The Rebuild continues

I'm slowly rebuilding my entire car - every time I do one thing, I end up having to change/fix 2 others.

This time, it was the wipers - one of the springs on the wiper arm broke, so it wasn't pressing on the screen and thus not actually wiping. Nice easy fix, you say? Holy Cow....

So I order a new arm (actually 2, in case the other goes soon) - arrives in less than 24 hours from CBS (impressive). I trot off innocently to the garage, remove the old arm and...er...bugger, the rubber piece has broken:

Back to the laptop and I decide to order metal replacements rather than rubber - these take 2 days to come (I did order on a Sunday, so I can't blame them).

Once more, I wander off to the garage and I'll just plop these metal bits on...er....no, they are a slightly different shape to the rubber versions, so they need filing down. The first one takes a mere hour to get right - it's a small, awkward round shape, difficult to hold in a vice while I file it down.

The second one? Holy Mother of the Great One - I do not understand why this one was so tough but my file didn't even scratch it. They are chromed but I didn't think a chrome finish was that tough? I eventually had to get the Dremel out, hack off a piece, then use a sanding disc and finally I got some purchase with the file.

Unbelievable! A job that I thought would take 10 minutes took me about 3 hours!!

 

I didn't have the time to actually try them out, so I hope I haven't re-aligned them wrong - we shall see.

Car wash

A short video of my commute home tonight in the remnants of Storm Brendon (?) - you'll get a brief glimpse of my new speedo if you look closely:

Nice...

Order is restored

So once again, as soon as I take the insulation tape off the wiring on the ignition plug, a wire drops out! No wonder my starting was flaky.

Amazing the difference a new soldering iron has - didn't take too long to solder a couple of wires up and one of them almost looks acceptable. Heat shrink and lots of insulation tape made what feels like a more secure connection.

And what a difference! Two cold starts have been almost instantaneous and my alternator seems to be generating slightly more charge? Is that really all down to a better electrical connection? I'll give it a few more runs before I can say it is all fixed.

Finally found a stretch of road for a 0-60 timed run - 7.28 secs. Not very impressive considering 750kg (with me) and 150 bhp gives a power-weight ratio of 200bhp/ton, same as the current Impreza or a C-class AMG Mercedes, which have 0-60 times of 5s. I think that is probably down to my Ford gearbox - I have to do 2 gear changes to get to 60 (might be able to do it with 1?) and the trusty old MT75 isn't a patch on a flappy paddle job in new cars. In theory, I have the GBS 'quickshift' but 'quick' is relative 😉

Next fix? While playing with the Emerald software, I noticed that pressing the throttle to its maximum only shows up as 75% as far as the ECU is concerned, so it looks like I could do with adjusting the cable.

Roller-coaster time again

So yes, I had pulled a wire out when putting the dash back in - doh!! All off again to re-clamp the wire into the plug.

I'm starting to regret my optimism a couple of posts ago about how to connect wires. I've had 2 issues since then where the wires connected using those spade terminals just haven't made a good connection. And now, my ignition wiring problem has returned!

My ignition wires use these same spade terminals I enthused  about a while back but, at the weekend, Zedster wouldn't start.

Now, there were 2 problems at play here; one was the fact that I think I have pulled yet another wire out of the switch on my aux panel that switched the ECU between maps, so the switch is effectively always in the 'off' position, which makes the ECU use my 'low emissions' map. This low emissions map does NOT have the recent cold start enrichment numbers that Emerald setup for me, so it wouldn't start. After rectifying this (by simply overriding the emissions map with the main, normal map), I then encountered the ignition wiring problem - it keeps losing connection and doesn't engage the starter motor. Only with some under-dash fiddling (ooh-err) will the motor engage and the engine start.

So, I've ordered a new soldering iron (my old one is about 20 years old and seems to only work in spurts) and I'm going to solder the damn ignition wires - hopefully, that will fix it like it has done for the speedo.

The speedo is working fine now, although it's not great at night - the needle is lit up and it has a little LCD screen that is lit up but the main dial doesn't seem to have any light on it and is very dark at night. And in a 20 mile run to check it out over the weekend, I couldn't find a single stretch of flat, straight, traffic-free road to test out the 0-60 timer function! The joys of SE England roads...

After the lows of my wiring issues, the roller-coaster that is kit car life has ratcheted up to the top of the Big Dipper (wow, epic metaphor!) - I have booked on to a week-long trip to the Italian Alps in June!!

It's with the SKCC club, something they do most years but the stars have never aligned to allow me to get involved in previous years. However, I've managed to sucker my wife into saying yes (I will regret this nearer the time as I get an earful over how selfish I am) and I should have just about enough holiday from work, so off we go!!

Obviously, early days yet and I need to ensure Zedster is in one piece come the time but I am VERY excited - always desperately wanted to go to the Alps. I am also booked on to the Wales trip again in September as well, so maybe my wife has a point...

The circus is in town

I do feel like Zedster is a clown car sometimes... (and I guess that makes me a clown? Which is about right, I guess..).

So the speedo wiring was fine - it just seems like the spade terminals I tried to use to connect the wires weren't good enough. I ended up soldering them instead (my soldering skills are horrendous, lumpy and yuck) and it seems to now be working BUT half my aux panel is now dead!

Either I've blown a fuse or I've knocked off a wire when putting the dash back in - jees! And one of the fluorescent strips in my garage has blown, so half my garage is in darkness.

Well, at least the speedo works (for now)....