetic, this is a proper RPN calculator, hence the switch register button.

As the price has been increased nearly $10 a month courtesy of Brexit I'm probably going to stop my Vinyl Moon subscription. It's just pushed it into the "too expensive" category for me I think. That does however mean I'm more willing to throw a bit of money at things like this - as I've rediscovered how much I enjoyed it.

In a related vein I've had a bit of a look at some basics of how CSS works...and it's not quite as terrifying as I remember. Especially given how simple a website it is...as every page uses the same basic format I'd only need to set things up once, then I should just be able to specify the style sheet in the header for each page. The style sheet itself is literally just a list of parameters and values. May have a bit of a play at the weekend and see if I can get it to work.

There are two things on the site the Google Search Console is still complaining about: Clickable items too close together on some pages, and text size too small to read. Not sure quite what to do about the clickable elements issue... I'm *guessing* that's relating to the home/back buttons at the bottom of the pages as it's still there on pages I've deliberately kept decent separation between things. The font too small complaint I'll mess with... don't want to increase it *too* much though or it will end up looking too clunky. I need to try though as it's hurting the visibility of pages in search results.
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Sat Jan 23, 2021 9:24 pm

I've been doing a bit of a poor job of updating things on the cars lately, though mainly because not a huge amount has been going on. It's a good time I've found to start ticking off a few of the jobs which had been waiting for the right time to happen and/or further information. One of these jobs was replacing the rear brake hoses on the Invacar. While the rubber on the ones on there seems fine, the ferrules are quite crusty and I've just never fully trusted them given their age. Despite them passing the "literally having me hanging off the brakes with my entire body weight" test without any signs of distress. However the tricky part there was figuring out what I needed to buy. My original plan had been to take one off the car (or one from a spares stash a friend has) to a local hydraulic specialist and have them make me up a set using the original as a template. This turned out not to be necessary however as someone else had found a Girling cross reference catalogue which showed the part number fitted. The rear brake hoses on an AC or Invacar Model 70 is 64047355. A bit of digging around has confirmed that this is the same as the front brake hoses used on the single master cylinder equipped versions of the Mk I Triumph GT6 (among others...but this seems to be by far the easiest one to find parts for). After initially getting one wrong part delivered (which turned out be a foul up on my part) I got the correct parts ordered.

That was at 16:34 on Friday afternoon, through the eBay shop of MEV Spares...The package dropped through my letter box a couple of minutes past noon the following day. That's some speedy service!

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Their part number for those playing along at home.

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Perfect weather to be working on cars.

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Despite being in the garage, with the door deliberately left out a bit to provide an overhang, and inside a car, the snow STILL managed to find ways to get down the back of my collar and into my right ear while I was working.

What then followed was the best part of two hours swearing at this thing.

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The nuts securing the hose to the chassis and suspension arm fought me the entire way off. Not helped by the fact I was working in a space precisely 2/3rds as wide as I needed it to be to realistically get both hands in - and access from underneath is even worse because all of the brake lines are on top of the chassis or suspension. Realistically I should have just removed the driver's seat first...but that sounds like extra work!

With the hose *finally* liberated I was able to confirm that it does look like we have a perfect match this time.

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Thankfully the retaining nuts survived the brute force required to remove them as I didn't have anything else in stock the correct size or thread. Fitting the new hose was a far quicker process! Doesn't this look better?

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The new hose looks a lot more twisted than the original in the photo mainly because the curve in the pipe is off to one side rather than upwards - that's the orientation it was naturally sitting in before any securing fixings were tightened up, so it's not under any undue strain.

Hopefully get the other side done tomorrow, get the system bled and adjust up the handbrake which is blatantly obviously doing next to nothing on the nearside at the moment - which ties in with me having noticed a bit of extra free play in the brakes recently - the handbrake adjustment plays a big part in that as it basically sets the rest position of the shoes. Car is just coming up on 1000 miles travelled now, so makes sense to my mind to have expected to need to do this as the shoes will have bedded in properly and cleaned any crud off the surface in the drums by now.

Will just be nice for long term peace of mind to know that these hoses have been changed. For all they looked crusty, I don't think the original ones were in imminent danger of failure (or I wouldn't have driven the car!), but it's nice to know I'm not relying on potentially 48 year old rubber hoses when I hit the brakes! *Especially* as this car has single circuit brakes - something I'd really like to look at upgrading in the future for obvious reasons. the flexible hose on the front brake was physically damaged when I got this car so was replaced with a NOS replacement. This part while also an off-the-shelf Girling item doesn't look to be shared with anything common enough to be readily available these days. For peace of mind I may well look to get one of these made up by Pirtek or similar outfits. Though the front hose at least is easy to inspect - unlike the rear ones which are essentially inaccessible unless you're going in through the service hatch in the rear of the cabin.

