Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 13/11.

[Zelandeth]

20 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

Excellent news on the fault hunting on the BX.  Perhaps with a stronger pump there's no need for a spring with the ball bearing and that's why there isn't one there?

Nope...had about 60psi on there to see if I could blow any crud out, it seals very well! 

Plus it would need a spring to seat it against the inlet port as gravity will cause the ball to drop away from the inlet port otherwise so it wouldn't work as intended.  If the ball does live there there definitely should be a spring there I reckon.

[vulgalour]

When you put it like that it makes more sense of there being a missing spring, or something just generally Not Right.  Just the fun challenge of figuring out what that something is now.

[R1152]

1 hour ago, dollywobbler said:

Willing to bet that the fuel gauge is a duff earth at the tank end. Seems common on Citroens of that era.

Earthing the lead on the sender should prove that the gauge is okay (not to the tank, obvs).

Last time I met this fault was on a 1965 Anglia Super... where there was no earth strap for the tank, thus no return for the sender.

[Zelandeth]

11 hours ago, vulgalour said:

When you put it like that it makes more sense of there being a missing spring, or something just generally Not Right.  Just the fun challenge of figuring out what that something is now.

The general consensus (and my own conclusion) seems to be that that ball belongs under the accelerator jet.

Which may well explain why it doesn't work too as it will just be pulling air in through the jet rather than fuel from the bowl.

There are only two balls in the carb...a detent for the choke lever and the check valve in the accelerator pump.  Given the latter doesn't work it seems a likely suspect.

[Zelandeth]

Okay...so that ball does not live under the accelerator jet.  With it in there it's not possible to get the jet to seat fully so it plainly lives elsewhere.  Except of course now it's stuck in the hole so I'll need to remove the carb so I can extract it.  *Sigh*

Isn't it fun when things don't match the diagrams?

Investigation of the non-functional hazard flasher warning light has proven 50% successful.

The switchgear actually comes apart really easily...two screws out then everything just unplugs from the base.

Replacing the bulb in the switch was half successful.  It has restored the illumination in the switch which comes on with the headlights...

However still no life from it when the hazards are actually on.  Will need to come back to that.

Got halfway through pulling the dash out before I ran out of time.  You have to pull apart the whole cowling below the steering column to access the bottom two retaining screws annoyingly. 

Then I'll need to stock up on lamps... didn't realise quite how depleted my stock was.

I did try replacing the one for the speedometer (as that is readily accessible from above) sadly this had no effect, so looks like there's a power supply (or grounding) issue on the panel itself somewhere.  Sure that will be fun to trace...

 

[Zelandeth]

Very quick update from today.

Had quite a few errands I needed to run today, having failed to get TPA out yesterday because we were boxed in by school traffic (to be fair with how windy it was that wasn't maybe a bad thing) I made a point of taking her out today.

Not being able to go anywhere makes getting decent photos harder...

I did get a couple of test videos from the Akaso action camera - video is far better than my phone though the audio is diabolically poor.  So in future I'll see about using separate recordings and splicing them together in software afterwards.  Tests were done with the camera on the door and windscreen - I didn't do a test on the rear windscreen as it would have involved faffing around looking through the rear window to frame it.  I didn't want to give passers by the impression I was out to shoot video rather than it just being done while I was already out.  In theory you can connect to the camera wirelessly from your phone to use that as a live viewfinder but I've never managed to get that functionality working.

The downside of this video source...that the files are both several gigabytes in size...so they're not going to be uploaded anywhere today.  Tomorrow maybe.

This afternoon though just as I got back home, the fuel pump for the Beige Wonder arrived.

Fitting this took me just shy of seven minutes from setting foot out the door to having the engine running.

Just thinking about this, I do wonder if the additional check valve in the carb which had caused some head scratching (which was still missing a spring though) was a measure added to deal with leaky valves in the fuel pump.  You used to be able to see bubbling in the filter once the engine had stopped for a few minutes as the fuel slowly drained back to the tank.  That doesn't seem to be happening now.

