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

[myglaren]

[Gibbo2286]

I've not looked for quite a long time but this company's exhaust catalogues used to be the best when I was trading.

https://www.catalogue.bosal.com/catalog

[Zelandeth]

I've not looked for quite a long time but this company's exhaust catalogues used to be the best when I was trading.

https://www.catalogue.bosal.com/catalog

Sadly nothing listed for the W123 at all.

-- -- --

Ran out of time yesterday so here's a couple of posts combined.

It turned out to be a really good call getting these fitted last week.



Got caught up driving in some of the heaviest rain I've seen in a long while so I was glad not to be on worn out, perished old tyres. As I've come to expect from Uniroyal tyres, they shrugged it off as if were nothing. I've used these tyres as my default now since at *least* 2006, and continue to be very impressed.

I definitely need to out super blades onto my list as I'm pretty convinced the driver's side at least isn't the right size. There isn't so much a triangle of doom where they meet as a crescent you could hold classic car shows in.

Sounds like 19"/20" passenger/driver is the correct size, will try to remember to grab some next time I'm picking up parts.

One feature I do want to implement at some point is an override for the cooling fan thermoswitch. It doesn't cut the fan in until quite a bit later than I would like. I have confirmed that the fan clutch works properly at least - so I just need to provide a switched ground to that wire. Should be a dead easy little relay installation job. Figuring out an indicator on the dash for when it's on shouldn't be too hard - there are helpfully two unused green lights in the strip below the instrument cluster - you can just about see the green mask as a slightly darker strip in the photo below.



The original thermostatic control will be left alone, but I just don't like how warm it gets before the fan cuts in, so I'd like to have a manual override available to me.

We're well over 1000 miles travelled now since I got the car, and I remembered to grab this photo of numbers lining up yesterday.



Didn't have much time today so only went out with one real task in mind, replacing the manky old fan belt. New one was fitted in a few minutes.



The old one was pretty well wrecked from oil contamination.





While working on this I spotted that I may be missing a bolt on the power steering pump.



I haven't changed that belt yet because the new one is the wrong size. I'm not 100% certain there should be a bolt there...the pump is absolutely solidly mounted so it may just be a case of it having a few mounting options for different applications.

Really need to get back in to the front of the engine with the degreaser as I've obviously missed a fair amount there.

[Zelandeth]

Nothing directly car related really done today. Instead it was the turn of the garage...the catalyst for finally getting around to this was knocking this pile of things over for about the seven thousandth time. Being the most easily accessible corner this is just where things tended to accumulate which are used regularly.



Which pretty much matched the state of the whole garage. This is from a few months ago, but you get a pretty good idea of the general level of disorganised clutter.



The huge pile about the size of a VW Beetle at the far end I can't do much about at the moment as a lot of the volume of that pile is cushions for the garden furniture and I've nowhere else to put that just now. However that's not really in the way of the area I actually use. I've wanted to attack the clutter in here for years, but the cascade of cans when I knocked one over today and it sent the whole lot cascading onto the floor was one time too many. Time for a proper rage tidy.

Cue me making a godawful mess.



After a few hours I had to call it a day because I ran out of wall plugs so I couldn't put up any more shelving. Definitely feels like I've made some progress.



This is what the corner in which I kept knocking everything over in looks like now.



Everything has been moved out of the way so the avalanche of cans and jars should be a thing of the past.

The additional shelving (all scavenged from cheap bookcases we've since got rid of, dating back to our student days) has made quite a difference.



Digging around I've ascertained that I *really* don't need to buy any more oil for a while. Especially 10W40!



Once I do have the opportunity to clear the rear of the garage my plan is to set up three or four ranks of free standing shelves across the garage widthways. Will increase the available actual storage capacity by several times and mean I can actually get at things. There's stuff in there I haven't seen since we moved in!

Remembering some comments from last time there was a photo of my garage on another forum. There was a suggestion that I'd nicked the bus stop flag and public transport information sign. No on either. The bus stop flag was a sample we had made to see how the new design (which I'd been heavily involved in the creation of) and was never actually installed. I was quite proud of how clean the graphical design looked and had put a lot of work into it, so kept the sample. The sign was originally in the reception of our old office building before the timetable rack in there was removed, it then spent several years above my desk until we moved buildings...we couldn't take it to the new office and it would have been skipped when the building was demolished, so I rescued it (with permission).

Not sure if the result really reflects how many hours of work this took...but I'm glad I've made a start on it as this is something I've been trying to find the activation energy to make a start on for years.

I can at least walk past the car now without having to flatten myself against the wall (I need to get through here regularly as we have a chest freezer at the back of the garage).



The compressed air tank there is going to be wall mounted up above the garage door frame to keep it out of the way. Having started this will give me a bit of a kick into getting that piped in... especially as I'm sick of not having air on tap any more.

The far side is still a squeeze, but at least having got all of the cans and previously precariously stacked tools onto higher shelves now it doesn't involve me knocking everything over when I want to get through to the oil stash.



Still a load of work to do but it really feels like progress.