Also on the long-term peace of mind list regarding the brakes: A few folks have raised concerns about the suitability of copper for rigid brake lines - in spite of it being sold for this purpose with all the prerequisite safety standard markings stamped on it in most motor factors. That message has been received and understood, and I do fully intend to replace all the copper rigid lines with cupronickel ones in due course. I want to fully investigate the possibility of the dual circuit setup first though as I'd rather not do the job twice. I've been as careful as possible to avoid bending the pipe at all beyond what's necessary to form it into the necessary shapes so as to avoid work hardening it, and have made sure it's secured in place as thoroughly as possible (and have actually just bought some more clips to improve on that a bit along the chassis rail for the front to rear main line). Thanks for the advice on that folks, it's not something I would have ever known about without the feedback.

Of course once this work is finished it'll probably be a while before I can take a test drive to see if it's made any noticeable difference to the behaviour of the brakes (not expecting it) given the current situation.
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Sun Jan 24, 2021 8:34 pm

Let's finish the job we started yesterday.

It was still cold.

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Somewhere down the line once the garage is actually sorted out I'll have to think about getting some heating installed.

Step 1...Do what I should have done yesterday and spend ten minutes taking the seat out.

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Today this is the corner we were doing battle with.

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The first retaining nut came off without too much bother. Was still a bit of a struggle, but nothing too dire.

Of course the last one decided to be an absolute pain. Not helped by having to do everything 1/32 of a turn at a time and access precluding getting any serious leverage involved.

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If I hadn't managed to wedge that one spanner against the chassis rail I reckon I'd probably still be there.

It felt like a LOT more than an hour and a half later when we finally had the old hose out.

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Getting the new one in was only made slightly more awkward by virtue of the fact that the flare on the line to the wheel cylinder wouldn't spin on the pipe so I had to screw the pipe onto the union rather than the other way around.

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By this point I could barely stand from my legs and back cramping so I called it a day.

Jobs for tomorrow will be to bleed the brakes, adjust the handbrake, clip all the lines back into place and do a VERY thorough leak check. While I have the seat out there are a couple of minor jobs in that area I might attend to at the same time. Looks like I might have a very slight blow from one exhaust to inlet manifold gasket, or it could just be a bit of dirt...I'll look more closely tomorrow. I'd like to attach that fuel line to the chassis rail to keep it from sitting and rubbing against the top of the engine mounting cradle too.

I'm thoroughly glad that these hoses are fitted now...Not a job I want to do again! Such a simple job made a million times more awkward because of the positions that you have to contort yourself into to get to anything.
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Thu Jan 28, 2021 2:36 am

The box with my new steering linkage ball joints has turned up. There's a little play in a couple of the ones on the car and one of the others has a shredded boot, so I think it's time to replace them.

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These are standard Mini track rod ends so readily and cheaply available. Conveniently they've got a hammered black finish as well which fits in perfectly with what I've generally been using for the cabin metalwork!

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I'll probably do that one first just to confirm they are actually correct as that one is by far the easiest to get to. That's a job for another day though.

Today I wanted to get things mostly buttoned back up - but there were a few tasks I wanted to do while I had the seat and service hatch out.

[] CVT Belt.

Our research had shown that the Dayco HP2020 should be a "drop in" replacement for the original Dayco 43-5639 belt. Having compared the two next to each other they appear identical (well within the variance that there seems to be between various batches of the original belts).

Checking my notes it's hard to believe I've done a little over 400 miles since I fitted that NOS belt! Taking a close look at it though it seems to be doing absolutely fine.

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I was particularly interested to check for any signs of either overheating or the outer braiding failing given that she's done quite a few high speed blasts up the A5 recently - and I don't think howling along at 70 was really in the original design spec for these belts! That's one area where the HP2020 is a better bet as I know it's factory spec for some vehicles with quite a bit more power than the Invacar so hopefully it should be able to stand up to this sort of punishment reasonably well. Even if I do wind up changing the belt annually or something as a service item at £35 it's hardly the end of the world.

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Changing the belt takes a grand total of about fifteen minutes from stepping into the garage and requires a 17mm spanner...that's it. In my case there's also an 8mm one needed to actually open the service hatch. Suffice to say these are kept in the car as standard these days. That belt I've taken off will be getting tucked away somewhere in either the engine bay or under the front hatch as a spare so should I have issues with a belt letting go unexpectedly in the future I shouldn't have issues getting myself going again.

