Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Hell Razor5543]

I wonder if this might be of interest to you, Zel, for the spare parts?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acorn-Archim ... %7Ciid%3A1

[CitroJim]

Then off to pick up a few other essentials in a few different locations around town.

I recognise that car park!

[Zelandeth]

Then off to pick up a few other essentials in a few different locations around town.

I recognise that car park!

Would expect you to! Once we're actually allowed to speak to each other again you'll need to have a look. You'll probably not recognise a few areas of the car from last time you saw it.

-- -- --

While I used up most of my day's energy allotment trimming hedges today (the one was starting to encroach on the footway again despite having been done what felt like five minutes ago) I was determined to get at least one thing on the to do list ticked off...and sorting this on a permanent basis as a follow on from yesterday seemed a good target.



Checking it on the meter the original condenser was doing a passable impression of a 600K ohm resistor with no reading given on the capacitance range on my meter. Yep, that'll be dead then.

The polypropylene film cap sitting next to it should be a "fit and forget" replacement as they're far more long lived.

The innards were gouged out from the open end of the can and a hole was drilled for one lead of the new capacitor to poke through.



This was then soldered to the case (note that these capacitors are non polarised so it doesn't matter which side is ground).



Not the tidiest job but I was running out of gas in the soldering iron so was trying to be quick. It's solid and has good continuity to the can. Those are the important points.

The new cap is a little longer so unfortunately will unavoidably poke out the bottom a little.



Shouldn't be visible in-situ though unless you're peering at it.

Getting the wire (which is integrated into the insulating block which passes through the distributor wall at the other end) soldered to the cap lead was a major pain. Had to use quite a bit of heat and wound up shrinking the heat shrink I'd hoped to slide over this lead.



I'll come back to that another day. It'll be fine for now with a bit if tape. Not as though the wire is long enough to go anywhere.

Especially as the void in the can has now been filled with hot glue to provide mechanical support to the cap.



If I have problems with it going gooey due to heat I'll revisit things and use epoxy. I just don't have any in stock right now. Reckon it'll be fine though.

Back in place you wouldn't notice something was amiss unless you were specifically looking for it would you?



Bit of tape has since been added to the coil connection wire to the cap just to ensure it can't short on the case. What I'll probably do as a proper solution there will be to add a crimped on terminal at the body end so I can properly get a bit of shrink wrap on there properly. If it hadn't got dark on me today I'd have done it then, just ran out of time though.

Glad to report that this was the result when I turned the key (note she's stone cold here).



Which is always reassuring given at least twice in the past I've resolved minor ignition issues on cars and then lost all spark until I spent an hour faffing around and swearing at them.

Not really expecting to notice any real difference on the road but we'll see when I next have her out and about.

[xantia_v6]

I would suggest that you need to put some epoxy over the solid wire coming out of the capacitor, or you will find that it falls off after a while due to vibration.

[CitroJim]

I recognise that car park!

Would expect you to! Once we're actually allowed to speak to each other again you'll need to have a look. You'll probably not recognise a few areas of the car from last time you saw it.

Magic Looking forward to seeing you and the cars Zel!

I love how you have 'restuffed' the condenser in finest vintage wireless restoration tradition... I've restuffed a few vintage electrolytics to maintain appearances and to give the replacements a good anchorage...

I would suggest that you need to put some epoxy over the solid wire coming out of the capacitor, or you will find that it falls off after a while due to vibration.

Agreed... They're not designed for rough service

[Zelandeth]

Fair point on mechanical support. It shouldn't really be subjected to much movement given everything is attached to the same body, but I'll definitely look at improving it. As you say it's definitely a weak point.

[mickthemaverick]

When I have done similar conversions in the past I have made the connections using small coiled springs, usually from an old biro, to absorb the movements. Not had one fail at all and one was in the KR200 which shook everything to bits!

[Zelandeth]

When I have done similar conversions in the past I have made the connections using small coiled springs, usually from an old biro, to absorb the movements. Not had one fail at all and one was in the KR200 which shook everything to bits!

