Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Lada, Saab, Citroen, Sinclair & AC Model 70
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 6:20 pm
So, since last time we've got a few things done here...Few updates rolled into one here. Apologies if some things don't quite make sense from the perspective of grammar - I've copied and pasted from a few separate posts elsewhere.
First task of the day though was to fit a non-return valve into the feed to the windscreen washer pump. This should stop the water draining back to the reservoir and requiring a million pushes of the button before anything gets to the washer. Have to admit for a manual washer pump I'm really surprised at the volume of water it gets onto the screen and the pressure with which it delivered.
Have successfully had life out of the indicator circuits now - especially having worked out which terminals to short out on the stalk (which is *utterly* knackered) so I can actually get life out of both the dash lamp and the exterior ones. Looking at it more carefully I think there's actually an entire part of the assembly outright missing.
The flash rate is a little higher than I'd usually like, but I think it'll be perfectly fine for a vehicle of this age. If anything else, the pattern being different to you'd expect from a modern car is a good thing as it makes it more visible, and with a car this small you want every bit of visibility you can get.
The more exciting part of this for me though is this...
Which confirms to me that the front-rear lighting loom is in fact intact.
...Even if the fact that it was the brake light that started flashing did initially confuse me. The previous owner has managed to put the backplate on upside down. The indicator is actually meant to be at the top, I'll turn it around tomorrow. Now I better understand the lighting loom, running the missing section from left to right shouldn't be too hard. Just three wires. With a bit of luck, tomorrow I'll have fully functioning rear light clusters.
That's quite a bit boost to me as I was worried that was going to be a lot of extra work.
Another boost was that in having sorted out a number of dodgy grounds etc and such like was that this happened too.
Yep, the windscreen wiper is now working just fine too. Self parking is a bit touchy, but that's entirely due to the rocker switches which we've already mentioned. I note that the Lucas replacement for the wiper one is actually a "two speed" version, so if I do fit that later I may well stuff a timer unit in there to give me an intermittent option, as that's actually a nice thing to have.
The list of vehicle systems needing to be brought back to life is actually shrinking quite a bit now.
May well look at getting the floor sorted out this coming week. The main brake line (which was the thing that was going to be the most awkward) has been replaced now and I've ascertained that the wiring loom under the floor is in perfect order, so no reason not to really. Be nice to actually have a floor and a seat in it!
In case you wondered, seating is going to be provided by the driver's seat from my old Xantia. I was originally planning to use this for an office chair, but this is a more immediate need. Yes it's a bit of a departure from originality and all that, but my spine will thank me for it.
Need to get myself a set of number plates made up for it as well. Will be in the correct typeface of course...modern ones would just look daft on this.
----
I decided to clean the speedometer up a bit. It was full of cobwebs before and one thoroughly dessicated spider. That was going to drive my OCD mad.
Being a typical 3.5" Smith's motorcycle style unit it had the twist-off bezel so was easy to get in to. Everything internally was actually in surprisingly clean condition behind the face, so I didn't mess with it. The only thing which seemed amiss was that the grease on the input coupling was quite gummy. Cleaned as much of that out as I could then put a fresh blob in there, it turns nice and freely now.
Didn't clean up too bad at all.
The wiring isn't proving too bad really so long as it's tackled methodically - quite a few bits just didn't initially make sense because so many bits were missing. Having plugged a few of the gaps it's making a lot more sense now. Especially now I've mostly tracked down the bits which differ slightly from the diagrams that predate the car by 3 years. Given the degree of hand assembly involved no two seem to be the same.
A fair bit of head scratching was caused also due to a dodgy indicator stalk as behaviour wasn't making sense due to how many contacts are involved and it behaving inconsistently.
Astonishingly, the hydraulic service braking system is the only thing that's outright not working now I think! You wouldn't have thought that a few weeks ago when it was a lifeless hulk.
----
Well that was painless!
Couple of hours spent sitting out in the lovely sunshine this afternoon tidying up some of the engine bay wiring and reconnecting the tail lights properly. One thing I did change was to do the earthing locally. Originally they were grounded through a wire in the loom which went all the way back to the front bulkhead ground point. I decided that was daft, so grounded both ends of that wire, and stuck a ground connection to each cluster to a bolt under the ignition coil bracket on the near side, and the voltage regulator bracket on the offside.
