Fumbler

Who needs an airbag when you have BUTTONZ!

Clock was losing time and sounding a little rough, so it arrived on my bench.

Oiled the pinions up, that helped a lot.

Then I set about adjusting the hairspring balance.

Yup, I set my clocks up with an oscilloscope. Don't you? Nice even pulses now, means the balance wheel is moving evenly.

So, back into the dash it goes with a note in pencil on the case that it was serviced today.
Phil

Progress - it's freed off enough to move. Definitely a dragging caliper. 

Who needs an airbag when you have BUTTONZ!

Rover Cityrover | eBay
'Unusual to see any of these left now. They were badly made in a country not known for quality, it's rusty, the fuel gauge doesn't work and it's basically a steaming pile of wank. But that's enough about the  Iv*co, here is my City Rover...'

 

Apologies if this has already been mentioned but holy oof! Never good when you find advanced burnage like that. With that shorted cap you've found, you'll need to desolder it and then test the same spot on the board and see if there still is a short. With that damaged and burned area though, I'm suspicious of that chip that's mounted to that heatsink. It may have failed short which has caused those tracks to lift and burn up. It looks to me as if it once looked like this:

A fibreglass pen would do wonders in scraping away all the charring and further revealing where everything used to connect to. A schematic diagram would be a godsend in this case.

I had a bash at replacing the capacitors this eve.


I removed those three capacitors, cleaned the board as best I could and soldered 3 replacements on:

Still not working though. Tested the other capacitors and there’s a short at the terminals of this one:

but I’m unsure if that’s to do with the microcontroller.
I removed a capacitor to look at the board damage again:

I think I need to solder a jumper wire between these two tracks:

It’s possibly too far gone to save, but I’ll still give it another go.

Pleasant day today so some troubleshooting and repair.

This freeze plug had decided it wasn't a plug any more, rather more a nozzle. 

Bashed at it a bit with a cold chisel and it came out, followed by a lot of rust.

Flushed that through a touch. Better.

13/16" spark plug socket and a hammer; new plug in place and sealed up.

Checked it was charging, cleaned up some contacts. That'll do. 

Gives nice bright lights. 
However, number 2 cylinder didn't appear to be doing a great deal of work, so I pulled the plug and tested the compression. 

Not great but certainly enough to make it pop at idle so I tested the plug wire, that was good, but the plug was bad. No spark.

Bought a new plug, checked the gap - correct wide gap for hei ignition.
Improved things considerably, especially at idle.

Also means it'll peel out easily. A good afternoon's work.
 
Phil

Set the ignition and mixture.
Fine tuned it and decided to see how slowly it would idle.
Phil

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/296086993953
Okay
 

Yeah, lets ignore that inner sill.

Oh, and that.

Could be worse I guess.


*tiny man not included

Finished up the passenger side pipe.

Doesn't look too bad.


Sits up underneath quite tidy.
Sounds okay, too.
Phil

Shite Nite Tonite @ Leominster Car Auctions
1993 Pug, 36K from new, FSH, been stood up a couple of years. Probate sale.
Not a lot of other shite - Rover 75, 1998 BMW 318 convertible and a JDM Lexus LS460 appeal to me - rest is modern(ish) stuff

BMW E36 328i | eBay
'This car is conveniently located in a  popular area. Local amenities such as a Co-op and a vape shop are on hand, as is a school with an excellent rating for little bastards. 441, LTD Drive offers scope for potential as you effortlessly effervesce in an enhanced pied-a-turd duplex one roomed annexe flat. Ideal for someone as an investment property as residuals are excellent and it has the scope to be a FOG LIGHT WANKER at your earliest opportunity.'

It was an ASDF reference...
Ironically, your reference was funnier!

That's the problem with the whole country frankly.  When did we decide to let insurers and lawyers run our lives?
Apologies, I'm getting on my soapbox already.

For reasons beyond my control, I ended up in town today and braved Christmas traffic.

That was potentially a good thing because the gearbox did something weird it's never done before, which shed light on the fault of the 1-3.......4 shift thing it does when it gets hot.

The drive home was pleasant. The car was running perfectly. Quiet, smooth, luxury. That gave me chance to think so when I got home I broke out the gearbox service manual, then went take apart the spare valve block.

Turns out the 1-2 throttle valve appears to be a bit of a kludge and as such has a bit of bad engineering occuring. A sharp 90 degree edge was machined on the edge of the idle drain plug, which should be sitting in a bore with a port, but instead sits between two sections of the casting with holes drilled in.
As the spring that pushes against heats up it seems to compress in an arc rather than straight down, applying a small radial force to the plug, pushing it off center because it's worn (we're talking maybe a thousandth of an inch) and causes it to jam solid halfway down it's travel, which blocks the 1-2 shuttle valve from moving fully.

So, I machined a chamfer to overcome their faux pas. Applying a side load to that now isn't a problem, it self centers and moves properly.
 
If circumstances allow I'll fit it tomorrow.
Phil

There is a freshness to the air.



I better have a decent breakfast before sorting things.

New alternator arrived, so I can give @320touring his back.

Stuck a 60A fuse in line to the alternator as it just seemed the right thing to do.

The OD problem was caused by the solder joint on the OD solenoid acting like a structural joint. It just gave way.

Simple enough fix there.

To stop this happening again the wire was cable tied to the body of the solenoid so that any tension doesn't get put onto the solder.
Next on the list, an obnoxious exhaust blow that started last time I drove it.

This looked decent when I reassembled the exhaust. Oh well. Out with the welder. Again.

I really, really couldn't be bothered here and the inside of the pipe looks like kerplunk.
The downside is now it's so clean it doesn't want to fit properly in the mid silencer, it's a bit loose. The solution for that was to create a new.. ahem.. exhaust gasket. Out of mig weld.

One last special touch. 
£20 for a throttle linkage bush? Get it round you.
6mm fuel hose.

Have some videos.
Cold start.
Jrive.
 
 

That temp readout rebuild is just fantastic. I love the attention to detail you have.

Thankfully that fits.

Need some new bump stops also.

Capacitor juices do nasty things to circuit boards. Give the board a wash with some isopropyl alcohol and you should be all good. Don't be too alarmed if your replacement caps are physically smaller and look a bit funny on the PCB. I don't know what voltage yours are rated for, but I've got a few 16V 100uF capacitors and they're bloody tiny!

Capacitor juices do nasty things to circuit boards. Give the board a wash with some isopropyl alcohol and you should be all good. Don't be too alarmed if your replacement caps are physically smaller and look a bit funny on the PCB. I don't know what voltage yours are rated for, but I've got a few 16V 100uF capacitors and they're bloody tiny!

A bit of cut and weld today.

Started by making up the mirror image of the passenger side mid-pipe.

Rain stopped play, need to clean the welds up. 

They fit pretty well though. Weatherman says the rain should stop now for the rest of the day (believe it when I see it). Now being held up by FedEx who have my mufflers on their truck with expedite labels on, and they still aren't here yet.
 
Phil

Driver's side downpipe. This one was simpler, there's less in the way.

Built up the passenger side section that gets to where the muffler will be. Soon, I shall have to buy some.
 
Phil

Let's go for a drive.