The HP2020 is a directional belt, so the arrows want to be pointing towards the left hand side of the car (as if you're sitting in the driver's seat), I assume this is to do with the direction that the braiding is woven, so if a thread were to come loose the rotation would tend to keep it from unravelling.

Virtually impossible to get a photo of that because of the guard and poor lighting...but you get the idea.

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[] Gearbox oil leak.

While TPA's engine is pretty much entirely oil tight, the gearbox isn't. It's fine when stationary but is clearly losing some when you're driving. One of the main sources is from the top cover, from where it's then running down the offside of the gearbox casing. I can't tell for certain if there's an additional leak from that driveshaft seal as well until I've sorted the leak immediately above it. Helpfully it's only held on by four nuts so hopefully an easy solution. It doesn't look like there was ever a gasket in here, just a smear of instant gasket goop. So I've scraped it back and replaced it with the same.

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While I had the cover off I checked to make sure the oil level hadn't dropped - and it is still level with the top of the fill plug. It is a bit murky though and seems to have frothed up more than I'd expect from my messing with the pulleys while fitting the belt.

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When I changed this oil originally it was drained cold when the car had been sitting for a while...so I reckon there may well have been some gunge in the bottom that was left behind (there's no drain plug on the gearbox so you have to drain it with a suction pump). The car will be getting an oil and filter change in roughly 150 miles anyway so I'll make sure that the gearbox and diff oils are changed then as well - I'll make a point of ensuring it's done right after a run so nothing has a chance to settle out this time. If it has been foaming though that won't have helped with any potential leak issues.


[] Electrical Isolator Switch.

I noticed that this was wobbling around a bit by random chance so took the opportunity to nip this up a bit.

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Easy fix.

[] Seat improvement.

The seat base on the Invacar is a little unusual because the seat is designed to be able to slide a foot or so over to the left to aid someone transferring from a wheelchair into the car. To allow this it sits on rollers at both the front and the rear. The lateral movement is only locked by a single latch on the front runner...the downside of this is that between play in the latch, the front rollers and the unsecured rear, the rear of the seat can of course shift a little - probably an inch or so - during cornering. I imagine this was probably far less of an issue with the original seat as it wouldn't provide any lateral support to speak of - the one I have fitted does though. After a year and nearly a thousand miles, the feeling of that moving just as you start to go into a corner is still extremely disconcerting.

My solution for this was actually very simple.

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I just drilled two holes through the rear of the seat frame, through the back of the backplate the runner is attached to and out the back of the bulkhead, then stuck two bolts through it. This simply prevents the frame from being able to move left or right.

It's a tiny detail in the grand scheme of things, but I think it's one of those things which will make a huge difference to how pleasant the car is to drive.


[] Reassembly.

Last thing I had to do before putting the interior back together was to return the rigid brake lines to their clips, then it was just a matter of putting the hatch back in place and bolting the seat back in. Which took about half an hour because it decided to fight me.

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That seems to happen about one in four times you have the seat out, it just refuses to line up properly when you're trying to get the bolts in. Got there in the end though.

That's where I ran out of time today - hence why there are still tools strewn all over the place. I haven't fully bled the brakes yet as I'll obviously need to do that once I've fitted the new master cylinder and done the associated plumbing modifications. I did get enough air out though so I could get full pressure in the braking system to do a leak check on the pipework I'd disturbed - everything seemed just fine.

Before I got stuck into the Invacar I did take a look at the alternator on the Jag. I wanted to see how accessible it isn't.

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Actually looks a lot less buried than I expected...Awkward yes, but not utterly impossible. I reckon once the airbox is out of the way and maybe that idler for the air conditioning belt it should be *reasonably* accessible. Of course being a Jaguar I'm sure there will be one fastener that's completely inaccessible and probably isn't shown on the parts diagram just for giggles...I'll have a closer look and pull a couple of bits and pieces out when I've got a bit more time...but I'm leaning a lot more towards having a bash at changing the alternator myself than I was this time yesterday.

So a lot of little things today, but it feels like a reasonably productive afternoon as it ticked a few things off on the whiteboard in the garage.
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:24 am

Just noticed something when flipping through the photos I took when looking at the alternator on the Jag.

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If I can get to it, that's getting trimmed back and re-terminated... I'm not honestly expecting it to make the slightest difference. However it's £1-200 cheaper than an alternator so definitely getting tried first. The behaviour initially seemed to suggest a high impedance issue somewhere...