[LightBulbFun]

8 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

The downside of this video source...that the files are both several gigabytes in size...so they're not going to be uploaded anywhere today.  Tomorrow maybe.

you have a Dual Processor workstation, surely you can transcode them into something smaller for easier/quicker uploading?  (plus pegging all the Cores of high core count computer and watching all the bar graphs rise in the CPU usage monitor never gets old)

 

happy to see TPA out and about, ill never tire of seeing a Model 70 out and about it just makes me grin so much to see one mingling among modern day life  

hows the belt running/1K milestone doing?  

 

and glad to see the Fuel pump change on the BX (The beige wonder, I like that ) was an easy job, but very suspicious it was so easy given its french...

(maybe you want to do some permeative work on those rear spheres so they come off easy before the imbalance of the fuel pump swap going well, welds them to the car LOL)

[Zelandeth]

2 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

you have a Dual Processor workstation, surely you can transcode them into something smaller?  

 

happy to see TPA out and about, ill never tire of seeing a Model 70 out and about it just makes me grin so much to see one mingling among modern day life  

hows the belt running/1K milestone doing?  

 

and glad to see the Fuel pump change on the BX (The beige wonder, I like that ) was an easy job, but very suspicious it was so easy given its french...

(maybe you want to do some permeative work on those rear spheres so they come off easy before the imbalance of the fuel pump swap going well, welds them to the car LOL)

That involves me actually having five minutes to sit down at said workstation - plus I realised that I didn't actually have an editing system set up earlier.  To be honest there's no reason not to upload the full quality versions - just means I need to be able to just leave it going for a while - albeit with the connection throttled.  Four days.  In four days I will be rid of this piece of crap router so won't need to do stupid things like that (if you've got any one machine uploading at more than about 5Mb/S it totally kills all internet access for every other device - the traffic management is THAT bad).

 

[LightBulbFun]

12 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

That involves me actually having five minutes to sit down at said workstation - plus I realised that I didn't actually have an editing system set up earlier.  To be honest there's no reason not to upload the full quality versions - just means I need to be able to just leave it going for a while - albeit with the connection throttled.  Four days.

fair enough

although as a side note future reference/tip, I think handbrake is a good tool/application for just feeding video files in and transcoding them out to something else, without having to setup a full editing system

12 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Four days.  In four days I will be rid of this piece of crap router so won't need to do stupid things like that (if you've got any one machine uploading at more than about 5Mb/S it totally kills all internet access for every other device - the traffic management is THAT bad).

do you have to return the Router, can you after those 4 days rip the thing out, and do horrible things to it/its main logic board with a screw driver on the end of a long piece of PVC pipe, with the screw driver connected to the output of an MOT? (recorded for our entertainment of course  )

[Zelandeth]

Okay, let's have a look at this carb.

Ten minutes and it's off.

The correct home for the mystery ball bearing has been found, there should be one at the end of a spring on the choke mechanism... there's not.

That has now been reinstated in the correct place.

The accelerator pump was never going to work how it had been assembled.  This was what I found when I removed the cover.

That spring should be pushing the plunger back out...however it's been installed on the wrong side of the diaphragm.  We've all been there at some point!

With it put back in the correct place however it still doesn't work.  There appears to be a hard blockage somewhere between the float bowl and the accelerator pump chamber.  I'll try giving it an overnight soak and long stint in the ultrasonic cleaner...but I have my doubts about being able to get it cleared if it's not shifted so far.  Hmm...

Back together for now so the car at least can be moved while I consider my options.

[R1152]

Mmmmm.... beige BX goodness....

[Zelandeth]

This evening's entertainment...

Immediately seeing previous repairs to the flex PCB is never a good sign.

Definitely has the worst case of oxidised contacts I've seen in a long time.

For your "entertainment" here are the two videos from yesterday.  The windscreen mount (second video) definitely gives a far more stable recording, however doesn't give any view of the actual driving going on.

Also the audio is horrible.  The moment I go anywhere north of about 2/3rds throttle the induction noise just results in horrendous clipping as Akaso apparently didn't see it as worthwhile to include any sort of automatic gain control on the mic.  If I do any videos in future with a view to actually publishing them on my YouTube channel or the like I'll use a separate audio recorder.

 

Really looking forward to getting the next 20 miles out of the way so I don't have to bumble along at 50 on the main roads! 

While the wide angle lens does exaggerate things a bit I think that gives a better idea of how she performs in the real world than previous videos I've done which were so shaky as to be useless.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Zelandeth
typo

[R1152]

Ooh! Ooh! Please Mr. Zel Sir, what's the Advance-manufactured piece of kit that looks like it has Nixie tubes in it?!

