Dick wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 7:00 pm
Could you strip the engine cowl and cover it with a vynil leather type finish?
Quite possibly...Though if they have used commercial grade carpet adhesive it's likely to involve a LOT of work!
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Wednesday was a little bit of a disaster.
My fuel injection overhaul kit for the Jag has finally turned up. I'm leaving this alone until next week though once the Xantia is (hopefully!) back on the road as it will inevitably take the car off the road for a few days as it will be quite an involved job to get that overhaul done.
The other thing which turned up was the stainless steel tubing I had ordered to take the place of the rear silencers on the Jag.
I set about replacing the tailpipes, while a bit fiddly this was pretty uneventful. Right up until this happened.
That is the twisted, shattered remains of what was my poor Huawei P20 Pro phone.
What happened is a classic case of "a series of unfortunate events." I'm a creature of habit...and my phone always lives in my left pocket. However during lockdown I've had no less than three pairs of trousers come to the end of their lives...leaving me a single, solitary pair of cargo pants. I've not felt like going into a clothing store to replace them so have been making do - but I didn't have my usual cargo pants on. So I didn't have the usual compliment of pockets. So I took my phone out of my pocket so it didn't get scratched up by my keys, placing it on the rear bumper of the Jag by where I was working. Unfortunately I then totally forgot to retrieve it before I went for a test drive. I realised it was missing about half an hour later and eventually figured out what had happened. The rubber bumpers on the case managed to make it stay exactly where I had put it for about 3/4 of a mile until it eventually fell off...Right in the middle of a 70mph dual carriageway.
The P20 Pro is a sturdy bit of kit for all it's got a shiny tempered glass finish, the chassis is milled from a single solid ingot of aluminium. It would have probably been absolutely fine following that experience, between the sturdy case it was in and the design, it might have cracked the screen or the rear case glass (both relatively easily replaceable), but it wouldn't have been a huge issue. However getting run over repeatedly by 70mph traffic was more than any piece of consumer electronics could deal with...and I defy any phone, even the ruggedised ones made by Cat, to come out of the experience looking any better than this.
Despite that mess my SIM card survived, and the eject mechanism for the drawer it lives in was still able to work properly to retrieve it. The battery was still undamaged as well - though given what it had been through I removed it as I didn't particularly trust it.
I feel such an utter idiot. I've had a mobile since early 1998 and have never damaged any of them beyond the odd scrape or scratch...I still have every single phone, and they all still work (even though the charger for the original one, a Vodafone MN-1 is currently AWOL...I know I do have it through, I saw it when we moved in here). Until now.
It's a real shame as well as this was probably the single piece of technology I've ever owned that I was most both impressed by and generally liked. I'd had it for a little over two years, and the shine hadn't even started to wear of (physically or metaphorically), and I was still daily awed by the capabilities of such a tiny bit of technology and the camera never ceased to impress me - and was singularly responsible for me having stopped carrying a separate camera. I knew I was just about at the point where I would be able to pick a new upgrade, but wasn't really feeling any need to. The main drive would be the fact that I always pass my previous handset on to my husband when I get an upgrade - so we actually get far more use out of them than we would otherwise (though I'd probably have considered selling the old handset otherwise). Being able to offer him such an impressive bit of technology would probably have been an incentive to look into it. Obviously that's not going to happen this time!
Turned out when I looked, I was indeed due an upgrade (as of last Wednesday), so getting a replacement handset wasn't going to leave me directly out of pocket (bearing in mind that directly replacing my existing one would still have set me back somewhere around £400) - though we *do* have "gadget cover" on our home insurance which will allow some of that to be recovered at least. Did mean I needed to do a bit of research though to decide what I wanted. Didn't take much...I've been very impressed with Huawei's handsets so far (we've had two P9s, two P10s and my P20 Pro in the house) so wasn't really interested in looking elsewhere. The P30 Pro was the standout choice...Basically a couple of year's worth of refinements to the basic design of the P20 Pro - and apparently a far better camera. Knocked £8 a month off my contract and doubled my (hardly touched) data allowance too.