Could I be that lucky?
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Sat Jan 30, 2021 2:42 am

It's been a bit of a frustrating afternoon. Spent another hour and a half on the phone to Vodafone, trying to give them their stupid 4G modem thing back. No surprises that they've charged me for it, despite assurances half a dozen times that I wouldn't have to. Seriously, if you have a choice just don't go near them. They'll be losing me as a customer once my current contract is up, after 25 years.

I then set about trying to revive my desiccant dehumidifier as I'd really like to properly dry out the Jag. This thing is supremely effective. When I put it in my original Xantia after discovering a swimming pool under the rear seats it pulled over 20 litres out of the car within a day and a half. Unlike refrigeration based dehumidifiers which really don't work well below about 15C, the cooler it is the better these work. In addition to that this thing kicks out about 650W of heat as well, which is obviously helpful when you're trying to dry a car out.

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It's actually quite well designed and by the standards of 21st century plastic tat it's actually pretty well put together. Unfortunately Amcor dropped the ball by using the cheapest and nastiest motors in the world. I've already changed the one which drives the desiccant wheel, but last time I had it running the blower motor seized up.

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I did pull the motor itself to bits to see if it could be saved, but the bearings are just utterly shot. Then started a swearing match with Google (etc) where 85% of my search string was just getting ignored. Thankfully I was offered assistance and a replacement has now been ordered.

By the time it arrives from China summer will probably be here so it'll be a moot point!

At that point I was able to escape to the garage for an hour to start getting the brake upgrade on the Invacar installed.

There's just a *bit* of a difference in size between the old and new!

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The mounting points are identical though as we hoped, though I obviously needed to swap the pushrod over, was expecting that though. Is a simple enough job, it's just held in place by a circlip...the removal of which was made slightly more awkward as this happened to my circlip pliers the moment I tried to use them.

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Yep...it's one of *those* days. After about 15 minutes of swearing at it I eventually managed to ping it off my forehead into the footwell.

The new cylinder has a spring clip, so was easy enough to remove with a normal pair of pliers.

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My *plan* had been to transfer this clip over as it would be far easier to manhandle into the groove...however I then discovered that the spring clip was too small to hold the washers of the old cylinder in...so I ended up having to wrangle the original flat circlip in.

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Got there in the end. One assembled cylinder ready to go on the car.

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Having learned my lesson before, I made sure that the "fork" of the pushrod was around the handlebar home rather than off to one side. It's a real faff to get this into place if the cylinder is already bolted in place if the pushrod isn't centralised properly.

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Getting the roll pin back in is a pig of a job just because it's fiddly. That's on the docket for tomorrow hopefully.

The cylinder is actually in place now though.

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I can't actually finish the installation yet because I completely failed to realise I needed to buy one additional part in. The current setup has the line from the master cylinder coming straight into a 4-way splitter block. From there it splits the hydraulic line to the front and rear of the car, with the brake light switch screwed into the fourth port. Of course there will be one less line there because there's a separate port on the master cylinder for each circuit.

I should have realised that before I even ordered the cylinder...bit annoying as I'll need to wait for that to arrive. Sadly I'm pretty sure I don't have one in stock given the lengths I went to to save the rear axle T on TPA. I'd not have spent hours salvaging that if I had a spare! Annoying.

The reservoir is meant to be at a slightly steeper angle than it is on this car but that won't be a problem at all in use as the cap is at the highest point and it's only a very slight tilt.

In the meantime I will get the rest of the plumbing done and will take the opportunity to pull the mud guard out and attack it with a large hammer to beat it back into something resembling the right shape. I suspect I may need to attack the bolts with the grinder as they're pretty crusty. While in the area I'll get the foam finally installed under the fuel tank upper strap and get rid of the folded up Amazon box which has been in there for a year.

I've got a couple of cans of truck bed liner spray on order as well. I'm going to paint the bulkhead with that on the outside to see if that helps reduce the drumming of that panel a bit. If it works I'll probably go round the inside of the other hollow body sections too.

Just more little bits and pieces it'll be nice to get ticked off the to do list. She's worth it, and they're all things which will add up in future when the car's in regular use.

No huge progress today then, but at least I did get a couple of steps done!
LOZ: Oddball cars, lighting information, and anything else I remember to upload!
Current fleet: 02 VW Caddy 1.9SDI, 90 Mercedes 208D Autotrail Navajo, 85 Sinclair C5, 78 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6GL, 73 AC Model-70.

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Zelandeth
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:03 pm

Very little time for cars today annoyingly as literally as I was opening the garage door I got a panicked phone call from a friend informing me that they had lost electrical power to their garage (which contains their washing machine and tumble drier) and they can't get an electrician in before the middle of next week. To be honest the electrics in that house are an absolute nightmare and they know that. They are currently planning later on this year to move out for a few weeks, have the entire place emptied and have crews come in and basically gut and renovate the whole house. Including a *complete* rewire and re-plumb.

