Dick wrote: ↑Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:22 am
You made a tidy of of the indicator switch, id never have thought of trying to put a thread in plastic.. good on you for saving the collection of old calculators that should have gone to silicon heaven years ago.. are they worth anything? Are there other people who collect such things? Can you restore them?
Yes and no. Anything old enough to have a Nixie or Panaplax display is usually worth decent money, more recent stuff seems to be a lot more random, though they're not usually worth big money unless you're talking about some of the more iconic models - oh, or anything with a Commodore or Sinclair badge on. The box of three currently in the post (mainly for the Sharp EL-8130A which is an interesting looking design I've not seen before) cost me £12 for the three, and the organiser mentioned in the last post was £0.99.
As far as restoration goes...yes you can, but none I've had has really needed more than a really good clean and some corroded battery terminals cleaned.
I just enjoy the fact that there used to be such a variety of designs to do essentially the same job, and that they used to be nicely made things which someone would have been proud to have on their desk, not just some £0.50 chunk of plastic.
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The windscreen wipers on the Jag have been becoming increasingly glitchy of late. Normally a sharp thump on the scuttle would get them working again - until last time I needed to go out in a hurry when they decided to play dead entirely. The behaviour seemed to suggest the motor wasn't making it quite all the way to the fully parked position (which is slightly further over the screen than the normal wiping range).
Given I knew the drains had been clogged for goodness knows how long the motor had most likely spent some time under water so I was hoping it was going to be a simple case of dirty contacts or dried up grease in the linkage.
Figured it was worth pulling the grill over it off and seeing if I could see anything obviously amiss. Looked like it would be a simple case of pulling the wiper arms, undoing a couple of bolts and lifting it off...right?
Of course not, because Jaguar. Having unfastened everything I could see it still wasn't interested in budging more than a few millimetres.
Peering under the edge it became obvious there was a load of hardware attached to the underside, with no obvious way to detach it. Attempting to get a wrench into the bolt only resulted in me dropping it into the void under the grill.
Eventually I figured out that the whole wiper assembly remains attached to the cover and you just have to sort of wrestle it out through the not-quite-wide-enough gap.
Those spindle gear boxes look suspiciously like the same ones used in the Invacar...given the amount of BMC parts bin hardware in there it wouldn't surprise me.
Nothing hugely obvious amiss, though the whole drive assembly and spindles were really dry. So everything was drowned in penetrating oil and I then splodged as much grease as I could be hand into the spindle boxes (pretty easy as they're not sealed) without pulling things to bits any further as I was being mindful of having to go out pretty soon to collect groceries.
I'm under no illusions that I won't be back in here, most likely I'll need to dismantle the motor gearbox itself to give it a thorough clean and re-grease as the original lubrication has probably long since turned to plastic. As it is though the wipers now move at about twice the original speed and appear to be playing ball...the issue has been intermittent though so only time will tell.
With everything back together I headed for my grocery collection slot, via a fuel station (again).
Stopping at the first junction after that I noticed the dash lighting seemed really dim.
Um...yeah, that would do it.
The alternator appears to have lost interest in charging. I legged it home and switched cars. Further investigation revealed no working ignition light either...so either bulb has gone or we've got an issue with the brushes most likely.
Of course when I went back to the car half an hour later to park it it behaved perfectly again.
Yep...sticky and/or worn brushes methinks.
Won't that be fun...the alternator is one of the nice easy to get to things...
Oh...no I actually meant the other thing. You can barely see the thing. I changed the belt for it a couple of months ago and that was a full day's job pretty much!
Never a dull moment...
I did finally get a bit of time to start putting the basic text for a website update together (first time since 2017!), got a ways to go but have made a start at least. Decided to use something lacking in distractions to assist in concentrating on what I was actually working on.
Really do like the keyboard on this too. It's definitely physically the same board that Acorn used in the Archimedes range (A3000/3010/3020 at least), which was always my favourite to type on of the machines from that era. Amiga wasn't bad...Atari ST came miles behind with their horrible mushy mess. Funky shaped function keys couldn't even redeem it. No idea when I'll actually get the update finished and uploaded, but at least I've made a start.