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

[CitroJim]

Sorry to hear the head gasket is suspect Zel At least it's not a massive job on that type of engine although I expect the head is very, very heavy... If you need a lifting hand I'm happy to help

Good work on the pinball machine Looking forward to seeing it all up and in action!

[MattBLancs]

...a very crude test,

I should say so!

Spoiler: show

fancy a statesman like lovely old Rover resorting to crude gestures, giving you the finger no less!

Fingers crossed for loose bolts

[Gibbo2286]

I had a customer who gave up on his Triumph Dolomite Sprint after changing the head gasket, I took it part exchange for a Chrysler 180 I had been using myself, checking over the engine before stripping it I found none of the head bolts were torqued down, did them up properly and the car was fine,
I even gave the next buyer a twelve month guarantee on the gasket, it was never used.
Good luck with yours.

[Zelandeth]

Sorry to hear the head gasket is suspect Zel At least it's not a massive job on that type of engine although I expect the head is very, very heavy... If you need a lifting hand I'm happy to help

Good work on the pinball machine Looking forward to seeing it all up and in action!

I'm expecting it to be reasonably heavy, though it is all aluminium so shouldn't be unmanageable. Getting it out with the manifold attached at least gives me a bit more to get hold of.

...a very crude test,

I should say so!

Spoiler: show

fancy a statesman like lovely old Rover resorting to crude gestures, giving you the finger no less!

Fingers crossed for loose bolts

I'd like to think the gesture was directed at whoever had done some of the meddling with the wiring!

It's astonishing how much difference a bit of loom tape makes though. This side is looking a bit less shonky now.

[Zelandeth]

It's been way too hot to work on the cars lately so have been picking away at our pinball project.

That pile of bits quickly turned into something looking vaguely like a modern computer but built into a vastly oversized case.



This location (and orientation) has changed slightly from my original plan. This is largely for thermal management reasons. The CPU cooler on this draws air in from the side facing us and discharges away from us. The power supply in the background is the same, and the exhaust from the graphics card points the same way. The slope of the playfield in the cabinet will make air want to travel in the same direction by convection even before we've added any fans. It turns out that having the fans on these devices alone actually causes a load of airflow, even before the fans intended purely for ventilation have been added - two intakes will be going in the base near the front, and two exhaust fans will be going into the back of the back box.

I will be probably 3D printing a support for the graphics card and a caddy for the SSD, but that's something we can come back to later. It'll work fine as it is for now.

What came next was basically just the normal setup process for a new computer.



Thankfully Microsoft haven't (yet) completely stomped on the ability to do an offline install as I don't have a wired network in that room and (somewhat unsurprisingly) my ancient Belkin USB dongle isn't supported any more in Windows 11. My interim solution to get drivers and such installed while I waited for a new wireless card to arrive was digging out the old power line network kit. It's horribly slow but as a last resort it does work. It sounded easier than trying to wrestle out a 50' long ethernet cable that the dogs would end up tripping over.

It did indeed get us up and running.



I did initially run into a problem whereby I couldn't get the display to run anywhere higher than 30Hz. This was a learning experience for me, and I learned that there are actually different versions of HDMI and DisplayPort cables, the latter of which you need for full framerate 4K resolutions. We have left that brief period where display technology by and large "just worked" when you plugged it in it seems, and have returned to the frustrating situation where there are various versions of cables which are visibly identical. A new DisplayPort cable solved that headache though and got the proper display refresh rate.

I didn't think they could have made the control panel any worse than in Windows 10, but no...in 11 it's even worse in my opinion!

This was enough to get us up and running in a very basic proof of concept mode.



Of course the first table we had up and running was Eight Ball Deluxe given that the table we're building this all into was originally an Eight Ball Deluxe LE.

Even though it was just a proof of concept and we had a random monitor hanging out the middle, we still managed to lose an hour or so. Even in the most basic form it's leagues better than just sitting at a desk playing it on a computer screen.



Thus far I am thoroughly hating Windows 11 though. That's probably been the biggest source of rage and frustration so far. Well, aside from sticking my finger in the CPU fan while fumbling around for a USB port anyway. That's something which will eventually be extended to a breakout board on the front lower corner for the sake of convenience. That's a long way down the to do list at this point though.

This was the first time we've really been able to test the main display in its intended application. Glad that there doesn't seem to be any problem with any perceivable lag at all, which is a relief as I know with 4K displays that can be a bit of a lottery.

The display which will be living in the centre position is actually a 13" wide-screen one as that fits pretty perfectly - obviously there's a bezel to be added yet which will also hold a pair of speakers. Makes it look a bit less shonky though.





A little bit of measurement has shown that a 27" display should be almost a perfect fit for the back box display, so I'll need to get one of those scrounged up.

