Adoom

So I started looking at the Triumph wiring loom to work out how I will connect the Link ECU loom to it.

Lucas, the prince of darkness apparently did not believe in fuses or relays. There are 3 fuses and a relay for the horn, that's all.

I've found some dodgy repairs to the instrument wiring. And someone had put in a relay for the headlights, but it's really old and gigantic, I had assumed it was an external voltage regulator before investigating. A section of loom has also been lengthened, with different colour wires... I haven't worked out why.

To sort out the dodgy repairs I've had to unwrap the whole loom to decipher the how and why, so since I've gone that far I may as well modernise it a bit and put in a new, larger fuse box and some relays to take the current load off the old switches.

The OEM wiring for the Oil and Brake warning light is LOL. (The brake warning is if the front/rear circuit fails.)The lights are wired in series for power, but each has its own earth through their sensors.

There is a description of how they work in the factory service manual...

1. Ignition ON engine not running: Oil light "ON FAINTLY", Brake light "ON FAINTLY" (apparently so you can check the bulbs work)
2. Engine running: Oil light "OFF", Brake light "OFF" (Yep)
3. Engine running brake circuit failure: Oil light "OFF", Brake light "ON BRIGHT" (Cool, makes sense)
4. Engine running low oil pressure: Oil light "ON FAINTLY", Brake light "ON FAINTLY" (Ummmm. What!? I know they are "faint" because they are in series, but surely there was a better way to do this.)

It does literally say "FAINTLY", which in real life is probably so dim you can't tell it's on, because Lucas.

However, I've got a oil pressure sender for the ECU, so the oil warning light will be controlled by the ECU.

I am undecided if I will retain the brake warning light, as far as I can tell many models didn't have it. I also had trouble finding a wiring diagram that included the light and sensor. Some diagrams listed the light and sensor as items 51 and 52 but they were missing from the actual circuit diagram?! I eventually found it in the factory service manual under "Left hand drive models only"...??? If I decide to keep it I have loads of spare inputs/outputs on the ECU, so I could connect the sensor to the ECU and get it to control the light as well.

I'm going to rewire the headlights on the Triumph because NO FUSE and NO RELAY, all the current goes through a 50 year old switch made by Lucas, the Prince of Darkness...

With headlight wiring.... when you use high beam, should the dip and high filaments both be on, or only the high beam filament?

So I've been fighting for clearance for the steering off the rear stud for the exhaust manifold.

I first tried replacing the stud with a bolt so it was lower profile.

I still had negative clearance.

The universal joint has a bolt that goes right through with a nylock nut which sticks out a fair bit. I looked at my starlet, and there is no nut, one side of the hole is threaded so you just use a bolt. I decided to replicate this method. I drilled and tapped it to the next size up UNF thread(I didn't want to mix and metric and imperial in the same assembly). But now the U-groove in the end of the steering column was slightly too small for the bolt to slide through. So stripped down the column and put it in the lathe. Fuck all needed to come off, it's now just the right size to thread the bolt in by hand. I painted it and regreased the bearings too.

That got me down to zero clearance... you can turn the wheel, but the corners of the bolt heads just clip.

Time to get drastic...er.

Move the lower mount of the steering column over.

To avoid making a mess of the panel behind, I used the flap disk until it was wafer thin then peeled it off. This intact lower mount is from the rusty car. I also kept part of the panel from the other car to use as a cutting template, and later I'll make a filler piece from it. 

It only needed to move a little bit, less than 10mm.

Using a set of drill bits to measure the gap, the closest it gets is 9.5mm.

The intermediate shaft now touches the chassis rail. When the engine is out again I'll make some room there.

@johnny.race Something to catch out new players on a tig. The ground lead goes to the POSITIVE connection, not negative!

Don't have the gas flow too high, the guide that came with mine suggested 8 Litres/minute. I went through gas RIDICULOUSLY FAST. I turned mine down to 4 and it still welds fine.

These https://www.bunnings.co.nz/kincrome-400a-3m-jumper-leads_p0292103
I dunno if I got the 400 or 800Amp

19 minutes ago, Nominal said:

Where can I get a decent set of jumper leads? Ones with actual bolted on clamps, not shitty pressed/crimped supercheat style.

Not bolted on clamps... But I got some kincrome ones from Bunnings. Surprisingly inexpensive. Even has an inline voltage thingo. The clamps are much sturdier than the flimsy SuperShit ones that are really easy to bend, they are plastic coated steel with 2-2.5mm thick copper teeth. The wire core is also a decent size. The cheap ones tend to make their wire look more heavy duty by making the insulation thicker but the core is still small. 

2 hours ago, Sambo said:

Sanity check:

 

I connected the (fully charged) battery in my AE85 for the first time in a number of months. I connected the positive first, then when I went to connect the negative I got an impressive amount of sparks. I tightened the connections, then noticed that both terminals were getting really hot and starting to smoke.

