Zel's Fleet Blog...Rover, Renault, Peugeot, Trabant, Invacar & Sinclair C5

Post pictures and stories about your cars both present and past. Also post up "blogs" on your restoration projects - the more pictures the better! Note: blog-type threads often get few replies, but are often read by many members, and provide interest and motivation to other enthusiasts so don't be disappointed if you don't get many replies.
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Zelandeth
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#701 Post by Zelandeth » Mon Sep 28, 2020 6:08 pm

Here's one of our periodic wanders off into the world of obsolete technology which happen now and then around me...

Hello there...

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We've got yet another system to join the vintage Toshiba portable computer family.

Well...sort of.

I used to have one of these back around 2000 which I used for a lot of my school work. It sadly failed at one point due to capacitor issues on the power supply board (which these machines almost all suffer from at some point, likewise on the display backlight inverter board). It was stripped down with a view to being repaired however due to a communications breakdown (read: my father ignoring everything he was told) when we were clearing out the loft several key parts ended up getting binned.

These machines seem to change hands for alarmingly large sums of money in good order these days, so when this one popped up for £50 I grabbed it. Especially as it has the optional hard disk, most T1200s had dual (720K) floppy drives.

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This is important as apparently the non HD equipped machines lack several other bits, so you can't just slot the drive in. I'm hoping that once I make one good one out of the two (my original has a largely un-yellowed and almost unmarked case for a start) that I'll be able to recover some documents off my old one's drive. The 20Mb drive uses a proprietary JVC/Ricoh interface so there's no real way to get data to/from it without one of these laptops (or a handful of other, even rarer machines). Not the last time Toshiba played this card...the original T3200 uses a 40Mb drive with a similarly oddball proprietary interface, made by Fujitsu in that case.

I will definitely be swapping the keyboard for mine...that is just nasty...

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Though a trip through the dishwasher for the keycaps would probably make the world of difference.

Unsurprisingly this one doesn't work...just showing an amber light on the power supply. So at the very least that will need to be recapped. Hopefully that will be enough to get it going...time will tell.

Be a nice little productivity machine if I can get it working reliably. It's based around an 80C86 processor (a low power CMOS based version of the 8086), has 640+384K of memory to work with and importantly over the other machines of this era I have, backs these specs up with a hard disk and a screen with a decent backlight. The lack of that is by far the biggest blot on the Amstrad PPC512's copybook.

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My original one was still running the original battery which was ancient even when I was using it, yet that with a bit if careful power management (you can manually power down the hard drive and drop the clock speed (down from 9.5 to 4.5MHz if I remember right) it used to get me through a full secondary school day and the 45 minute bus ride to/from the place without breaking a sweat.

... I've never had a modern laptop which could do that! Never mind one from the mid 80s.

What do you bet that a clean, working example now turns up locally at a reasonable price?
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Luxobarge
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#702 Post by Luxobarge » Mon Sep 28, 2020 6:54 pm

Did you see my thread on this subject?

http://www.practically-classics.co.uk/f ... f=4&t=7206

These are still available if you want them......
Some people are like Slinkies - they serve no useful purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them downstairs.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#703 Post by Zelandeth » Mon Sep 28, 2020 7:24 pm

Luxobarge wrote:
Mon Sep 28, 2020 6:54 pm
Did you see my thread on this subject?

http://www.practically-classics.co.uk/f ... f=4&t=7206

These are still available if you want them......
Oh, no I hadn't spotted that...They are a little newer than most of my stuff, though the one running 95 probably just about squeaks in. Several people have told me I should be able to kick 95 into running on the T5200... though not likely actually in a usable fashion. They're both old enough to be interesting in their own right now though.

I'd definitely happily offer a good home for them, would just need to figure out collection arrangements, which with the threat of further lockdown looming might be a little while. Sure we could arrange something though.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#704 Post by Zelandeth » Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:29 pm

I appear to have managed to fail to take a photo of my progress today...but not a huge issue given there's not much to see!

All of the rivets to the left of the seat in the floor of TPA have now been drilled out and replaced with stainless bolts. The vast majority just disintegrated the moment I touched them with the drill so clearly weren't doing much useful.

The difference in rigidity of the floor panel with only that done is huge...you can still make it move, but it has resistance and doesn't just flop around. Thumping it with a first now makes a solid sounding thud rather than a hollow rattle.

I definitely want to make a point of changing all of the fasteners involved here as they're all clearly shot. So the seat needs to come out next as there are half a dozen buried underneath it that I can't get to any other way.

