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

[Zelandeth]

Yep, no advance notice this morning, after being told yesterday when they told us they weren't going to make it yesterday that they had an absolute concrete 1 hour window this morning they had to work to. Which they arrived 32 minutes before the start of.

The fact that the first communion we got yesterday was past 1500 when the buyer chased them - four hours after the agreed collection time - just set the scene really.

[MattBLancs]

It's amazing how many industries you could be a runaway success if you went what would appear to be the near unique approach of "just be competent at the one thing that is whole point of the job"

[xantia_v6]

A few years ago, I needed a car moving to a ten about an hour away and got a reasonable quote on Shipley from a transporter who was going to be dropping off another car somewhere in the vicinity.

He didn't turn up at the allotted time, and was not responding on the contact number I had. He turned up about 2 hours late, his truck had been involved in an accident while transporting the other vehicle, so he got a lift home, got his own car and borrowed a trailer to transport my car. I was impressed.

[Zelandeth]

May have just spent probably a bit more than I really should have on this.





Which differs slightly from the previous 324G I picked up a while ago by being badged Sumlock rather than just CompuCorp, but far more importantly in that it's been demonstrated as working.

It's a historically interesting enough machine as it was so ahead of its time that I really wanted to have a working example in the collection and available for demonstration in the future.

It also means that I can dissect the original one to investigate the tech involved without worrying quite so much about whether it will go back together properly. It's not the easiest thing to disassemble (especially as a lot of the fasteners are badly corroded).



Quite a lot crammed in there.

[daviemck2006]

Derp...of course that's the inlet side. My mistake.

It feels reasonably sturdy still, my guess is that the original fasteners seized in place during the car's 11 year slumber and the cover was damaged getting into it during the revival work. I'll figure out a proper solution in due course.

There's a rural scrap yard not far from where I used to live where stuff never leaves - it just periodically gets shoved further to the back of the yard, which had a trio of 25s last time I was there - which admittedly was a good while ago - so next time I'm in the area I'll be making a trip there to see if they're still there. If so could be a good source of silly little bits and pieces like these.

Is that Aberdeenshire Zel? If it is let me know which one and I may have a wee look for you.

[CitroJim]

That's a cracker of a calculator Zel Early 70s or earlier?

[Zelandeth]

Is that Aberdeenshire Zel? If it is let me know which one and I may have a wee look for you.

Sharpewood over Huntly way, though judging from the satellite photo on Google Maps it's long since been cleared out and reorganised, now with the usual formal rows of piled up stuff rather than just being a giant chaotic carpark. So I imagine the cars in question have long long gone.

That's a cracker of a calculator Zel Early 70s or earlier?

1972 if memory serves. 10 numeric registers, 80 step program memory, and fully algebraic input when a large chunk of the more advanced machines still used RPN. Aside from a couple of oddities (like using the 2nd function button *after* the operator rather than before) to keep in mind, you could pretty much pick one up and use it like any 80s-90s era basic scientific calculator.

It even looks pretty much like one...until you realise how big they are, which never comes across in photos of just the unit itself.



Oh - and it cost the equivalent of somewhere around the £5000 mark in today's money.

It's a shame that like a lot of the pioneering companies that Compucorp didn't survive the 70s given they spent a good chunk of the decade well ahead of the curve.

[CitroJim]

Gosh, that really was bleeding edge stuff for 1972 Zel...

I fondly remember RPN from the days of my very first scientific calculator... A Sinclair one I built from a kit... That would have been late 1975... Despite it's atrocious accuracy it helped me through my technical qualifications and was a bit of a step up from my slide rule and Castle's Logs..

Happy days

[Zelandeth]

Today I learned that you can't just pull the stereo straight out of the dash in a Renault 25.



Even with the helpful little panel above it that unclips there's nowhere near enough room to pull it up before it hits the dash.

Looks like it's a pull the whole centre console out job. That's a job for some time that's not right now.

Seats are looking healthier now after half a dozen passes with the leather feed.





Now feeling a good deal less like cardboard.

