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Thousand Dollar Supercar

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Thousand Dollar Supercar last won the day on March 17

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About Thousand Dollar Supercar

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    Music - I play keyboards in a classic rock cover band, and play piano for fun. My taste in music ranges from traditional / classic metal through rock, blues, oldies, classic country and random stuff.
    Amateur electronics at a basic level, ditto for photography, and I watch too much YouTube.

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  1. Interesting. A guy from my industry randomly decided to retrain as a primary school teacher, but he didn't last long in the field. I used to flat with a primary teacher years ago, and I remember her making strong vodka jellies to take to school and share around the staffroom at lunchtime - presumably those helped the teachers get through the day. I had David Jenkin assess my piano years ago. I found it interesting and I was sorely tempted to throw money away on a rebuild, but instead I bought a new piano for some reason. Now I have two pianos, because of course I can't get rid of the old one. More than a decade ago I was already finding it difficult to book piano tuners - they were busy, which meant they would tell me their one and only available time slot a month or two in the future, and I'd have to make that work. Then they'd decide to specialise in tuning expensive Steinway grands and stop accepting jobs for old British uprights. The piano tuner I use now is someone I was forcibly transferred to when my previous tuner basically said he was too busy. She's not the norm for the industry as she's about a decade younger than me. She was able to bring forward her return visit to finish the hammer bushing replacement to earlier this week. So that work is mostly done now, but it has an annoying short-term downside - as Tim Finn would say, what I need is a positive action, but there's a fraction too much friction. Ooo, and I noticed this written on the back of the action: I think it says "Palmer. 15th afternoon Recentre Ease Regulate". Palmer was my great grandfather's last name, and ironically he must have been getting the same work done to the action as I've just had done.
  2. "If ye don't tek yer meat, ye can't tune any piano! How can ye tune yer piano if ye don't tek yer meat?" I have a tuning hammer that I bought online, and I could probably do an OK job with the aid of an app, but I'll save that for when I move out of Auckland to where there aren't any tuners. Until then, I know I cannae match fahrty yeers of expeerience in any wee, shepe or farrim. Barglaralarrum.
  3. I'm behind schedule on this and I haven't posted anything because of no progress. I put the piano in the middle of the room and set up some microphones. I found that you could hear the rattling of these wire screens on the rear of the piano: I took them off. The next problem was too much typewriter clatter from the piano's action when recording with the upper front panel removed. I know I should expect unwanted noise from something ancient, British and worn out, but the level of rattling was a bit much to be excused as character. With the upper front panel back in place, the mic doesn't pick up the clatter as much but I lose a bit of clarity. So the technician took the whole action away to replace the bushings responsible for some of the clatter, and to reshape the hammer felt to remove the grooves and compacted areas. I got the action back last week, but now it's a matter of working through which new bushings are too tight or too loose, fixing the already-broken bits we found, and fixing the newly-broken bits which resulted from working on something so old. So far the tone and the dynamic range are a bit better. An old piano like this is never going to set the world on fire, but I encountered four other old pianos over the course of Nats and they were all miles worse than mine. The bar is low. I have been tasked with playing the piano and making notes on what's still not right for the technician's next visit in April.
  4. Hmmm… I did notice the commutator was worn but I didn’t notice that bit. I’ll have a look at higher-res photos when I get back from Nats.
  5. Boring update: I finally changed the rear subframe mounts. Here's the one I had been most concerned about. I had expected to find it in worse shape once it was off the car. Hardly worth worrying about really. This rubber-to-metal bond is the only thing that seems to keep the IRS assembly attached to the car. There is a radius arm connected near each rear hub which twists the whole IRS assembly in its mounts as the car leans in the corners, creating a passive rear wheel steering drunken snake effect. Wikipedia says this "...may result in significantly improved handling". May? Anyway, the mounts can fail from age or too many burnouts, and then you definitely won't have significantly improved handling. In this shot, the two subframe mounts have been removed: You can see the IRS cage thing, the tricky double shocks and springs, the light reflecting off the inboard rear brake disc, the skinny anti-roll bar terminating at the base of the RH spring (not present on all XJSs).... You can also see that I managed to change the mounts without disconnecting anything such as the exhaust, brake lines, roll bar, driveshaft, radius arm etc. I did one side of the car at a time, using a jack and an axle stand. New mounts fitted (this is on the opposite side of the car, to mess with your head): Now that these mounts are done, I'm not gonna be THAT guy:
  6. Oooo.. I built a couple of model cars as a kid, and an aerosol of colour-matched paint came with my XJ-S.. But if I can't get around to working on my real car, what business do I have building a model of its V12 sibling? @fuel here's one for you: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace/toys-models/models/cars-trucks/classic-cars/listing/4575944007