Sure enough, look at that...we have fully functioning tail lights.
(Note that there's no hazard flasher functionality - I may well add that via a "bolt on" unit as it seems a useful feature to have).
I was expecting a bit of a battle to get all three bits working at once, but nope...Brake, tail and indicators all operate correctly without having any effect on each other.
They are currently missing their gaskets, so I'll need to come back to that at some point in the future, but it'll do for now.
Glad to report that the dashboard indicator is also behaving itself. You've no excuse for forgetting to turn the indicators off in this thing as it's by far the brightest light on the dash - I had to use the flash to get this photo without it totally washing out. Amber is the one for the indicators, again like quite a few other cars from this era (and still quite common on motorcycles I believe).
----
New indicator stalk arrived today...
The only difference (aside from the connector - which may well have been on the original one when it left the factory for all I know) I could see on the new stalk was that the new one has a purple wire that doesn't exist on the original. I've just terminated it and left it alone for now - guessing it might be a feed for a dim/dip device or something like that as it looks like it leads into the contacts that handle the headlight switching.
Pretty quick and painless job to get it wired in and the cover back in place.
...Though we did initially have a bit of a head scratcher, in that turning the indicators on resulted in all four flashing (and the flasher unit sounding distinctly unhappy about this). Took a bit of head scratching, but it turned out to be that the screws I'd used to fasten it to the column were too long and were bridging the contacts for the left/right selection. Switching them out for some that were slightly shorter resolved that issue and got things working as they should.
The offside ones still flash slightly faster than the nearside ones for some reason, will sort that out later. My money's on dodgy tail light earths until proven otherwise.
Funny how adding something like this does so much to make the dash look more complete.
I've not wrapped the wiring for this again yet, as I think I want to make it a bit longer as it currently pulls more on the loom at full right hand lock than I'd like. That's a job for another day when it's warmer though and I've more time.
In other news, the fuel gauge has revived itself! Noticed today that it was "twitching" when I turned the ignition off - and sure enough, it now responds as it should do to varying the impedance between the connections for it. Guess I'll pull it out of the dash for a clean then if it's going to work.
First task of the day though was to fit a non-return valve into the feed to the windscreen washer pump. This should stop the water draining back to the reservoir and requiring a million pushes of the button before anything gets to the washer. Have to admit for a manual washer pump I'm really surprised at the volume of water it gets onto the screen and the pressure with which it delivered.
Have successfully had life out of the indicator circuits now - especially having worked out which terminals to short out on the stalk (which is *utterly* knackered) so I can actually get life out of both the dash lamp and the exterior ones. Looking at it more carefully I think there's actually an entire part of the assembly outright missing.
The flash rate is a little higher than I'd usually like, but I think it'll be perfectly fine for a vehicle of this age. If anything else, the pattern being different to you'd expect from a modern car is a good thing as it makes it more visible, and with a car this small you want every bit of visibility you can get.
The more exciting part of this for me though is this...
Which confirms to me that the front-rear lighting loom is in fact intact.
...Even if the fact that it was the brake light that started flashing did initially confuse me. The previous owner has managed to put the backplate on upside down. The indicator is actually meant to be at the top, I'll turn it around tomorrow. Now I better understand the lighting loom, running the missing section from left to right shouldn't be too hard. Just three wires. With a bit of luck, tomorrow I'll have fully functioning rear light clusters.
That's quite a bit boost to me as I was worried that was going to be a lot of extra work.
Another boost was that in having sorted out a number of dodgy grounds etc and such like was that this happened too.
Yep, the windscreen wiper is now working just fine too. Self parking is a bit touchy, but that's entirely due to the rocker switches which we've already mentioned. I note that the Lucas replacement for the wiper one is actually a "two speed" version, so if I do fit that later I may well stuff a timer unit in there to give me an intermittent option, as that's actually a nice thing to have.
The list of vehicle systems needing to be brought back to life is actually shrinking quite a bit now.
May well look at getting the floor sorted out this coming week. The main brake line (which was the thing that was going to be the most awkward) has been replaced now and I've ascertained that the wiring loom under the floor is in perfect order, so no reason not to really. Be nice to actually have a floor and a seat in it!
