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

[Zelandeth]

My two tips would be to measure the value of the ballast resistor (or substitute a known good one). Put a dwell meter on the the coil, the results will be nothing like you get with points, but you should get a reading that increases with RPM, until reaching about 90% dwell, and at any RPM, the reading should be fairly steady. I have seen amplifier modules which caused the dwell to drop to almost 0 at low RPM, and one that bizarely performed perfectly at idle and above 3000 RPM, but had 0 dwell anywhere between those two speeds. It made driving interesting.

The ballast resistor measured at 0.9 ohms, so guessing it's meant to be 1.

Dwell meter is a good call. I do have an automotive multimeter with a dwell function so I'll see what that says.

This thing can also measure dwell...but is currently utterly buried at the back of the garage, and I'm pretty sure by now has become structural!

[mickthemaverick]

I believe you mentioned you were looking for one of these Zel. As it is in an interiors sale, not a specialist one, it may slip under the radar of many collectors, and its only in Cambridge!!
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auct ... 71011ac757

[Gibbo2286]

That old Crypton was a fabulous piece of kit in its day. We used one daily on all our servicing. Then move on to the Dynascope version.

[Zelandeth]

I believe you mentioned you were looking for one of these Zel. As it is in an interiors sale, not a specialist one, it may slip under the radar of many collectors, and its only in Cambridge!!
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auct ... 71011ac757

I'll definitely keep an eye on that, thanks for the heads up!

[Zelandeth]

Been a couple very little jobs done to make the Caddy a nicer place to be ticked off during the last few days.

The old floor mats were driving me mad as the driver's side one kept insistently ending up jammed under the accelerator.

Before:



Solution of course is to get some properly shaped ones made up.

After:





Could have gone with all sorts of lurid colours, but figured black and grey made most sense so it didn't clash with the rest of the interior.

Great service from Simply Car Mats, they really went out of their way to make sure I got the right parts - even down to getting in touch querying what type of retainers were needed as apparently it's unusual for a Caddy of this age not to have any. The grippy backing on the mats seems decent too, they've not shifted at all in the best part of a week.

Second on the list was sorting this.



Which has been making my teeth itch for months.



Much better. It's a very snug fit so I reckon will end up pulling itself off...for £5 though it was worth a shot.

While I had the gaiter off it made sense to grease up the gear selector linkage as it was a bit stiff. While doing that I did spot where the play in the linkage is...



I don't think there's meant to be daylight visible through the bush between the lever and selector rod. Will need to get one of those ordered in then.

Having greased the bushing where the selector rod goes through the bulkhead alone has made a massive difference to the gearchange, it's way, way lighter and smoother now. Doesn't creak going into reverse now either!

A replacement ignition amplifier has been ordered for the Trevi so I'll provide an update on that when that turns up - and hopefully a report of it being safely returned to the owner actually running properly for the first time since it was put back on the road a couple of years ago.

While on several occasions I've covered well over a hundred miles on a day in the Invacar, about 20 miles from home is about the furthest I've actually gone in one direction. That will finally change at the end of May when I'll be making a run over to Birmingham for another event which includes a sort of mini car show as part of the program. Will feel like quite a big achievement ticked off to get the first drive that's not just local errand running done. Good reason to give the car a decent once over first too given that whichever way I go will involve a decent amount of running on faster roads. Will most likely be up the A5, A45 then a few hundred yards of the M42 and I'm pretty much at the door. Wonder how deaf I'll be by the time I get there.

[Zelandeth]

Had the opportunity to get a few things ticked off on the Cavalier today to bring it into a more user friendly state for transportation.

[] Replace the very flat nearside front wheel with the spare.

Old one off...



Good spare on. Job done.



Not including the walking the whole way back to the far end of the field and back because I forgot to pick the key up before walking up to the car, just over six minutes work.

The spare has highlighted that I appear to be missing chrome wheel rings from three other wheels. Sure they grow on trees these days...

[] Replace dissolved fuel line tail between the tank and the main nylon line to the front of the car. No photos of this as it was an awkward and messy job. Especially at the point where I made the discovery that a lot less of the fuel had leaked out of the tank since I left it a few weeks ago than I'd expected. Of course I found this out with my face as I pulled the line off under the car as I ended up wearing a significant amount of the contents of the tank. Again.

