Car'd out

 Wow, it's been a busy 2 weeks for car stuff:

Aug 21st - British Motor show

Held at Farnborough airfield, this was a surprisingly good event. My son pulled a sickie and joined me - lots of current cars, classics, customs etc. Best of all, other events have finally cottoned on to what makes Goodwood so great - cars running. This event just had a big arena for some supercars to drive round but its just great to here a Lambo up close, even just idling. I'd rather see and hear one Lambo than a stack of static car displays. Best was the DeTomeso Pantera (excuse the spelling) - man, that was loud and blew my sons mind (and ears).

Aug 28 - Stoneleigh

Later in the year than usual, the show was reduced to 1 main hall with only a handful of the usual manufacturers in attendance but there were a decent number of kits outside and quite large crowds - hopefully next year will be better. 

Aug 29th - CarFest South

Our second time at this event and it was great - a reasonable number of cars and quirky stands (vintage caravans for example), some great music to sit and chill to and a small track for cars to blast round (sensing a theme?). With so much to do, we plan to take our caravan next year for the whole weekend (although it's damn expensive). 

We were there until 11pm listening to the music - a great (but exhausting) day. 

While at Stoneleigh, Zedster wouldn't start, a problem I thought I had fixed, so I took the opportunity to ask cleverer people than me to have a look. Their opinion is that it is a sticky solenoid on the starter motor and banging it with a spanner did indeed eventually kick it back into life. 

So today, I took the motor off in an attempt to remove and 'clean' the solenoid. Unfortunately, looks like I have a motor with an almost sealed in solenoid so the entire motor will have to come apart. I've asked (on a forum) if anyone thinks this attempt is likely to make any difference or if I should just buy another starter motor. 

A productive day - while removing the nosecone, I fixed one of the smaller indicators that was hanging loose, noted one of the bolts holding the nose on had vanished and fixed a loose wire that was ocasionally causing one headlight to not come on. 

Improving the view

 So time to actually do some work on Zedster, rather than all this namby-pamby driving.

The screw that held the lower windscreen crossbar to the main frame had given up on life:

It wasn't particularly serious but looked a bit rubbish. To do this properly (you can see where this is going), I should take the screen off and redo that screw. However, that was a lot of work, removing wipers and worst of all, having to remove the self-tapping screws that hold the frame to the side brackets. I'm no expert on self-tappers in metal but in wood, I've rarely managed to get a self-tapper back into its original hole securely; they always end up much looser and I normally have to move their position and start a new hole. This isn't possible with the windscreen as there are fixed holes in the steel brackets the frame attaches to. 

So my cunning plan was a U-shaped bracket under the crossbar and screwed into the frame. This would mean having to cut a slit in the rubber strip under the crossbar which is a shame but it wouldn't be visible and needs must when the Devil vomits in your breakfast. 

Now, anyone with a delicate aesthetic disposition may wish to stop reading here - what follows isn't pretty. 

Simple bracket made (had to be more boomerang-shaped because of the curve of the crossbar) :

Relatively simple to cut a slit in the rubber, push the bracket through and bend it round so each arm folded up the frame. I then gently drilled 4 holes through the bracket and into the frame and job done:

It's very not pretty but does the job and should last longer than the screw ever did. 

I shouldn't be worried about what it looks like but there various forums and FB groups full of beautifully painted factory builds, with long threads on where to get carbon fibre indicator stalks, for example. I feel a little like a charity case...

Goodwood once more

 Thankfully, Goodwood went ahead as a test event - and it was as awesome as ever.

It was absolutely heaving, as always but the biggest difference were the electric cars; there were more electric cars than ICE! The EV designs are lovely and they are so fast BUT I just can't get excited about them. The lack of noise just makes them so dull - fine for daily drivers to go shopping but nothing to excite the soul.

I watched a couple of beautiful Porsche EVs whoosh up the hill and they were very impressive but it was the rip-snorting Lambos and NASCARs that made me (and everyone else) smile as you felt the thunder from their stupidly noisy exhausts vibrate in your chest and the unburnt petrol clogged your nostrils.

Thankfully, I will probably always be able to have an ICE car for the rest of my driving life - I honestly feel sorry for future generations who may never experience that V8 roar of a Maserati Quattroporte (one of my lottery-win cars).

Some highlights of the day:

A 7L V8, 1950s NASCAR - jees, it was loud:

Pagani Hyeru (or something, can't spell it) - one of the few cars that looks better on the inside:

Lola T70 - another ear-splitter:

Dubious colour scheme #213:

This is what it sounds like to be 6 inches from a NASCAR:

All in all, another great day and I'm going to try go every year from now on, to fight against the dying of the ICE. You should to. 

A Cornish Adventure

 As a test of my recent earth updates, a 600 mile round trip to Cornwall to visit family did the job. No starting issues, even when hot, so all continues to look good.

My 10-year old nephew is already car-mad, so he was very excited to go on a short jaunt in Zedster - picnic at Godrevy Beach:

(My mum doesn't walk well, so we couldn't get much further than the car park but the view the other way is beautiful - honest!). Just to be clear, we also took my sister's car - I didn't squeeze my old mum into Zedster!