Also, what's that 1k resistor doing on the instrument panel?

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, R1152 said:

Ooh! Ooh! Please Mr. Zel Sir, what's the Advance-manufactured piece of kit that looks like it has Nixie tubes in it?!

Also, what's that 1k resistor doing on the instrument panel?

It's a somewhat cantankerous old DMM2 which I really need to get around to properly servicing one day.  The third digit in the display for instance today has decided to go on strike.

 

We had some success with the instrument panel.  After cleaning several dozen contacts and about five thousand lamp holders we had working panel illumination.

Never realised that the Citroen text and the vehicle diagram were illuminated.

Unfortunately once back in the car there's still no life from the illumination circuit - though we do now appear to have a full compliment of working lighting indicators...

Side light and rear fog lights had been missing before.

On the other side of the dash we have now got everything attached to the test button behaving as it should.  The overheat indicator wasn't working before.

I'll need to have a poke around tomorrow to see if we're missing the supply for the illumination entirely or if it's just a dodgy contact between the edge connectors and the instrument panel itself.

My guess that the speedometer wasn't working was correct though as the cable wasn't attached to the back of the panel, so it definitely wasn't working!

[R1152]

24 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

It's a somewhat cantankerous old DMM2 which I really need to get around to properly servicing one day.  The third digit in the display for instance today has decided to go on strike.

Lovely 🙂 Looks much nicer than the contemporary AVO one I have (somewhere). I've just managed to find the service manual for it too, more than I've done for my Advance Timer/Counter...

[LightBulbFun]

5 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

This evening's entertainment...

Immediately seeing previous repairs to the flex PCB is never a good sign.

Definitely has the worst case of oxidised contacts I've seen in a long time.

For your "entertainment" here are the two videos from yesterday.  The windscreen mount (second video) definitely gives a far more stable recording, however doesn't give any view of the actual driving going on.

Also the audio is horrible.  The moment I go anywhere north of about 2/3rds throttle the induction noise just results in horrendous clipping as Akaso apparently didn't see it as worthwhile to include any sort of automatic gain control on the mic.  If I do any videos in future with a view to actually publishing them on my YouTube channel or the like I'll use a separate audio recorder.

 

Really looking forward to getting the next 20 miles out of the way so I don't have to bumble along at 50 on the main roads! 

While the wide angle lens does exaggerate things a bit I think that gives a better idea of how she performs in the real world than previous videos I've done which were so shaky as to be useless.

Lovely stuff   I definitely think the first view is better, since you can see what everything in the cabin is doing etc

its also interesting to observe how you drive etc and take mental notes for myself (hopefully you rate your driving well enough that I have not just horrified you or something! LOL)

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

It's a somewhat cantankerous old DMM2 which I really need to get around to properly servicing one day.  The third digit in the display for instance today has decided to go on strike.

 

1 hour ago, R1152 said:

Lovely 🙂 Looks much nicer than the contemporary AVO one I have (somewhere). I've just managed to find the service manual for it too, more than I've done for my Advance Timer/Counter...

ah a good excuse to post about my Own cantankerous old Nixie tube Digital volt-ohm meter again  

an old Ex Military Fluke 8125A, thats so ridiculously robust im pretty sure I could chuck it out of a plane and it would be fine (I have a matching front cover)

but it does have an issue where the display with Randomly just start displaying nonsense, but otherwise it does work fine, one of these days I really want to dig it back out and see how it compares to my (still pretty old) Fluke 87 Series 1, for a while this fluke 8125A was my only DMM! (and yes I did remove the "240V AC white live" label and correct the wiring in the plug!)

 

 

as a side note I posted this in the what makes you grin thread, but I know theres a common audience in this thread who likes this sort of thing that I think its worth posting here for those who dont check the what makes you grin thread out often

but it looks like there will be a successor to the secret life of machines and im far too excited about it

 

 

[R1152]

Sorry for nicking your thread @Zelandeth - but wow! That's a beast, @LightBulbFun!!!

