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

[elma]

The extra button ...and because it's wonderful to see how long passengers can resist either pressing it or asking what it does.

I just have to write extra or do not press on my spare button now, that would amuse me too.

[demag]

Now you mention it my Saab had hissing heater controls.

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[van ordinaire]

Ah, vacuum controls, early Ford wipers, the wonderful infinitely variable wiper delay on P6 Rovers AND - power ashtrays on a certain era Lincoln Continental!

Now we have immensly complex heater controls - that you should never need to touch!

[CitroJim]

I remember Ford vacuum wipers... They went on a go-slow up steep hills or under heavy acceleration when there was little manifold vacuum available...

Not one of dear old Henry's best innovations

The Pug 205 sunroof had vacuum operated seals - worked well too!

[elma]

Bit of inspiration for the C5 Zel.

[Zelandeth]

That's a fun little project!

Will provide a bit more detail later, but suffice to say my trip down to the DDRC boot sale resulted in me bringing a few toys home. Most usefully a Megger, which I'd been keeping my eyes open for for ages, half a dozen 8-track tapes, a Sony Mavica MVC-FD85 camera (had wanted one of these for the collection for ages), a pair of Hitachi combination radio/cassette/TV units - because I wanted one so badly when I was growing up - one's a parts unit for the other, but most interestingly what appears to be an ex military ruggedised portable computer. Not entirely sure exactly *what* it is yet, but I had to buy it to find out!

[Hell Razor5543]

Bit of inspiration for the C5 Zel.

That made me laugh.

[Zelandeth]

Well I've found out what's in the box. There's an issue with the display which makes me think cabling issue as it intermittently looses sync, will investigate that further in due course. The power supply is also struggling, in particularly the 12V rail is sagging down at 10.93V which can't be doing anything any favours, seem to recall the 5V rail being similarly far out. BIOS battery is also dead as a dodo. Given that it's a sealed unit my money is on crispy caps in the PSU as I bet it runs warm. Haven't tried running it from DC yet (it can take AC at 90-266V or DC from 18-36V), not sure if I should expect any difference in behaviour.

In the box we appear to have a 466MHz Pentium III, 64Mb of RAM and a 12Gb (not wiped!) Hard drive. Hand written date on one of the panels points at a 2003 date, though the hard drive is from 2000. Nice touch is the addition of an LS-120 drive, didn't have one of them till now. Even though I'll now need another one of course!

If I can get it to behave reliably I might be able to find something for it to do. Especially if I can upgrade the memory a bit and figure out a way for it to communicate with the outside world. The motherboard appears to support USB, but the machine has none. If there's a header on the board that may get added to the front panel. Likewise I need to confirm if one of the expensive connectors on the back is actually ethernet as that would make life easier as I just need to make an adaptor then.

It's an interesting bit of kit, obviously very much designed to either keep it from emitting any RFI or hardened against EMP. There's a fine wire mesh embedded in the display cover, under the keyboard below the keys, even on the tiny little LCD display with the hour counter under it. The front panel has a door that closes tightly against an RF gasket too. That hinge only has 12 screws holding it on...not at all over-engineered...

I do shudder to think what it must have cost!

[CitroJim]

Sounds like an excellent haul Zel

[Zelandeth]

Well, I can confidently state that the Saab's head gasket has transitioned from "failing" to "failed" after about four years.

Lost a cylinder just as I was turning into our neighbourhood, and noticed when I parked that a cloud that Mr. Bond would have considered adequate for a smoke screen - a cloud which smelled very obviously of burned coolant.

Well, can't really complain, she's been warning me it's been on the way for long enough. No water in the oil and there was no overheating so hopefully will just be a straight out replacement job.

I really should have snapped a photo of the cloud!

[CitroJim]

Sorry to hear that Zel If you need a hand to sort it then don't hesitate to give me a shout

Very happy to assist - even if it means time off work... I'm due some time off anyway!

[demag]

You probably said somewhere Zel but has it done many miles?

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[Zelandeth]

Need to do some reading and track down what bits I need. Don't think there's much aside from the gasket, similar for the manifolds and distributor oil seal (already have the cam cover gasket in stock). It's a big old head, and being a crossflow layout it will definitely be a manifold off job. Not like the Skoda where the whole lot weighed in at about 20kg including the carb!

She's on 133-and-a-bit K miles and I don't think the head has ever been off. Usually seems to be about 100K they last unless there's a premature failure, and this has been weeping oil from the back (pulley end - remember the engine is backwards) end of the head ever since I got the car in 2012. So it's not entirely unexpected.

Be a bit of time before I get back to that beyond a quick blast tomorrow with the expansion cap off to make sure all the water is blown out of whichever cylinder it is so things don't rust.

Been poking around that computer a bit, and have rediscovered something I'd forgotten. Military spec equipment is often (but not always... I've worked on an Alvis Stalwart...) a joy to work on. If you have a manual telling you what order the 3784 pieces are meant to come apart in, and if you have the tools the designer had in mind. If however you have no data save for your own intuition, and in terms of tools just whatever happens to be on the bench... it's often a complete pig! The one tool I was wishing for this evening was a small Philips screwdriver - but a really long one as it had to reach a screw buried behind about a root's worth of other components. I *think* having now got that screw out, once I release the nuts holding the power connector onto the case that I should be able to get the chassis out. In theory. We'll see if that plays out as planned...

In other news, with a fresh set of batteries I can confirm that the Megger works just fine, including the 500V range. That will be handy for working on the valve stuff as often a normal DMM won't show the results of leaky caps - what appears as open circuit to it can quite often turn into an alarmingly low impedance in reality once a decent voltage is applied. Haven't had a chance to look at anything else yet.

Edit again...

Nearly forgot to mention that having had a bit of gift money left on Amazon that I picked up a little heads up display for the 107. It plugs into the OBD port and provides all the usual sort of data that you'd expect on the dash of most cars these days - most notably though it means that I now have a temperature gauge! The lack of that instrument was something that I found downright unnerving when driving it.

The speedometer readout on it ties in with the reading from my sat nav to within 1mph, whereas the speedo itself over estimates quite a bit.

[demag]

Wow never heard of those before. Will have a look.

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[daviemck2006]

Is that a scangauge Zel? I seem to remember them being quite popular on the c1oc 6 or 7 years ago when I had my first 107.

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