Congratulations to Vauxhall for having positioned that connection precisely so that the rear axle and exhaust are *precisely* in the way. Nevertheless, it only took a few minutes to do. Hardest part was getting the old hose tail off the tank as it had welded itself to the stub, though it did eventually release.

I thought I had a photo of the new line in place but my phone claims otherwise.

[] Non Running State. Last time I was at the car it seemed to be running quite well, right up to when I blipped the throttle at one point when it died. A quick bit of diagnosis revealed that we had no spark, and that the points were staying resolutely open circuit. However we were short on time and didn't have the screwdriver needed to get the distributor cap off, so just left it be.

I was initially quite worried as the screws on the distributor cap appeared to have been tightened up by the Incredible Hulk and one was threatening to round out on me. After no small amount of very careful perseverance I did get the cap off. Bit of a scrub of the points with some Emery cloth seemed to sort things out. Flicking the points to see if we got any sparkage proved two things. One, we did have spark. Two, that screwdriver was far less well insulated than I thought it was. That's the third time I've been belted by a HT system in the last 48 hours. The Trevi has got me twice so far!

That sorted she started first touch. Meant I was finally able to move the car (albeit very carefully as the only brakes I have are provided by a very poor handbrake on one wheel it seems). This has also highlighted that the clutch release bearing sounds distinctly unhappy. Guess I'll be doing or getting a clutch done in the not too distant future then.

This is assuming it's a sealed bearing and doesn't need to be periodically lubricated as per the old Skoda ones. Can't really see how you would access it for that though.

First time I've had a look at it not tucked into a corner.







That's very much the good side.



Standing back from the car it's more obvious that the damage to the doors is from the fork lift/loader that was used to move the car around when the previous storage location was being cleared. A shame as it is damage that could easily have been avoided, but on the flip side it's nothing too hard to fix. I'm just grateful it wasn't plucked out by a strap under the roof.

I also seem to be missing the "Vauxhall" text which should be between the tail lights. Hopefully that won't be too hard to track down. I imagine it should be easier than the more model-specific bits at least.

I let her run for a while to get up to temperature...top radiator hose started to get warm after a while...



The temperature gauge apparently thinks otherwise.

Now there are plenty of things I will happily do without in a car, but a working temperature gauge is not one of them. Thankfully 90 seconds of detective work under the bonnet found a stray wire with a spade terminal and a post for it to attach to on the thermostat housing. Result?



Much better!

I still love that dash design. I'm a sucker for anything which doesn't just have boring rectangular or square lights on the dash.



Very much looking forward to getting this home and starting to get properly stuck into recommissioning it.



Such a rarity these days despite being such a common sight in its day.

So stuff I'm missing, seems worth mentioning as I know these cars do have their fans and they're the sort of things someone might have floating around in a box in a shed in some cases.

[] Rear silencer.

[] NSR door rubbing strip.

[] 3 X Chrome wheel rings.

[] 4 X Wheel centre caps.

[] Vauxhall badging from rear panel.

Of course if I have the car in working order and the bugs shaken out by then the big question would be whether I took this or TPA to the FotU?

Probably still TPA really, as there's inevitably going to be at least a couple of other early Cavaliers there. Granted though there might be another couple of Invacars too given how they seem to have come out of the woodwork over the last couple of years!

[mickthemaverick]

Zel, I have posted some information which may interest you:

viewtopic.php?p=715163#p715163

[Zelandeth]

Thanks to Mickthemaverick a package arrived yesterday containing a bit of kit I've been after for a very long time. Wonder what could be in here?



Finally!



One of those machines I really kicked myself for not picking up back when they were just considered obsolete and were readily cheaply available. Especially as a long, long term Acorn fan it really felt like a huge gap in the collection.

So let's take a closer look.



A little dusty, but compared to the vast majority I've seen this really is a very clean machine. It's blatantly obviously not an ex-education one anyway! The vast majority of my Acorn gear *is* ex schools equipment, and I know precisely how hard a life they lived!

I've no idea if there's a way to decode serial numbers on these to get any more details like on some IBM or HP kit.



Despite the BBC involvement in this project, there's only one actual BBC logo on it. Tucked away on the back of the power supply by the switch.



Upon removing the top cover it became immediately apparent that this is definitely a low hour machine from the lack of soot marks on the underside of the case. While I've not had all that many of these apart, I'm used to seeing a nice inverted image of the power supply on the underside of the case.