 

Ignition was definitely off, so there shouldn't have been any significant draw. Short on the positive cable somewhere?

Positive terminal on the starter motor touching the block...or maybe got a spanner or something on it?

I got some nice leather seats from an Alfa 156 for my triumph. But they have airbags. What do I need to do?

EDIT: I've since worked out how the upholstery is removed and managed to wangjangle the airbag unit out of one of them. Guess I just need to snip off the "Airbag" tag thingy?

I would have made an attempt to bash the original valance into shape with a cheap set of hammers and dollies. Or even cut out the REALLY mangled bits and make little patch panels. Remaking the valance from scratch with all those curves in it is some advanced level shit.

This guy who talks funny has good videos on making up patch panels. You should watch every single one of his videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6JPmJ_aicru8XPWr3EvJnw

I had some areas of bare metal where I had made repairs or modifications. They kept getting minor surface rust, so I thought I should really get around to painting them with epoxy.

The prep around the firewall was awful. All the seam sealer was bituminous tar stuff. So there was many hours of heat gun and scraping and rags soaked in kerosene and manual wire brushes to remove it. Then I needed to remove the paint because there were areas with surface rust and others where rust was creeping under the paint. So that was more many hours of knotted wire brush on the grinder. And the 3M abrasive pad thing on the grinder. And chemical paint stripper on the larger flattish areas and more scraping. Then there are lots of narrow spaces and gaps and corners I can't get into with the grinder. I found some reasonably priced little wire brushes at mytools.co.nz that were rated to use in a die grinder at 20000rpm without exploding. I also used small abrasive pads in the die grinder.

Then I dusted it off with the air gun and wiped it all down with a cloth soaked in prepsol. And dried it off with the heat gun.

And brush painted it with protec 408 epoxy primer. The engine bay has had two coats, the repair in the boot has only had one.

I have some modern seam sealer to use. Hopefully it hasn't all gone hard... I think I might have bought it a couple of years ago.

18 minutes ago, Testament said:

Weird, did you use any thinners? Mayber the hardener has lost its mojo

Only ever used durepox and often get the opposite issue of having to work real fast/brush turning to wood by the end of the job

/Ling

No thinner because I was intending to brush this bit. I also don't have a gun that I trust not to be total shit.

I would hope it's not lost its mojo, I only just bought it from panelstore.co.nz about 3 months ago.

10 minutes ago, tortron said:

how cold and wet is it there?

leave it out in the sun and see what happens

still thats a long time.

Did you give it some time to set up? i.e after you mixed it you waited 10 mins?

i see it doenst mention it in the TDS for 408, but seems to be recomended for their other products

 

try mix some fresh stuff up and paint something small and leave it out and see if it does the same. might be soemthing wrong with it

It eventually did go hard after about 4 days. Even the leftover in the pot has turned into a solid block.

It hasn't been particularly cold. I don't think it dropped below 9 in the shed over night. It's 25 in there now.

I didn't wait after mixing. I'll try that next time. It still needs at least one more coat.

Got some Epotec 408 primer. Mixed it real good with a wooden stirring wand because it had separated. Didn't stir the hardener. Used the cup and mixed it 4:1 like the sheet said. Stirred it good in the mixing cup.

Brushed it on. Just one coat, not real thick. Definitely needs another coat for full coverage. 

It still doesn't feel hard dry. I made too much so there was about 15mm left in the cup and that has gone real thick and goopy.

Sheet says 16 hours to hard dry. But it's been at least 48.

Did I do it wrong?

It will be WAY easier to get at from the back.

10 minutes ago, tortron said:

 

I'm a fan of a bicycle cable through a pice Of rod in a drill.

 

I'm having difficulty imagining this thing you describe. 

2 hours ago, Jo_Rolla said:

@Adoom I'm not sure it's rusted through. Would you recommend cutting it out? I was wondering if sand blasting the area would work then painting the shit out of it?

I'd aggressively scrape at it with a screwdriver you don't like much or some other sharp pointy thing so you can see how bad it is.

If it's just light surface rust you could clean it up real good and paint over it. Epoxy if you have it, but something like hammerite is probably good enough.

If there is any pitting, and definitely if there are pin holes, I'd want to cut that out and weld a patch in. But I've had a bunch of practice welding panel steel.....

Trying to fix rust in that area is a pain in the arse.

Take out the dash or just the glove box and access it from the back.

Mine looks a bit different because it has the heater inlet holes blocked off because racecar and it seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I have had good success with a Kerosene soaked rag. Makes a horrible mess, but wipes up easily. Shouldn't damage paint, also doesn't evaporate fast like prepsol.