[R1152]

23 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

you have a Dual Processor workstation, surely you can transcode them into something smaller for easier/quicker uploading?  (plus pegging all the Cores of high core count computer and watching all the bar graphs rise in the CPU usage monitor never gets old)

This is why we have FFMPEG 👍🏻

[R1152]

5 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

For your "entertainment" here are the two videos from yesterday.  The windscreen mount (second video) definitely gives a far more stable recording, however doesn't give any view of the actual driving going on.

Also the audio is horrible.  The moment I go anywhere north of about 2/3rds throttle the induction noise just results in horrendous clipping as Akaso apparently didn't see it as worthwhile to include any sort of automatic gain control on the mic.  If I do any videos in future with a view to actually publishing them on my YouTube channel or the like I'll use a separate audio recorder.

 

Is the mic itself actually squaring off, or is it the input stage of the recording device that's being overloaded by the mic? Because at this point I say "attenuator".

[Zelandeth]

11 hours ago, R1152 said:

Is the mic itself actually squaring off, or is it the input stage of the recording device that's being overloaded by the mic? Because at this point I say "attenuator".

No idea to be honest...the onboard options basically consist of photo/video mode, resolution and a record/stop button.  So there's really no easy way to tell.  As it lacks any form of external mic input capacity there really isn't much I can do about it other than use a separate device for audio.

[R1152]

Well, there are some reasonable pro and semi-pro digital recorders to be had at sensible prices these days. I think a couple went through the former BBC Wales clearance auction yesterday.

This looks stupendously cheap: https://www.tascam.eu/en/dr-05x

 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Those Tascams are decent.  My old job included the extensive use of hand-held recorders and I've always liked them.  If you stump up for a Tascam with an XLR input, even better.

[Zelandeth]

It's something I'll need to look into in more depth at some point.  Biggest problem really is that it's just something I am likely to use now and then, so dropping any real money on it just isn't something I can justify - especially with as many projects on the go (motoring or otherwise) I've currently got underway.

 

Today saw a big milestone passed by TPA.

Which doesn't mean anything unless you really remember things usually well from two years ago.  When she first arrived on my driveway looking like this...

The odometer was reading 11353 miles.

So that's us now over the 1000 mile mark.  I'm gutted that I was keeping an eye out for the big 1K that I totally missed 12345! 

We actually ended the day on somewhere around 12380 as I seem to have been running around all over the shop today thanks to an utter and complete failure to plan out the day's missions in anything resembling an efficient manner.  Not limited to but including picking up our week's groceries.

Guessing that gets points for the most unusual car of the day in the customer collection bay at Tesco!

Another fuel up today showed 33.1mpg, so it seems to have settled down to mid 30s fairly consistently.  Would like to see what the figures were on a run out of town, but obviously can't do that at the moment.

Service coming up at the weekend.  Engine oil, oil filter, gearbox oil, diff oil will all be changed, plugs will be checked and all grease points will be gone over.  Oil pickup strainer will also be checked and cleaned as she had quite a bit of sludge in after the first oil change.  Never really seen any since, but better safe than sorry.

Oh...and clean the rear windscreen.  I've managed to leave a hand print right in the middle of it and it's driving me mad!

[LightBulbFun]

58 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

It's something I'll need to look into in more depth at some point.  Biggest problem really is that it's just something I am likely to use now and then, so dropping any real money on it just isn't something I can justify - especially with as many projects on the go (motoring or otherwise) I've currently got underway.

 

Today saw a big milestone passed by TPA.

Which doesn't mean anything unless you really remember things usually well from two years ago.  When she first arrived on my driveway looking like this...

The odometer was reading 11353 miles.

So that's us now over the 1000 mile mark.  I'm gutted that I was keeping an eye out for the big 1K that I totally missed 12345! 

We actually ended the day on somewhere around 12380 as I seem to have been running around all over the shop today thanks to an utter and complete failure to plan out the day's missions in anything resembling an efficient manner.  Not limited to but including picking up our week's groceries.

Guessing that gets points for the most unusual car of the day in the customer collection bay at Tesco!

Another fuel up today showed 33.1mpg, so it seems to have settled down to mid 30s fairly consistently.  Would like to see what the figures were on a run out of town, but obviously can't do that at the moment.

Service coming up at the weekend.  Engine oil, oil filter, gearbox oil, diff oil will all be changed, plugs will be checked and all grease points will be gone over.  Oil pickup strainer will also be checked and cleaned as she had quite a bit of sludge in after the first oil change.  Never really seen any since, but better safe than sorry.