  7. Ford Model T carriage lantern: (hopefully those images allow remote linking) Looks pretty similar. There seem to have been a few variations. Looking at the NZ Model T club photos, often the lanterns don't seem to have that red side light. http://modeltford.co.nz/media/1588/img_4080-copy.jpg http://modeltford.co.nz/media/1574/img_4066-copy.jpg http://modeltford.co.nz/media/1578/img_4070-copy.jpg
  8. Welcome to the forum. There can be some weird humour here because many of us know each other from the real world - 20 years of sporadic club events. If you're likely to be doing much of your own maintenance on your Jag, you'll have picked up that I've found Kirby Palm's "Experience In A Book: Help For The Jaguar XJ-S Owner" (a.k.a. The Barry Bible) to be useful. It's a free PDF you can download online. @dmulally sent me a 1992 XJS electrical system PDF too. Be careful treating my build thread as 'useful stuff'.. I'm a dodgy and not-very-enthusiastic amateur, this is my first Jag and I've been finding things out the hard way. This thread is just a diary for entertainment purposes and should not be considered mechanical advice. No doubt someone well versed in these cars would have a hit list of proactive replacements they would immediately perform on an under-maintained, high mileage XJS, and they wouldn't get stranded out of town, stumped by known issues etc the way I have been. FYI we run a system on oldschool.co.nz where only the car owner posts in their build thread. This prevents discussions cluttering the threads. Each car has a corresponding discussion thread, and the discussion thread for my Jag is here:
  9. I'm running Nankang N729 235/60R15 on the Jag, which is barely on the right side of half the power and twice the weight of your Gemini. I was going to get them reverse-fitted to hide the raised white lettering if it said 'PRESTIGE' instead of 'RADIAL' - apparently this was the case for certain sizes of N729s at certain times. For a standard classic car, I guess how a tyre handles power is irrelevant - the tyres will always age out before they wear out. In a classic which does low mileage and doesn't have stability control, it would seem to make sense to sacrifice treadwear / noise / efficiency etc for grip, but for whatever reason, that doesn't happen. Treadwear on my N729s is 400.
  10. Go go gadget curtain: You can use the control panel to turn on and off various elements of my pointless box of lights to create different looks. Here's your basic 'starlight headliner' look: The slight glow from one of the orange neons is a bug 'feature', as is the fact that I positioned the Southern Cross constellation too close to the rear, causing its southernmost star to spotlight the 'Radion' logo above the TV. Turn on the analogue meters and the dancing Nixie tubes: Add the plasma globe, the TV (which normally can't be turned off - I unplugged it for the photos) and the neons: I deliberately positioned one neon bulb close enough to the plasma globe to show the induced glowing: Turn the globe off, put on its blue LED, turn on the incandescent bulbs behind it: I grabbed each variation of these vintage filament bulbs while they were still easy to come by. Now they're being replaced on the market by LED 'filament' bulbs, which just aren't the same. A side effect of these features is that the heat production / power consumption of my creation is a bit more than ideal, just like a real valve radio. Here's where the old micro system lives, in the side of the cabinet behind a cover that slides upward: Its display is very dim these days. If it ever looks at me funny, I'll replace it with something which can do CDs, Bluetooth and USB. For the time being, I use an aux cable. So yeah, you get the idea. (hail Satan) That's pretty much it. Slight variations thereof. I have run out of attachment space for this post anyway. I'll make a video at some point, and afterwards I'll probably only consult my pointless box of lights whenever I need a drink. Open bar!
  11. I've gotta throw up some photos here, so that I can post them on Facebook afterwards (oldschool gets the scoop). A reminder 'before' shot from 2012: The wood originally had a darker stain which did make the grain stand out more, but the HDR photographic effect is further exaggerating its stripiness. Now (below), the external changes to the cabinet are pretty minor, and the wood is a lighter shade (which wasn't intentional - I'm not a fan of light oak). The central panel with the knobs is the only one which still has its original finish, so it stands out as being too dark (especially after I waxed it). Power it up... This 'mysterious glow' effect (basically a convenient way to use up the last of my icicle LED lights) can be switched off: Here's another 'before' shot, with the radio and speakers stripped out: After: You can see my Nixie tube clock has found a new home in the top of this cabinet. I made up this clock from a kitset in 2015. I originally intended to house it inside the centre of the cabinet where the radio used to be, but not only was that an impractical place for it, the clock was also too bulky. If you turn on the switch to the right, the gears to attempt to spin. That mostly works. This is the upper shelf of the left side cupboard: You can see I've covered the ceiling with some copper mesh backed with blue velvet, to hide the holes where the record player originally was. All of these photos are taken from favourable angles / there are plenty of rough edges. My newest purchase for the cabinet is this lighter: It functions as either Jim Beam (with its oldschool lighter insert) or Jim Laser Beam (below): I haven't been brave enough to stick my finger in yet. More pics to come. =)
  12. Check out my latest Jag-cessory: It's someone's scody old lighter, covered in 'brown lizard' and tobacco stains. But wait, when you clean it up, what does the engraving say.... Yep, it was once owned by Mister J.A.G. How good will that look next to my keys on the bar of the local TAB.