[NewcastleFalcon]

The bus stop....etc.

The two things my eye was drawn to in the picture was the bus stop sign with "Rosemount Viaduct" on, and the grease gun Curiosity, and a natural predisposition to like viaducts. had me look up the Viaduct.

Education, Salvation, Damnation...

Rosemount Viaduct

© Copyright Bill Harrison and
licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

REgards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

The side lever grease gun, pretty well redundant for modern cars. I've got one tucked away under my bench, can't remember the last time it came out.

[myglaren]

The side lever grease gun, pretty well redundant for modern cars. I've got one tucked away under my bench, can't remember the last time it came out.

I bought one to grease my daughter's original Mini. Got home and she had sold the damned thing.
Used it once to grease some bearings on a machine at work then gave it back to the shop I bought it from.

[Zelandeth]

The bus stop....etc.

The two things my eye was drawn to in the picture was the bus stop sign with "Rosemount Viaduct" on, and the grease gun Curiosity, and a natural predisposition to like viaducts. had me look up the Viaduct.

Education, Salvation, Damnation...

Rosemount Viaduct

© Copyright Bill Harrison and
licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

REgards Neil

The one in that photograph is actually the stop that sample flag was made up for.

[mickthemaverick]

I have just come across this auction lot which may interest you Zel?

BFTW

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auct ... 8700f21093

[Zelandeth]

I have just come across this auction lot which may interest you Zel?



https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auct ... 8700f21093

Nice, though Spectrum stuff seems to be getting quite expensive these days. Especially as I do already have one - albeit one with a Fuller case and keyboard upgrade...so I would like to get an unmodified one one day.

-- -- --

Progress has continued on the garage. Yesterday I got the shelf up for the compressed air receiver tank which finally moved that from the floor sticking out about 6" into the walkway.



Those brackets are screwed directly into the wall stud so strength should be fine, the tank isn't actually all that heavy (the compressor is remote), and I did go back and add another two just for peace of mind later on.

I had originally hoped to have the tank mounted up above the garage door framework nearer to the door, that plan though was scuppered by there not being quite enough height available. I had also been half planning to have the compressor up in the same area...right up to the point where I picked it up for the first time in a couple of years. Nope... it's staying firmly on the floor because it is downright obscenely heavy.


Today that corner continued to be developed with me starting to rebuild some old Dexion shelving a friend gave me a while back. Yes I fouled up the top shelf currently in there on the one corner.



The bottom one was the important one today though as the height of that was dictated by needing enough room underneath for the compressor to live, so I can now install the rest of the shelves at usefully spaced heights.

The eagle eyed among you will probably see that there is pipework running up the wall there too, that's the charge line to the air tank.

I was a bit worried that my tiny and ancient compressor wouldn't be up to the job, but it made it up to the set point and cut out in a little under five minutes from stone flat. About a minute seems to be the going rate to top itself back up when doing things like inflating tyres. Which in all honesty is what 99% of its work will be anyway. Especially with the two nearest garages to me now charging £2 to use the machine there.

That yellow hose will be getting routed along near the ceiling to next to the door. I'll probably mount a regulator and water trap on a quick connect fitting there. The regulator actually on the tank is awful and I'm basically just leaving it there because I'm too lazy to remove it! I really do want a hose reel (so I can reach all the cars without having to coil/unwrap 25 metres of hose every time), but we'll see how long it takes me to justify the cost. Or I could try to build one...I do have a couple of dead wheels floating around.


The power supply to the compressor is wired through the original pressure switch so it cycles just the same as the original one from that tank.

Once I've finished messing with the shelving I'll probably put some mesh around the bottom to make sure nothing can get tangled up in the belt. Given there's no integrated cooling fan on the compressor I will probably arrange a electrically operated one to help keep it from overheating issues. It didn't seem to be doing bad though after filling the tank from empty twice in a row though. Once I have a fan in there I might enclose one side to help cut down on noise a little bit. Though it's really not bad...plus volume level aside having something chugging away like this is far less grating than the old direct drive one was, which sounded like a cross between a jackhammer and a chainsaw and really did require ear protection if you were in the garage with it running for more than a few minutes.

I *do* need to find some rubber feet for it though...I can feel it going *dug dug dug dug* through my feet despite the floor being concrete - so I'm sure everyone else in the house can as well. I think some broken Invacar engine mounts I still have in a box for some reason will be perfect for that job.

I'll get a few better photos when I've actually finished and tidied things up a little. It still looks really shonky just now.

[white exec]

Maybe not relevant to your compressor, Zel, but its common for there to be an instruction to turn compressor on at its dedicated pull-switch, and not via a remote mains connection. This (I think) takes a strain off the motor on start-up. The switch has a small air-connection too.

[Zelandeth]

Maybe not relevant to your compressor, Zel, but its common for there to be an instruction to turn compressor on at its dedicated pull-switch, and not via a remote mains connection. This (I think) takes a strain off the motor on start-up. The switch has a small air-connection too.