Didn't take long to figure out the problem...Tracing the wire heading out of the consumer unit from the garage breaker it immediately disappeared into a junction box and then to a fused switch (which has no maker's name or anything on it anywhere). Which I wasn't able to get the fuse out of to check. Immediate conclusion: It's over a period of years running both a washing machine and a (condensing) drier, has stressed either the fuse and/or holder and has overheated. Quick check showed we had power into the switch but nothing on the way out. What did I find when I pulled it off and took it to bits?

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Yep, we have a winner! Exactly what I was expecting to find.

A better quality replacement switch was installed and they've been told to try to stagger use of the appliances in the meantime, if it causes any further issues in the next couple of months we'll arrange a beefier feed to the sockets in the garage. The duct that runs into there being a foot away from the consumer unit makes life a bit easier there. Beyond that the whole place will be getting re-wired anyway.

Having resolved that crisis I was left with half an hour or so to get car things done before dinner. Target was to get the front mud guard off the Invacar so I can straighten it out and paint behind it.

There are two bolts at the front and one at the rear of it - all of which were lumps of rust that were never going to move.

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The angle grinder is too much of a blunt instrument for jobs like this, I'd most likely end up damaging the surrounding bodywork. Step forward the reciprocating multi-tool...it's much more of a scalpel than a sledgehammer and is one of those tools I curse myself for not buying about fifteen years earlier. It made light work of the front two bolts in a matter of seconds.

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The rear one was a bit more of a hassle as I couldn't get quite far enough in to get to the bolt properly from any angle so I wound up cutting around it a bit. Will mean I need to put a small repair plate on there before it goes in but it won't be a difficult repair. The mudguard as a whole though needs "a little help" I think it's fair to say.

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That *should* be pretty much a straight U shaped channel save for the bit that's folded up to form the keeper for the bonnet latch at the right hand end.

I reckon that with a bit of careful application of the hammer pictured there and a large chunk of wood to act as a former we'll be able to get it back to something far closer to the correct shape. It doesn't need to be absolutely perfect after all. I'd have done this a lot sooner but only relatively recently discovered that it could actually be removed.

The only other thing of note which has happened today is feeling that I've achieved something by actually using the 3D printer for something honestly useful.

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This is the piece of test equipment that I lose in my room by far the most frequently, not least because it's an awkward shape...so I made a little bracket for it to live in. Hopefully it will stop vanishing quite so regularly now. Already planning similar solutions for some of the more awkwardly shaped tools in the garage which frequently vanish because there's nowhere truly out of the way for them to live, especially with my garage having a critical lack of flat surfaces on which things can sit.
LOZ: Oddball cars, lighting information, and anything else I remember to upload!
Current fleet: 02 VW Caddy 1.9SDI, 90 Mercedes 208D Autotrail Navajo, 85 Sinclair C5, 78 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6GL, 73 AC Model-70.

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Zelandeth
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Re: Today I mostly .....

Post by Zelandeth » Tue Feb 02, 2021 10:26 pm

Finally got hold of the last couple of bits I'd been waiting on to allow me to proceed with the brake system upgrade on the Invacar.

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Metric unions are needed because the master cylinder is metric, and the T is a replacement so I can replace the 4-way one the brake light switch is currently fitted to - which of course needed to be Imperial because the brake light switch is!

The switch was removed from the car and stored safely in the bag with the union it will be living in from now on while I removed the old T piece.

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That's now been loosely refitted to the stud the T-piece lives on.

This has then allowed me to have a think about how I'll be routing the lines, shouldn't require too much plumbing. The line to the rear will be getting extended the couple of inches needed to reach the cylinder. I did think about remaking the whole line to avoid the need for a join...but the run is a single piece all the way to the T at the rear axle and routing it would require me to remove the fuel tank. It's getting extended!

Shouldn't take long to get things in here hooked up.

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Just ran out of time today.

The mud guard will need a bit of careful attention, but even a couple of minutes has got it looking far closer to the correct shape again.

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That was mostly achieved simply by standing on it! Shouldn't be too hard to save it.

I do alternatively have a couple of sheets of metal here I could probably fabricate a replacement out of if it came to that.
LOZ: Oddball cars, lighting information, and anything else I remember to upload!
Current fleet: 02 VW Caddy 1.9SDI, 90 Mercedes 208D Autotrail Navajo, 85 Sinclair C5, 78 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6GL, 73 AC Model-70.

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