This evening's entertainment was dismantling our oven, which chose roughly 1800 on Christmas Eve to pack in.

The culprit: One tarnished edge connector.



That's obviously after I'd cleaned it! No in progress photos as this was an absolutely disgusting job. As with everything we inherited in this kitchen it was absolutely covered in sticky, greasy slime. So if it keeps working I will be completely disassembling the damned thing and probably putting every part of the casing and front panel through the dishwasher.

Not sure if the issue was power to the timer board or an issue with the enable signal from the timer to the main controller or a combination of the two.

Daft type of interconnect to use in a hostile environment like this. Vibration, extreme heat cycles, grease, humidity, the lot. Mechanical stress there too as the timer inevitably moves a bit when the buttons are pressed.

Back together...well back together enough to test anyway.



Fingers crossed it keeps behaving.

Also discovered that it's not on its own circuit...turning off the circuit breaker to kill power to this also knocks out a bunch of the downstairs sockets. This is one of the few bits of the house I've not fixed/had fixed, so this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Disappoint, yes. Surprise, not so much.

[CitroJim]

A big relief to get that oven working Zel May it cook a most excellent Christmas dinner

Looks like Renault must have used a Citroen consultant when designing the housing for the radio The same one who designed the Xantia heater matrix arrangements

[Zelandeth]

A big relief to get that oven working Zel May it cook a most excellent Christmas dinner

Looks like Renault must have used a Citroen consultant when designing the housing for the radio The same one who designed the Xantia heater matrix arrangements

Well there are definite design elements that are shared...



Series 2 Xantia is the only other car I can think of off the top of my head which did that trick with the door pockets. Do wonder how many owners of both these cars never knew the pockets existed.

Not a problem when you have a standard single DIN stereo in as that just uses the lower slot - the big one here though doesn't have enough room to come out. I'll need to consult the manual as it's not impossible I've missed something.

The kitchen appliances do know when to pick it. Last year it was the fridge which decided that the evening of Christmas Day was a good time to quit cooling. Thankfully I was able to bodge that back into working until I could source the required spare part.

[daviemck2006]

Is that Aberdeenshire Zel? If it is let me know which one and I may have a wee look for you.

Sharpewood over Huntly way, though judging from the satellite photo on Google Maps it's long since been cleared out and reorganised, now with the usual formal rows of piled up stuff rather than just being a giant chaotic carpark. So I imagine the cars in question have long long gone.

Sharpwood has been closed completely for a couple of years now Zel. It's a pity as I loved being told go have a look up there and see what there is. I dont know what is in there now.

Frasers in Huntly is also closed a couple years ago. This area is now very poor for scrapyards, overton is very expensive and theres the one at Daneston as far as I know, and one about Mintlaw somewhere.

[CitroJim]

It's a true tragedy how so many traditional scrapyards have closed in recent years...

Might be worth getting hold of HubNut and getting some scrapyard recommendations via him Zel

I know a good one down in Somerset

[Zelandeth]

It is a shame, but between the tightening of environmental regs making them so much more expensive to run, the volatility of scrap metal prices and no small part the ever decreasing repairability of modern cars it's really not surprising. I did well out of Sharpewood's over the years though. Sad to hear they're gone though, they had some really rare stuff back up by the tree line which still had a lot of useful parts on when I was last there.

Persley Den is decent (they're strictly there for the scrap metal so anything they make on parts is seen as a bonus), but stuff doesn't stick around for more than a week or two so unless you're in the right place at the right time it's really not much good for older stuff. We did spot a Lada in there a few years ago and virtually stripped it (basically if we could remove it with the tools I had in the car and I could carry it by hand, it came off), think Stan charged me something like £75 for the lot - and that was two Saab 900s worth of stuff including the entire interior. Took me I think a day and a half to move that all on. Sadly not exactly easy to pop in to check on things periodically when it's 500 miles away.

[Dormouse]

Spent many an hour in Persley and met Stan in a pub on one of his very rare days off. Magic place!