Goes without saying that I'll be looking closely at a few of the other body mountings where rivets have been used in case they're in as bad a shape - though the water being trapped under the floor mats for years probably made the issues here so much worse.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#705 Post by Zelandeth » Fri Oct 02, 2020 10:30 pm

With everything going on just now I'm only getting the odd few minutes here and there to do anything relating to the cars. Despite that the structural improvements to the nearside of the Invacar floor have been finished and I've started cutting the carpet to fit.

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You can start to get a feel for how it's going to look now I think.

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These are the new kick plates that might be going in.

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I'm still undecided...whether they get used or not will probably depend on whether I can get the originals back to a vaguely presentable state...currently they're awful.

I'm basically making the left carpet, right carpet (which is *mostly* just a mirror image) then will cut an infill to go in the middle.

Nothing is being glued in place yet. Before that happens I need to rotate the car 180 degrees so I can do the same knackered rivet replacement on the offside, paint the seat base, find a rubber boot for the gear selector linkage where it passes through the bulkhead and thoroughly degrease the entire floor and front bulkhead. Depending on how things sit I may apply some foam underlay. I think that this will really make a huge difference to the feel of the interior.

As the seat can only be moved a few inches to either side I'm also doing away with the sliding capacity. Two bolts will be going through the rear of the frame to secure it in place. As the latch is at the front of the frame the rear of the seat tends to shift an inch or so every time you change direction, and it's quite annoying. If someone wants to undo it in the future it will just require a couple of bolts to be removed. Should make the driving experience a bit more pleasant. The seat wobbling around really doesn't instill confidence, so I'd really like to stop it doing that. I reckon this is probably more of an issue with my seat than it would be with the original as this provides a lot more lateral support than the original one would have.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Zelandeth
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#706 Post by Zelandeth » Sat Oct 03, 2020 5:25 pm

This is actually starting to look like I've got any idea what I'm doing...

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The joins will be far less visible once things are actually glued down. Plus the bar across the middle isn't bolted down at the offside yet hence the bump there.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#707 Post by Zelandeth » Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:41 pm

New offside outer "sill" made up from some ally sheet and bolted in place.

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I tapped the edge at the overlap flat with a hammer, though as this will be under both the carpet and sill kick plate I'm not really too bothered about how it looks.

I then went on a similar rivet replacement mission as I did on the nearside before giving everything a thorough wipe down then starting to get the carpet glued in.

After an hour or so getting distinctly high on carpet adhesive fumes we were three or four pieces away from the floor being done.

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Closer look at where it's following the contour of the front bulkhead to show how well it's formed.

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Yes I fouled up the bit by the steering yoke bracket...an infill will be cut to disguise that oops.

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Sadly three or four pieces short of being finished I ran out of time! Annoying having to stop so close to being finished, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Should get it finished tomorrow and get things put back together tomorrow. Have a few more bits to fit as trim but they're a bit less of a faff than the floor where you're working around the seat base.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#708 Post by Zelandeth » Mon Oct 05, 2020 6:26 pm

I think it's fair to call this is looking a bit more welcoming.


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Here's a "before" photo for reference.

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It's astonishing how a bit of trim can change the feel of the cabin.

The offside kick plate still needs to be secured, but I need direct access to that side of the car for that so it needs the rain to stop for five minutes.

There will be a few more bits to go in. To name one I'll be lining the door cavities in matching carpet, and the roof will get some at some point. That may well be a lighter colour and be actual automotive carpet though so it's easier to shape though...and will likely wait a while as removing the roof will make lining it massively less awkward.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#709 Post by Zelandeth » Wed Oct 07, 2020 9:21 pm

Trying to get the offside kick plate refitted today. Having the slightly frustrating situation that any bolts long enough to actually catch and clamp everything together are then long enough that they foul on the door runner when you try to open/close the door.

I think I may well just go for attaching the new kick plate on this side (which will go over the top of the original one to retain the exterior section which stops you getting grease all over your trousers getting in/out) which will allow me to re-drill the mounting holes in positions which don't get in the way of the door mechanism. This kick plate is in a royal mess anyway so I'd rather cover it up anyway. The nearside one just needs a good paint really...this one however is a bit mangled and has a lot more corrosion on than the other one.

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Might be a job for this weekend.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#710 Post by gazza82 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 2:02 pm

It's looking very smart ... guess that is also the advantage of those flat floors.

I remember a lady having one who lived up my road as a kid .. if she left both doors open we would try and kick footballs through it to a mate on the other side :lol: She often left them both open for fun too!! :D
"If you're driving on the edge ... you're leaving too much room!"

Retirement Project: '59 Austin A35 2-door with 1330cc Midget engine and many upgrades
Said goodbye: got '98 Alfa Romeo 156 2.0 TSpark to 210K miles before tin worm struck

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