In case you wondered, seating is going to be provided by the driver's seat from my old Xantia. I was originally planning to use this for an office chair, but this is a more immediate need. Yes it's a bit of a departure from originality and all that, but my spine will thank me for it.
Need to get myself a set of number plates made up for it as well. Will be in the correct typeface of course...modern ones would just look daft on this.
----
I decided to clean the speedometer up a bit. It was full of cobwebs before and one thoroughly dessicated spider. That was going to drive my OCD mad.
Being a typical 3.5" Smith's motorcycle style unit it had the twist-off bezel so was easy to get in to. Everything internally was actually in surprisingly clean condition behind the face, so I didn't mess with it. The only thing which seemed amiss was that the grease on the input coupling was quite gummy. Cleaned as much of that out as I could then put a fresh blob in there, it turns nice and freely now.
Didn't clean up too bad at all.
The wiring isn't proving too bad really so long as it's tackled methodically - quite a few bits just didn't initially make sense because so many bits were missing. Having plugged a few of the gaps it's making a lot more sense now. Especially now I've mostly tracked down the bits which differ slightly from the diagrams that predate the car by 3 years. Given the degree of hand assembly involved no two seem to be the same.
A fair bit of head scratching was caused also due to a dodgy indicator stalk as behaviour wasn't making sense due to how many contacts are involved and it behaving inconsistently.
Astonishingly, the hydraulic service braking system is the only thing that's outright not working now I think! You wouldn't have thought that a few weeks ago when it was a lifeless hulk.
----
Well that was painless!
Couple of hours spent sitting out in the lovely sunshine this afternoon tidying up some of the engine bay wiring and reconnecting the tail lights properly. One thing I did change was to do the earthing locally. Originally they were grounded through a wire in the loom which went all the way back to the front bulkhead ground point. I decided that was daft, so grounded both ends of that wire, and stuck a ground connection to each cluster to a bolt under the ignition coil bracket on the near side, and the voltage regulator bracket on the offside.
Sure enough, look at that...we have fully functioning tail lights.
(Note that there's no hazard flasher functionality - I may well add that via a "bolt on" unit as it seems a useful feature to have).
I was expecting a bit of a battle to get all three bits working at once, but nope...Brake, tail and indicators all operate correctly without having any effect on each other.
They are currently missing their gaskets, so I'll need to come back to that at some point in the future, but it'll do for now.
Glad to report that the dashboard indicator is also behaving itself. You've no excuse for forgetting to turn the indicators off in this thing as it's by far the brightest light on the dash - I had to use the flash to get this photo without it totally washing out. Amber is the one for the indicators, again like quite a few other cars from this era (and still quite common on motorcycles I believe).
----
New indicator stalk arrived today...
The only difference (aside from the connector - which may well have been on the original one when it left the factory for all I know) I could see on the new stalk was that the new one has a purple wire that doesn't exist on the original. I've just terminated it and left it alone for now - guessing it might be a feed for a dim/dip device or something like that as it looks like it leads into the contacts that handle the headlight switching.
Pretty quick and painless job to get it wired in and the cover back in place.
...Though we did initially have a bit of a head scratcher, in that turning the indicators on resulted in all four flashing (and the flasher unit sounding distinctly unhappy about this). Took a bit of head scratching, but it turned out to be that the screws I'd used to fasten it to the column were too long and were bridging the contacts for the left/right selection. Switching them out for some that were slightly shorter resolved that issue and got things working as they should.
The offside ones still flash slightly faster than the nearside ones for some reason, will sort that out later. My money's on dodgy tail light earths until proven otherwise.
Funny how adding something like this does so much to make the dash look more complete.
I've not wrapped the wiring for this again yet, as I think I want to make it a bit longer as it currently pulls more on the loom at full right hand lock than I'd like. That's a job for another day when it's warmer though and I've more time.
In other news, the fuel gauge has revived itself! Noticed today that it was "twitching" when I turned the ignition off - and sure enough, it now responds as it should do to varying the impedance between the connections for it. Guess I'll pull it out of the dash for a clean then if it's going to work.