Nicely unmolested looking machine.





The latest date code I can find on any component is 8151, so I imagine this is an early 1982 machine...so quite possibly an early one given that they only launched in December 81, but not really seeing any significant numbers of machines shipping until early 1982 due to production issues on the first machines unless my memory is failing me.



Thoughts of a really quick and easy power supply recap however were scrubbed when I discovered it to be riveted together.



Which surprised me...I've recapped two of these machines before for folks in years gone by and I'm sure I haven't had to faff about drilling out rivets in a power supply before. Looking more closely at the supply itself I'm pretty much certain that this is very different to the ones I've dealt with before which were pretty standard switching units...This in contrast looks to be a linear regulator and a surprisingly-heavy-for-the-size toroidal transformer. Possible further evidence of this being an earlier machine?

Now I'm actually thinking about it more...The badging looks different to me to what I remember too.



I'm almost certain that this usually was badged in a narrower serif font and labelled British Broadcasting Corporation at the top, then with Microcomputer System on the lower line...Or I could be totally making that up.

I also will need to bring something into this room that can display composite video or RF in as currently I have zip in here that can do that. Given space constraints at the moment...a composite to HDMI/DisplayPort adapter is probably going to be on the shopping list though long term of course I'll need to pick up the correct Microvitec Cub monitor to go with it. I do have a couple of Acorn PAL monitors in the loft which I could hook up with the correct cable...but the cuboid metal cased Microvitec monitors are just so firmly linked together with the Beeb in my mind that it's an essential purchase.

A more logically pressing purchase though will probably be a disc drive or two as otherwise having to rely on the cassette port for loading/saving software will get old in a hurry I suspect. Plus I don't think I've ever actually *used* a cassette storage system with one of these, they've always had at least one 5.25" drive attached!

I'm over the moon with it though.

Next wish-list items would be the big brother to this, the BBC Master and something from the pre-Amiga Commodore days. A PET would be a really nice companion to have to put next to the Apple II on a display...Again patience and luck needed to find one for not stupid money though.

[Hell Razor5543]

Is it an A or B variant?

[Zelandeth]

Is it an A or B variant?

Presence of a full selection of expansion sockets underneath and the dedicated monitor socket suggest Model B if my memory is right. Model A was *very* bare bones.



I think everything under here was stripped out aside from the user and printer ports.

[Zelandeth]

TPA has been out quite a bit over the last week. Have a few photos...well just because I like documenting things.

A bunch of massive oversized nonsense, and one sensible little city car...











The replacement air cleaner has definitely reduced the induction noise a lot at speed. There's still quite a growl there, but it's nowhere near as boomy. I think any apparent performance increase is purely psychological as the car is quieter so it feels like you're maintaining the same speed with less effort just because of the improvement in refinement.

Oh, and I remembered to put the clock forward at long last.



I did have a bit of a wobble though, just as I was getting back home last time we were out it became obvious I was having a fuelling issue. Felt like she was generally running lean, and the accelerator pump definitely wasn't doing its job.

Followed some advice given by a few different folk and have ditched the glass and metal screen fuel filter. Several folks have expressed concern that it's likely to unscrew itself and I'll die in a blazing inferno at the side of the A5. Given all three components were fixed in place I don't see how it could unscrew itself, but a paper element one definitely will do a better job of filtration, so probably for the best. Looks less blingy too.



Have tried yet another provider, let's see if this one doesn't fall apart internally like the last two.

Place your bets...

Someone asked where it was that I'd got my emergency toolkit stashed these days. Answer is right here.





That bag contains a spare CVT belt, the tools needed to change it, and selection of basic tools. There's a really convenient little void down there that it sits securely in which isn't wasting any valuable actual storage in the car.

The same space on the nearside is where the heater booster fan I plan to fit one day will go.

I really do need to do something about the engine bay splash guards at some point.



Thankfully these aren't critical to the correct operation of the cooling system like one an air cooled VW at least, but they do want patching up. Actually replacing them is an engine out job so that ain't happening in the near future - plus good tinware is really hard to come by so I'd like need to make it from scratch.

I had opportunity to investigate the fuelling issue properly today, especially as I wanted to pull the air cleaner housing off for painting anyway. Didn't take long to figure out the issue...