  13. Be serious. What could you feasibly source quickly and inexpensively which wouldn't break or overpower the rest of the vehicle, requiring too many other upgrades? I like the idea of a garbage oldschool motor, because I love the sound of garbage. It may be that it's just easier to grab a small modern 4cyl Jap engine for this task though, cos whatever you can find in the nearest abandoned Nissan Micra would have more power than the existing motor. @La Viva 71, the user @yoeddynz has done two engine swaps on Vivas over the years - a rotary and a Mazda V6. There has been more than one other Viva on the forum too, and they may have build threads on here somewhere. We also have a user cletus who is a vehicle certifier.
  14. Hi Stevo. =) I presume this is a Mitsubishi Lancer GSR. Google says that ABS fault codes 41-44 are for the ABS solenoid valve system. Code 43 is the RR solenoid valve, so I presume RR = Rear Right, RL = Rear Left? Apparently some service manual says that probable causes include: Defective hydraulic unit Defective harness or connector Defective ABS-ECU Although I've never owned a car with ABS (this is oldschool.co.nz), I'm going to guess that you damaged a wire or unplugged something. Hopefully you can find a wiring issue which can be repaired without buying any new sensors etc.
  15. The verdict from the automatic transmission place was that the problem under hard acceleration wasn't caused by the auto! I was saved from having to spend lots of money on it. When the problem started to develop, it was only apparent at the top of second gear - it felt like the transmission wasn't making it into third gear, but in fact it must have been the engine running out of gas. Once again I'm lucky I didn't blow it up. I consulted the Barry Bible and apparently thirsty old Jags can suffer fuel starvation for several reasons: Fuel pickup blockage because the fuel tank likes to rust (my car has had a tank replacement in the past) Insufficient voltage to the fuel pump because of Lucas electrics Internal mechanical problems with the fuel pump Barry has answers for all of these issues, and he hasn't put me wrong before. His first recommendation is to remove the strainer from the pickup in the surge tank and substitute an external filter instead. I went and bought the required 1/2" size of fuel hose and filter, which of course you can't get from Repco/Supercheap. Then I took out the fuel pickup aaaand..... It's fine. I took it off anyway, because I'd already bought the parts to add the external filter: Ideally I'd find a bigger transparent filter which can be disassembled and cleaned, but maybe later. What's next... insufficient voltage. The voltage across the fuel pump turned out to be a constant 13.2V. That's presumably good enough - Barry said it should be at least 11V at idle. So the remaining fuel starvation cause is this: Barry describes this easy modification you can make to these fuel pumps to stop them playing up as they age. Yes you can just buy a non-Lucas fuel pump, but where's the fun in that. Plus this Lucas part is actually a Bosch part made in France. Apparently it's easy to un-crimp the top of the aluminium canister and mash out the internals.... I didn't find it easy. Violence was required. Here's what's inside: The part that does the pumping does not spin with the rotor. It has some internal impeller which is driven by the rotor, but the body of the mechanism needs to be held in place. The problem is that the only thing keeping it in place seems to be a rubber o-ring (not shown) pressing against the outer aluminium canister of the pump. As everything ages, eventually the part that does the pumping starts to slip and spin, meaning less relative speed of its impeller bits, meaning less fuel pressure. Then you get a crappy idle and fuel starvation at full power, and then you get burned pistons and you have to do a 350 Chev conversion. So here's the solution: how? By cunningly fitting a screw into the inside of the housing of the motor, we can lock the pump mechanism in position. The screw threads need to be ground off flush on the outside of the stator/casing so it can be jammed back inside the aluminium housing of the pump. By using the right number of washers under the screw head, it's impossible for the screw to come loose and fall out once the whole thing's reassembled. Genius. It was not easy to get the pump back together. It looks all mangled now and I'm surprised it still works and doesn't leak. I also replaced the regular fuel filter at the same time, because it had been installed over 14 years ago. Then I went for a drive, and yay, it seems to be fixed! The idle seems to be improved, which is something that has always bugged me. Most importantly I seem to be able to use full throttle right to redline again without the awesome AJ6 drinking its injectors dry. It's all the horsepowers that do it. Listen to them all on my crummy hand-held dashcam: All this mucking around has meant I still haven't changed any suspension bushes / subframe mounts or fixed the headlining. Hopefully I can fit some of those in by Nats.
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