Interesting idea. Worst thing for vibration I've ever worked on was an early 80s Honda trials bike (road legal...but only just!) which had a 500cc single. It used to virtually leave the ground at idle. Had ridiculous levels of torque when under way though. Biggest challenge was trying to keep the front wheel on the ground for the first three gears. It used to take great pleasure in firing the core out of spark plugs into the next county at frequent intervals too. Great fun though and to my surprise a really comfy thing to ride. Not that I ever rode it on a public road of course.

Engine vibration is surprisingly absent on the Invacar at least...being a well engineered and well built boxer helps there, and is one of the main reason a lot of these engines wound up in Fiats when these cars were scrapped I reckon.

[Zelandeth]

Nobody spotted my deliberate mistake to see if you were paying attention then I see!

Um...yeah...of course it was deliberate. Definitely didn't happen simply because I'm a Blithering idiot.

While that capacitor came out of the drawer for the 0.22uF caps, it isn't one! It's a 0.022uF cap. D'oh! Now thinking about it, that should have been blindingly obvious based on size alone. The result of this was a car that would die the moment you even looked at the throttle.

Of course having turned that corner of the house upside down I can now confirm that I have a total of zero 0.22uF caps in stock.

Cue some bodging to get the car back up and running. This mess will just be getting cable tied to the side of the distributor.



Once the correct capacitor is back in stock I'll set about making it pretty again. Based on testing on the drive this seems to have sorted things though. Couldn't really go out to do a test drive as by that point it had dropped below few point again...which in a vehicle with no really usable demister is less than ideal.



That's definitely the biggest shortcoming of this car as a winter runaround I think.

Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to actually test things tomorrow.

[CitroJim]

Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to actually test things tomorrow.

Judging by the weather first things this morning Zel, maybe not... Brass monkeys everywhere!

Jack Frost has been out and about too!

[Zelandeth]

Towards the end of the summer the oil pressure warning light stopped working on the Jag. Given that the oil pressure gauge doesn't work this was less than ideal and was not something I was willing to leave unfixed.

By the standards of a V12 XJ-S it's not particularly difficult to get to at all.



Thanks to the sheer amount of stuff in the way though even this did require full use of two extensions and a universal joint to get to it...but not too bad to be honest. Fiddly rather than difficult.



The offending item.



Once the new one was fitted (which by some miracle I managed *not* to drop down the back of the engine while fitting) correct operation of the oil pressure warning light was restored.



Fingers crossed it lasts longer than the previous one which was only in there for about a year.

Earlier in the day I had reason to do a bit of an audit and clear out of the chest freezer in the back of the garage as we had a large delivery of frozen snacks etc for Christmas and New Year arriving today (basically when we found we could actually get a delivery slot from Iceland we grabbed it!). This meant backing TPA out, and while I had some room I decided to do a bit of a clear up. Not bothering about the piles of junk around the periphery...I just wanted to pick up all the bits of finely atomised rubber floor mats and and sweep up the year's worth of accumulated leaves - and omnipresent film of soda blasting media that I reckon I'll still be finding a couple of decades from now.

Looks a bit less unpleasant at least. Though the clutter still makes my skin crawl...I cannot emphasise enough how much I am looking forward to getting this place actually cleared up.



Note the complete lack of any oil spots...Since I sorted the sump plug washer TPA's engine has remained completely oil tight. She weeps a bit of gearbox oil at speed from the gearbox top cover (reckon I'm missing a gasket), but that's it. Not bad for a 47 year old car. Bet if the engine was British she'd leak! Most of the discolouration of the concrete there was there from before we moved in. Aside from the stripe left to right near the door - that's spilled resin from when I was rebuilding the rear apron.

There will be a MAJOR clear out and rearrangement happening in the new year. Basically everything forward of the space the car parks in will be getting kitted out with ranks of shelving across the width of the garage (leaving just enough of a gap to be a walkway along the left hand side) to finally give me decent storage.

Getting rid of the clutter along the sides here will be a massive improvement as I'll be able to actually get to both sides of the car, and have the permanent equipment like the Sun engine analyser set up in an actual home.

It's a good thing for me that TPA isn't any wider or have conventional doors.



The black paint at the threshold is an experimental test to see if I can stop the little bit of water that tends to get in from doing so. The garage door closes about 1/2" in from the edge of the concrete slab so water tends to "wick" its way under the door through the grain despite there being a slight downhill grade to it...so I want to see if the finish being less porous helps stop that. It's not a big issue, but I'd just like to sort it if I can. Especially as there will be a floor covering of some description going in at some point to make it a nicer place to work.