Remember a couple of weeks ago I had the carb apart to change a couple of gaskets? Yeah... apparently I never properly screwed the top cover back onto the carb. Oops.

Pure dumb user error that one.

Oh well, at least it was a simple fix!

Air cleaner has had a splash of etch primer...



Then a couple of coats of hammered black topcoat.



Stuff in this engine bay gets dusty in a hurry because of the amount of airflow through it, so it'll dull down to being less in your face shiny pretty quickly.

Hopefully get it refitted tomorrow. Not sure if I'll have time to get a test run done to see if screwing the carb back together has sorted my fuelling issues or not. Sadly the school is back from the holiday now so it's back to being a nightmare to try to find enough room to get into or out of the garage.

[Zelandeth]

While I had the painting supplies out I gave the engine cover stay a going over too as it was very conspicuously rusty.

Makes things look a bit tidier.



Carb is better but definitely still not 100% happy, will need to investigate further. I really hope that my leaving the top cover loose accidentally hasn't wrecked the new gasket I just put in there...the £30 odd the kit cost was moderately irritating for what it was, but the month it took to get here from Italy far more so.

I did spot something after the test run today though which had the potential to be really "exciting" if I hadn't noticed it.



See anything amiss there? See the line between the driveshaft and the back of the hub? That's a gap. That should not be there. All four bolts on one side and three on the other were several turns less than finger tight. Now I admit to probably have forgotten to properly tighten the carb top cover screws last week, but making sure the driveshaft couplings were torqued up properly was *definitely* done when I installed the engine. So they have loosened themselves over time.

Given the vibration and shock loading that coupler will be subject to running 10" wheels with the state of the roads around here that's not necessarily a massive surprise, but the potential for Bad Things to Happen if a driveshaft came adrift means it's a checklist item that has definitely been added to the regular service regime. I think I will look to add some locking tabs to there too (there are already spring washers under the heads). Just glad I spotted this as the nearside is pretty much entirely hidden from view unless you're under the car as the battery tray and heater ducting obscure your view. I've put a mark on there with a paint marker now so I can easily visually check if they have moved now.

Think I basically need to just spend a day going over every single nut, bolt, screw, clip or other fastener on this car and make sure it's not managed to shake itself loose based on my experiences over the last week!

[mickthemaverick]

At least you'll have an answer to anyone who accuses you of having a screw loose Zel!

[Zelandeth]

At least you'll have an answer to anyone who accuses you of having a screw loose Zel!

Oh there's never been any doubt of me having many screws loose for decades!

-- -- --

Had a bit of a downer of a day today because of the general public being inconsiderate morons, then wasting several hours trying to fix things that an Android update that installed itself last night managed to break.

Oh, and the engine bay undertray of the Caddy decided to eject itself somewhere just north of J13 on the M1 this afternoon. Irked there as it was securely attached when I last looked (albeit with a few fasteners replaced with cable ties - but that's expected on a 20 year old car) and it was likely last disturbed last week when a garage changed the aux belt pulleys for me. My bad there for not checking it was properly secured when I got it back I guess. Hardly the end of the world, just annoying.

I had a couple of jobs which were low hanging fruit to get done on the Caddy so figured I'd tackle those to hopefully lift my mood a bit.

First up was dealing with the missing foglight blanking cover on the offside of the front bumper.



Needless to say that's been bugging me no end ever since I bought it.

The replacement blanking panel turned up a couple of weeks ago, I'd just not got around to fitting it.



Next to it is the replacement expansion valve which will hopefully sort the air con properly.

If you know this model better than me you'll have spotted the problem there. That blanking plate didn't have a recess or cutout in it to accommodate the towing eye.

Well not until I attacked it with the angle grinder anyway.



Not pretty, but it's one of those things you'll never notice once it's in situ, and my patience was already frayed at that point by yet another part being wrong despite my having triple checked the part numbers cross referenced correctly.

That's better.





Next up for the front end has to be getting some paint on the bumper and wheels. Not having a gaping hole in the front though is a definite improvement.

Flushed with success I moved on to the next job, installing this leather wrapped steering wheel fitted to replace the nasty - extremely slippery - factory one. I believe this comes from a Mk III Golf.



Being an identical style to the original one on here meant it was a really simple job.