This has an unloader built into the pressure switch, so as soon as the compressor stops (well, as soon as the pressure drops below that in the tank) it dumps the air from the line between the compressor and tank - what causes the hiss you often hear when they shut off. As such the compressor shouldn't ever see any head of pressure during startup.

[Zelandeth]

Two updates in one as I ran out of time yesterday.

I needed to get TPA out of the garage to allow me to put up a ladder to route the compressed air line along the side of the garage. So this was an excuse to use this particular car to run the errands I needed to.



Which meant that this happened.



That's us ticked over the 2,000 mile mark. Second one rolled around a lot quicker than the first did!

Having air on tap in the garage meant it was time to replace the horrible cheap tyre inflator/pressure gauge with something a bit more fit for purpose.



The 220psi scale on the old one meant that you really couldn't aim for anything better than "roughly to about +/- 5psi" on a good day - not great when I'm aiming for 17psi for the front tyre on the Invacar. New one actually has a proper scale...and has shown how awful the old one was! It was overreading by about 5psi.



In a hobbyist garage setting that should last basically forever.

I also made a start on routing the supply hose around towards where I'm planning on the hookup point.



The compressor now has "feet" made from a few old engine mounts. This has reduced the noise level in the garage when it's running by a good 50% I reckon.

Sadly took a couple of steps backwards today. I knew I had a tiny leak from one union on the charge line and had planned to just tidy up a couple of minor things like that. However the system apparently had other plans.

You may recall I mentioned that my intention was to remove the regulator that's on the tank outlet as it's sufficiently inaccurate enough as to be useless plus with the new tank location I need a ladder to get to it. Apparently it heard me.

While rummaging through the toolbox I heard something bounce off the ceiling, land on the roof of the Invacar then roll off and disappear behind it. Now I'm quite used to hearing things falling over now and then in the garage, but something randomly bouncing off the ceiling was a new one.

Turns out that it was the pressure adjustment knob from the regulator.



The threaded section in the body has completely stripped out, this allowing the spring pressure to launch the knob off the top of the regulator.

Cue a run round to Toolstation to grab a replacement. Which of course is far larger than the original one so I couldn't just screw it in the same place as the original to stay there until I had finalised the pipework layout etc. So for the time being it's just been hung off a random screw in the wall in roughly the same neighborhood of the target location.



The supply line will be larger than that one long term...it's just what I had laying around with the right fittings on...I'll need to pick up a few more bits and pieces to finish this off.

I've now got a 30 foot hose reel on order so this is probably roughly where the regulator will live, most likely just moved a foot or two up so it's a bit further from elbow bashing height. The reel will probably be fitted up above shoulder height so I can reach around to the far side of the Invacar when checking tyres without falling over it. Also to keep it just generally as out of the way as I can as it will otherwise eat into the space there otherwise.

[Zelandeth]

Out for a run again today, needed to make a run down to Aylesbury and it was a nice day so TPA came out for it.



While I do enjoy driving this car, and the vast majority of the time she copes very well. Was staggered by how nicely she cruises on the motorway for one, on the wrong road she can be quite tiring. Google decided to send me cross country, and I wound up on a relatively fast road with a horrendous surface.

Ride is better than I had ever expected for a 400kg car on 10" wheels, but is quite bouncy. The seat does a good job of isolating the majority of the shock from the driver too. However being a glass fibre body the moment you hit anything whatsoever by way of undulation on the road you get all manner of crashes and rattles from the body. The interior is a LOT better than it used to be, but there's only so much you can do. The doors in particular are always going to be a major source of rattles without totally re-engineering the latches. I may look into doing something along those lines one day given I'm obviously going to keep using this car regularly and can't honestly ever see me selling her.

You can carry more speed through corners than I think people expect, when you know the road and can see a good distance ahead. However when you *don't* know the road and the tendency for there to be hedges or walls right up to the side of the roads around here I did have to pull in a couple of occasions so as to not irritate the cars behind me. While she's quite happy to cruise at 50-60, she does take a bit of time to wind up - just as you would expect from a 500cc powered car from the 70s!

The biggest cause of stress on that trip though was down to dealing with one of those road surface issues which are just inherently quite unnerving in a three wheeler with the single wheel up front - roads with really wobbly undulating camber issues. That does make her wobble around quite a bit...I don't find it unnerving really now as I've got used to it and know she's not about to hurl me off the road, but it does mean keeping a straight line line (especially with how direct the steering is) on roads like that is quite a bit of work. Not quite as bad as the Lada was on similar roads mind you!

Coming home I chose my own route and just headed down the A418/505/5...far less daft a route. Much smoother and better in the visibility department...and I wound up being stuck behind a brand new Range Rover until I got to the A5 so I could overtake it!

Really, really news to clean the windscreen. The amount of bugs splattered on there is unreal just now. Whole car could do with a wash anyway really...think she's only had one so far since being resurrected so far.

[Zelandeth]

A parcel arrived from DPD earlier today containing this for the garage.



Sadly didn't get time to look into getting it fitted today... hopefully tomorrow.