Less than 24 hours after speaking to Vodafone the new handset arrived. I'll say one thing...It really is an incredibly pretty thing. There's a sort of three dimensional holographic effect on back.
They describe this finish as "Aurora" - and yes, I can see that.
I think I may actually need to make a point of getting a clear case this time...That's too pretty and makes me far too happy to hide it.
Initial impressions to overall fit, finish and software experience while setting up, basically can be summed up as "Your move, Apple."
Quick camera test...Haven't fiddled around with the configuration at all yet...
Hey look, a conveniently pretty test subject.
Hey look...a proper optical zoom with proper optical image stabilisation. Nice to have.
Plus in the opposite direction a proper wide angle mode.
Which will definitely be handy, not so much outside but for interior shots it will be a real bonus. Examples...
Here's a shot of the interior of the Jag in "normal "mode.
It's clear how much more you can see with it in wide angle mode.
The rear seat you can't usually get a decent photo of whatsoever because it's so cramped.
Would have been much better if I spent two seconds making sure the driver's headrest wasn't in shot.
It's even makes taking an interior photo of the Invacar pretty easy!
At the other end of the scale I discovered another party trick this camera has which will definitely be a lot of fun to play with. The macro mode focuses down to something ridiculous like 3mm. Here's the Jag's bonnet badge. I could get closer than this but would need to have a light on hand to avoid shadows.
Or how about a Xantia tail light lens?
You can really clearly see the alternate strips of clear lens and retro reflector in the lens.
Another package arrived yesterday morning that I'd actually completely forgotten about...This was hiding in it.
Here's the data tag for those of you playing along at home.
This is a new old stock 32mm Solex carb. It has the same throat size and stud spacing as the Weber 32 ICS carb on the Invacar - albeit with the base rotated through about 45 degrees. So if this stays on the car I'll need to make an adaptor up - not that it will be difficult. Just needs a metal disc with one hole in the middle and four smaller ones at appropriate places.
There was nothing really in mind here other than experimentation in the sheer spirit of curiosity.
Turned out the most difficult thing to get my head around for an initial test was figuring out how to actually bolt it onto the manifold. The original Weber carb has studs attached to it. This one has two holes to allow it to be bolted down or to fasten onto studs on the manifold. Just bolting it on however was made a bit tricky by the fact that you can't slot a bolt in from the top because the top of the carb casting is in the way. You can't slot it in from the bottom because the inlet manifold itself is in the way. After a bit of head scratching I cut a couple of bits of threaded rod to size and put nuts in both sides to clamp it down. That took me far longer to figure out than it really should have.
So what happened the first time I started it up? I wasn't honestly expecting it to even start. This was literally the carb as it was out the box - all I'd done was to blank off the vacuum feed for a distributor advance unit. Apologies for the horrible camera work, you're listening more than watching to be honest though.
YouTube Link
Well I think that's got promise! The throttle response is immediately obviously far, far snappier. Cracking the throttle open would usually result in quite a gaping hole in the carburation until the engine picks up, with at least the occasional sneeze back through the carb. I think we might need to cobble together a connection to the throttle to see how it behaves under load. The engine this carb was originally destined for was an 1100 I believe, so the per-stroke fuelling rate should have been pretty similar to what we would have been looking for here. Should be an interesting experiment...Initial indications seem to be positive.
Hopefully the weather will cool down enough over the weekend that we might be able to do an actual test run. I'll need to figure out whether making an adaptor plate for the base or adapting the throttle cable will be easiest. Annoyingly the throttle cable is about 1/2" too short to reach as it is. I suspect it may well be the base plate. I don't want to invest *too* much time in this at this stage as it's purely an experiment and it's entirely likely that my theory will be completely wrong and it will actually run pig rich under load.