First step given this car is equipped with an airbag of course is to disconnect the battery. I unhooked both terminals and wedged a roll of tape in between the positive post and the terminal just to make absolutely certain it couldn't drop back into place as the negative was very reluctant to stay clear of the battery post. Made sure to note down the reading on the trip meter as that's digital on this dash so would be wiped when the battery was unhooked.



This serves a double purpose here...one I obviously don't want the airbag to deploy in my face, though the odds of that happening are really small in reality. The second is that I really don't want to trigger a fault in the system as there's no way to reset the warning light without VAGCOM apparently.

Two hex head bolts on the rear of the wheel release the centre/airbag module from the steering wheel itself.



That gives plenty of room to pull the push fit connector out the back of the airbag module and put aside somewhere safe. The ribbon cable and the clock spring assembly is quite fragile so care needs to be taken doing that.





I chose to refit my existing airbag module into the new wheel as I don't know the history of the one that came with the new wheel - see my earlier comment about fault codes. They're an identical type in this case as aside from the one having a leather wrapped rim the wheels are otherwise identical. If they were different styles obviously that wouldn't be possible.

The wiring to the horn buttons could then be unplugged.



The three small Torx screws holding the clock spring housing to the back of the wheel are unscrewed next. Then the main steering wheel retaining nut (24mm) can be undone. In theory.

Turns out it was biblically tight. Not necessarily a bad thing given the application, but a problem nevertheless. Helpfully I do own exactly the tool for this job.



Which proceeded to spin the nut off as though it was less than finger tight. Impact guns are extremely useful tools. This one is heavily and unwieldy in tight spaces, but it's one of the most useful bits of kit I've ever bought. When you need one you really need one.

That step leaves the wheel itself ready to be removed. What you want to do here however is to thread that nut back on a few turns so you can remove the wheel in a controlled way. Give it a firm tug towards you and it should slip off the splines. If you didn't have the nut there you'd probably smack yourself in the face with the wheel and tear the airbag clock spring assembly to bits.

With the wheel loose the airbag and horn wiring can then be carefully threaded out through the old wheel as it's removed.

Reassembly as the manuals love to say is simply the reverse of disassembly. Though unlike VW originally I did take the time to tuck the horn wiring into the grooves clearly intended to keep it tidily out of the way.



Just because nobody will ever see something is not a reason not to do things tidily.

Once the wheel was all back together (after making ABSOLUTELY sure the keys were in my pocket) the battery was reconnected.



Not sure what the deal is with all the residue on top of the battery is, it's definitely not overcharging or anything like that...though being a Euro Car Parts special I don't really have huge faith in its prospects for longevity anyway.

Initially when turning the ignition on I made sure to stand to the side - there's no reason for the airbag to misbehave, but figure there is no reason not to be careful.

This was the thing I was looking very carefully at.



I do enjoy the solution that VW came up with for there being no SRS system warning light on the dash, just sticking it in a switch blank rather than updating the silk screen in the instrument cluster itself.

Thankfully after the self test it did turn back off exactly as it should do.



Then the rigmarole of resetting the clock and everything.



Thankfully the stereo retained everything aside from the time and date data. That's a big positive as doing all the configuration from scratch again is quite a chore.

Doesn't really look any different!



However is far, far more pleasant to hold than the old one. Given it's your main driver control having a nice wheel is kinda high on the wish list. Given that the old one was really quite unpleasant to hold it's an upgrade I'm glad I made.

Nice easy job which has a very tangible positive impact on the driving experience, I'll tick that off as a win I think.

[Zelandeth]

Spot the difference...





Think it's fair to say that looks a bit better. The finish up close is horrible in several places but from ten feet it's a lot more presentable. Mainly thinking of our poor neighbours who have to look at it all day!

I had hoped to just pull the bumper off to paint it, but a plethora of metal-rusted-into-plastic fasteners had other ideas. So it wound up being a really quick and dirty mask off and spray job. The paint reacting with the existing primer on there was an extra layer of excitement I could have done without.

Still definitely looks a lot less scruffy than it did 24 hours ago I think.



The radiator grill has several broken mounting tabs so I'll need to hunt down a replacement at some point.

I also need to go on the hunt for a new under tray. Had a closer look today and can confirm that this is the only bit that is now left.



Hoping that will be the same as used on several VAG vehicles of the time so hopefully won't be too hard to find.