There's more clutter than usual in here at the moment as well as we've got a crew coming tomorrow to spend the week to permanently deal with the rampant bamboo in our back garden, so there's a bunch of garden furniture and cushions from it etc buried at the back too. By the way...if you're looking at a house where the previous owner has been daft enough to plant bamboo outside, not in a properly shielded container, run away. Getting it eliminated is going to be costing us the best part of £6000. Yes, six *thousand* pounds. The work does come with a ten year guarantee at least.

I've also made a bit of a change to my parking arrangements. The Xantia has now moved to the bit of ground under where that huge Spruce tree used to be. The ground there is really hard packed and there's no grass or anything there so it's not going to get churned up. Plus it's just scrub land so couldn't care less really if it did make a cosmetic mess of it. Unlike the bit of lawn right out the lounge window which I'd been using as the overflow space before. That wasn't too much of a problem A: In the summer when the ground is like concrete, or B: When the car there wasn't being used much. However with the ground now being flat and everything pretty much in regular use I was starting to chew the grass up. I also really, really didn't want the Jag parked long term in damp weather over grass given their tendency to rust. So the Xantia is now to the left of the driveway, the Jag has taken up the position behind the van, and nothing is on the lawn. Well, the Xantia will for a couple of days when the landscaping crew arrive tomorrow as they'll be using that space as their entry/egress into the rear garden, but not on a long term basis.

We might well actually extend the driveway over towards the fence, where the tree used to be as it should gain me two spaces - but that will involve quite a bit of ground work to remove the stump of the tree, to flatten it all out etc...so not a job for this year. I really would like to be able to actually park all my cars on proper spaces though...and not have to dump something on the street whenever I want to get TPA out of or into the garage as that wastes a lot of time - and basically means I can't do it between 0830-0930 and 1430-1530 every weekday due to the school rush.

Having the area beyond the driveway here available as a proper parking area would definitely be really useful.



That bit of actual driveway is usually occupied by Chris' company car by the way...and it's not quite long enough to get two cars in one behind the other - which is annoying! At the very least we might extend the driveway back a few feet to the left in that photo as the fence there needs replacing anyhow...at least having the option to stick two cars one behind the other would be an improvement over the current arrangement even if still a bit more of a faff than having each one able to get in/out without needing to play automotive Tetris.

[CitroJim]

Excellent work so far Zel

Plenty still to do but you'll be delighted when it's all done and dusted... I know my epic sort out back in the summer made a world of difference to me

Once lockdown is over, if you need any assistance, give me a shout

[Zelandeth]

It's always fun when you take a car in for its first MOT in your ownership. Doubly so when you really haven't had time to check anything beyond that all the lights work. Though I did forget the fog lights.

Never mind when it's on a 35 year old British motor and the test is effectively six months late thanks to COVID (granted the car was off the road for the bulk of that time).

Anyhow...in we went.



Twenty minutes later:



I'll take that.

Usual issue noted with the daft steering rack mounting bushes meaning the whole rack can move, which I was already aware of. Might look to sticking some improved bushes in there at some point. That didn't go on as an advisory as it's more of a stupid design than a fault due to wear or age. Only other thing noted was a tiny bit of play in the lower pins in the rear hubs. Nothing major and I've always told my tester I'd rather he told me of any issues rather than just issue an "easy" pass.

Tester admitted to being pleasantly surprised by the overall condition of the car and was complimentary of the standard to which the usual welding repairs had been done.

Then straight back home to start hauling bits of felled trees into a skip. Right across the area where the patio used to be but is now a giant clay pit. In the pouring rain. I lasted about an hour before my arms and legs were utterly useless. Now resting up for a bit, will see if I feel like having another bash at it in an hour or so. Just seems sensible to use as much of the skip as possible given it's here until this evening and the contractors dealing with the bamboo only used about s third of the capacity. We did check and it was fine for us to throw anything in there.

[Hell Razor5543]

Yay!!!

[mickthemaverick]

Well done Zel, no problem with the advisory, most old soldiers get a bit wobbly on their pins!!