The trip down was wet for the first 100 miles but dried up nicely, which is not common for Cornwall. 

I was delayed by 30 minutes when I was witness to a pretty bad accident - old guy pulled out of a crossroads into the path of someone doing 60! Very shocking, bits of car everywhere but fortunately, no serious injuries. However, it did slow me down for a while after that - I was 1 car away from maybe being involved in that and I wouldn't have got off as lightly as the airbagged cars involved.

The rest of the journey was uneventful - I'd specifically chosen a non-motorway route as that is very dull and noisy in Zedster, so I had some lovely A-road blasts when the rain finally stopped. Just after Exeter, my sat-nav showed the next turn to be a roundabout 80 miles away!! I didn't realise we had a road that long in the UK! Very dull that stage..

The journey back was quicker (I took a more direct route) but less interesting as it was mostly dual-carriageway, which is little better than motorway. I stick to 70 mostly for comfort on those roads and at the occasional roundabouts, I scream away from the traffic but as most people drive at 70+ these days, they all eventually overtake me down the road - I do feel a bit stupid but acceleration in Zedster is SUCH fun. Top speed not so much....

So now the starter motor is better, I'm wondering if my alternator could do with a dedicated earth - I cannot seem to get more than 13.7v charge at revs, where I used to get 14v. Not a huge difference but I don't understand why it's changed. At one point, with the headlights on, my phone and wireless earpods charging and the wipers on, it was down to 13.3v. At idle, it was dropping to 12.1v with that load, suggesting the alternator wasn't even doing enough to cover the load? It's a pretty new, Denso alternator, so it should be fine.

Other issues:

1. The ex-Emerald guy enabled Adaptive mode on the map he last sent me about 6 months ago and I've had a lot of popping from the exhaust. I assumed it would go away as the adaptive sorted itself out over time but that didn't seem to happen. I switched the map back to Closed loop and its better but still popping a bit. I've since learnt that the changes the ECU recorded during the adaptive mode are still being applied even in closed loop mode, so I need to get into the map and clear those changes.

2. The screw that holds the lower bar of my windscreen to the main frame has broken/slipped out. Not the end of the world as the windscreen supports are preventing it moving any further out but needs to be fixed.

3. I'm getting a slight pull to the left if I let go of the steering wheel. This may be my tyres getting worn (they are 4 years old now) but I've always had too much negative camber on the front and I keep promising to take Zedster to a pro to get it sorted with some laser alignment kit.

Otherwise, all is good in the land of Zed. A 4-day trip to Wales in September is the next big trip and hopefully Goodwood next month - I've got tickets but the event is not 100% going ahead because of the idiotic COVID restrictions still in force.

Grounded

 So time to improve the earth points. Turns out my alternator DOES need my engine earth - a short drive with earth disconnected showed my battery getting no charge. So, short job to sandpaper the chassis point and replace the flat washer with a spring washer, in case that helps.

Next step was an extra earth from the negative battery terminal to the starter motor mounting bolt. When I took the bolt out, it was very dirty - maybe it hasn't been making a good electrical connection with the block? 

I bought a cable from Halfords which had ring terminals attached to save me having to wait a few days for cable and separate terminals (I didn't want to miss out on the amazing weather forecast for the weekend) - it wasn't quite long enough so I've had to route it across the battery. Not ideal but hey... 

Engine fired up immediately so looks promising - see how it goes on a drive over the weekend. 

It's a Kind of Magic

 Electricity hey? Can't live with it, can't throw it in the bin...

So I felt my starting problems were electrical but I couldn't work out why. Then I came across a diagram showing a typical alternator /battery/starter motor setup and I realised that the starter motor has a 12v input but no obvious earth - it is earthed through its body and the engine block. 

To test this, I taped a ring terminal from the body of the starter motor to the negative terminal of the battery:

Voila! Starter motor sounded much healthier and instant engine start! 

So, bad engine earth, you say? I had already removed that earth and cleaned it up but, Ok, let's try again. Engine earth looks like this at each end:

Removed it completely, connected my temporary wire to the hole in the chassis and still started fine, suggesting the earth point is ok. However, for a laugh, I then removed the wire completely, with the earth cable disconnected and, guess what?

Yeah, engine still started fine. 

So my engine earth is doing bugger all? Maybe the alternator needs it but it is probably earthing the same way the starter motor is, wherever the Hell that is (gearbox, propshaft, diff?). 

I'm getting close to the hair-removal-while-screaming stage... 😕

More driving, less fixing

 So I took the injector loom off - the injectors themselves checked out fine. I took the plastic injector plug case off:

and after unwrapping the loom tape, none of the wires dropped out of the the butt connectors, which is what normally happens when I usually unwrap my wiring. I did a continuity check of the earth's to each plug and they were fine, as were the common signal wires. But I couldn't easily test the signals from the ECU.

I really didn't want to redo all the wires - that really needs to go back to the ECU plug, remove numerous panels to get to the loom, unwrap it all and then rewire it, having to reverse engineer it etc. That could take weeks at the pace I work, with no guarantee it would be any better.

So I just put it all back together and went for a drive... I've decided to be like an ostrich for now and just suffer the difficult starts.