Oh...and clean the rear windscreen.  I've managed to leave a hand print right in the middle of it and it's driving me mad!

Woo! Congrats to TPA and well Done Zel for getting her to this to this milestone  

heres to many more miles!  

 

I love seeing that photo of when she first arrived, vs how excellent she is now, really is a credit to your hard work and an inspiration to at least myself if not all  

 

[dollywobbler]

Brilliant. Inspires me to carry out some improvements to TWC this year - let's hope they can have another meet up.

[Zelandeth]

Few bits and pieces done today.  First up was seeing if I could figure out what was up with the dash lighting on the BX.

The only lighting inside which is tied to the headlights is in the rear window heater and hazard light switches, the rest all comes on with the ignition.  The only light I found that was working was the one in the glove box - but investigation of the schematics shows that it's on a different circuit.  The rest should all run through a rheostat - missing on mine.  I'd originally assumed just being basically a base spec car it just didn't have the rheostat...however I fully expected the wiring to be there just with a link in its place.  Kind of expected they would have fitted a blanking plug too rather than just leaving a hole in the lower steering cowl.

Peering down inside the cowling I could see this.

Hmm...Green and green with a purple trace.  Let's consult the schematics.

Would you look at that...the dash lighting rheostat (number 50 in the diagram) has that colour of wiring.

Quick rummage around in my box of bits of Xantia turned up this.

Thanks to PSA being big fans of not changing parts bin items for decades this has exactly the same connector and slotted perfectly into place.  Did this fix the dash lighting?

That's a yes!

Remembered seeing this floating around in the boxes in the boot...

Which today I realised I had spotted the home for - it's the trim which should go between the ignition barrel and the cowling.

Doesn't that look better?

Speaking of looking better, treating the front bumper has made a heck of a difference!

Work has started on the polishing. 

As I had kind of expected, the metal badge on the boot lid fell off pretty much as soon as I touched it.  Leaving a bloody mess behind.

Which required the best part of an hour carefully picking away at it to clean up.  It has left a mark but you wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it

I'll keep it with the car obviously.

I'm torn about the dealer decals...They're part of the car's story, which makes me inclined to leave them be.  However they're in quite poor condition, and the cleanliness of the design on the BX really makes them stick out...so I'm tending towards removing them.  If they weren't already flaking off I'd probably just leave them be.

We're getting there, though it's time consuming as polishing a car always is.  I'd hoped to get most of the doors done but only got the tailgate and one rear quarter done because of the amount of time dealing with that badge lost me.

Looking a lot better already I think though, we're getting there.

Does anyone know how the little spoiler is attached?  If removing it isn't a huge pain it would make repainting it far less of a faff (it should be satin black, but it's worn away badly like the paint on the door tops has).

Edit: After 150K miles, HOW is the protective film still on the label for the gear shift pattern?!?

[Tomtation]

Some good beige wonder progress The paint is remarkable really, I totally agree with the gear shift sticker, my B reg GT has 60,000 miles and no longer has hers.

I can't remember if the boot lip spoiler thingy is bolted on or bonded, I do know all the other BX spoilers are bolted on so perhaps that answers that for you. From memory there are two bolts - hopefully removing some of the inner boot plastics will reveal the truth! Good luck.

[egg]

19 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

I'm torn about the dealer decals...They're part of the car's story, which makes me inclined to leave them be.  However they're in quite poor condition, and the cleanliness of the design on the BX really makes them stick out...so I'm tending towards removing them.

You could get recreations done by someone like DMB. Maybe.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, egg said:

You could get recreations done by someone like DMB. Maybe.

They're gone now!  As I kinda expected they just started to disintegrate once I started polishing in their vicinity.  I did get photos of them though, they're just single colour vinyl so wouldn't be hard to recreate for anyone with the kit to do laser cut vinyls.  Personally I'm happy with their disappearance as the car looks so much cleaner for it.

The BX is such an un-fussy design that they really did draw the eye too much.

[beko1987]

I always go for removal of old stickers if their tatty, then get reproductions made if wanted. 

The tailgate looks so much better! You'll be hunting out new name badges next so you can whip those off and get behind them