The interface board should be here later this week which should allow us to get the flipper buttons wired in and start getting arrangements for the feedback devices to be wired up. I'll need to give the coin mechanism a service too - I'm not planning on *requiring* us to use coins, but given that the software can use the input from it just the same as any other button it would be nice to have that work. Likewise the encoder kit for the launch plunger should be here soon, to allow that to be directly translated into the simulation in real time.

It's all progressing quite nicely. A lot is very much jury rigged for testing at the moment, but seeing it working this well already is quite rewarding.

[mickthemaverick]

Looking great Zel, well done. Just don't try and sell it quick as it wouldn't do to flip it! I'll get my coat.

[CitroJim]

Looking superb Zel Can't wait to see it all up and running

And... Huge thanks for yesterday, that was massively appreciated

[Zelandeth]

Finally got a chance to (very briefly before it started tipping it down) look at the Rover today. I can confirm that the head bolts are indeed tight (well as tight as spec anyway - all of 50 lb/ft for the big bolts and 30 for the little ones). Guess it's coming off then!

Looks clean enough though - well up here where it's easy to get to anyway - what's under the exhaust valve cover really will tell a more full story I think.

[Zelandeth]

Had a very quick look under the exhaust rocker cover this evening (I was literally just taking some stuff to the garage, wasn't even specifically looking to do anything car related).

Not as clean as things on the inlet side as you'd expect, but still very clean for the age of engine I think.



Definitely not a horrible sludgy mess anyway.

I still love the valve gear on this engine.



I was pretty sure the valve clearances were out given it's far more tappy than my last P4. Testing purely with my eyes says I'm right.

The clearances are meant to be 6 thou on the inlet and 10 on the exhaust, and they're all at more like 50 I'd say. Inlet should be set hot too, so are probably even further out! Not going to worry about that until after the head gasket has been changed obviously, but I reckon that will quieten the engine down a lot. No reason not to just do the exhaust side clearances anyway I guess given they're not going to be disturbed.

[CitroJim]

That's proper engineering Zel!

[Zelandeth]

This stupid phone felt it necessary to update to Android 16 overnight.

A side effect of this is that Google Photos has duplicated my entire photo library. Of course the tool specifically designed to help you hunt out duplicates disappeared way back around the time they dropped the Picasa name.

Oh this will be fun to sort I'm sure.

[Zelandeth]

Some progress on Project Pinball today.



Albeit not all visible at a glance.

Most obvious is that the upper display has now been sourced and installed. My math was correct that a 27" display was pretty much a perfect fit. Even if extremely awkward to install on account of there being no space around it, so access to the monitor mount all had to be made by reaching up through the cable access into the back box.



When the machine is finished there will be a mask on the glass in front of that display which will hide the gap around the edges. It's not currently hooked up because I'm an idiot and totally missed the fact that it's a HDMI only display - so I'm waiting on a DisplayPort to HDMI cable for it.

The main display is now actually attached to the board it's sitting on, so removing that for service access is now far less of a pain. It really needs two props now though as it's too heavy for the factory one.

We have now done away with the cluster of plugs on the floor and power is routed into the machine via the original cable entry point.



Currently just to an extension lead on the back panel.



Eventually we will have a proper junction box here, with all the secondary power supplies turned on/off by a contractor triggered from the PC 12V rail. This will do for now though and is a vast improvement.

A major step forward has been made with these.



In that they now have switches attached to them again. No silly micro switches or anything like that, proper pinball machine leaf switches.



They aren't actually wired into anything yet, though the interface unit is now here - apparently I forgot to get a photo of that though so you'll have to wait until it's installed.

The central display has now been secured in place. It's been tidied up as well, using the original acrylic (?) window. This will only be showing a monochrome plasma display (well, a simulation of it) in the final configuration so a red filter is fine. The print on the back of this was already in poor shape between flaking and scratches so I didn't feel too bad about removing it. Bit of acetone did the trick in seconds.





It wouldn't be hard to recreate this with a transparency in the future if someone wanted to restore it to the original arrangement - I made sure I had good high resolution photos of it. Very simple handful of clear windows and a couple of bits of text.

I quite like the idea of keeping the red filter on the DMD display as a bit of a nod to the original table.



With a bit of luck we should have all the final displays up and running tomorrow, and hopefully the flipper buttons actually wired up and working. Maybe credit and start buttons as well if I get time. Having the controller in place will mean that I need to get the table levelled as it contains an (extremely sensitive) accelerometer which is used to handle nudging and optionally tilt - though I'll be using the original hardware from the table for that.

[CitroJim]

Excellent

[Gibbo2286]

Clever buggers those who designed the valve gear rockers on the Rover engine.

[Zelandeth]

Starting to look a little bit less thrown together with the properly sized display in the top and the cover back on the DMD in the middle.

Figured you'd appreciate a change from Attack from Mars as our demonstration for photos.





Didn't get much time on it today so sorting the configuration for that was about as far as we got. Hopefully get the Pinscape controller fitted tomorrow.