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

[Zelandeth]

It's interesting how different people's eyes and brains work.  I'm the total opposite, I'll always take light text on a dark background given the choice.  Always have found it far easier to read.

I guess back then it never occurred to me that other people might think differently.  It's one reason I'd like to offer an option for folks to chose one or the other.

I do have ideas in mind for a fairly major graphical overhaul one day anyhow - that needs me to invest rather a lot of time in it though so unsure when or if it will ever happen.  Learning how to properly use CSS would be a huge help as it would save me having to hard code a lot of things on every single damned page.

Have to admit I'm a bit more forgiving of light backgrounds nowadays when I'm not viewing the world through a clapped out VGA CRT running at a flickery 50Hz refresh rate.  Even so, light on dark is my preference.

[Zelandeth]

Okay, simple enough job, figure out if these speakers were connected to anything.

Turning the radio on resulted in noise coming out of them...so yes, they were hooked up.  Interestingly though, noise was also coming out of the speakers by the rear seat.  This intrigued me, as I had definitely only hooked up one pair of outputs to the stereo.

Speaker wire dangling from under the rear seat...yeah, that fills me with confidence.

So someone has just paired them up at some point.  I'm not messing with that right now.

Or am I...guess it couldn't hurt to have a proper look behind the head unit, see if I missed something.

Yeah, I had to go and start digging didn't I?

Including some quality wire joins.

Which probably explained why the left channel kept cutting in and out over bumps.

There were other such wonders as a three way fused spur...to a ground connection and a permanent 12V feed just floating around with an uninsulated spade terminal right by the front of the heater box.  A black wire of course just for extra giggles.

Eventually this lot was evicted.

Leaving the area looking like this.

Once everything was back where it lives...

No longer visible spaghetti poking into the passenger footwell.  Will call that good enough. 

I tidied up the wiring to the passenger side interior light switch too...it was long enough to touch the floor, held up by one decomposed bit of tape and running through two very rusty screw terminals (it's the yellow to light blue wire in a couple of pictures above - then changing again to a purple wire a few inches out of shot).  I shortened it to a more sensible length, replaced the two screw terminals with one Wago, and securely zip tied it to the heater control cable to keep it safely away from feet.

I suspect the speakers in the boot have just been connected directly to the speakers in the back of the car, so I'm leaving that alone for now.  The sound quality is pretty dire so if a speaker upgrade is put on the cards in the future I'll see about unhooking the extras at that point.  For now I'm leaving things be.

The rev counter was further investigated.  

Nothing I could find amiss behind the panel, and I'm not sure what else to do at this point without having a known good tach head to try substituting the one in the car for.  It might be repairable, but I wouldn't want to try without a replacement on hand in case I made it worse!

On a similar note to the issues with shrinkage of the sunroof, I notice that the door seals seem to be similarly afflicted, which may well be responsible for the somewhat horrific amounts of wind noise.

These seals don't have a split in them, so it's not possible to just shuffle it around and deal with a little gap somewhere.  It's tending to try to pull itself out of the door aperture at the top as well, so it's not really doing much by way of being a seal in several places.

Only thing left on my list for tomorrow is to tidy up that speaker wiring dangling out from under the rear seat.  Most likely it will just be bundled up and tidily zip tied out of the way under the seat unless it's blindingly obvious that it can be easily trimmed down to size.  Assuming it is indeed anything to do with the speakers!  Just because it's *speaker wire* doesn't necessarily mean that's what it's feeding...if that turns out to be the case it will definitely just be tidied up and filed under "we'll come back to that another day."

Do feel better for having tidied up the spaghetti behind the stereo though...the moment I dug far enough in to see those taped connectors I knew action was needed!

[adw1977]

On the subject of white text on a black background, I find it OK on a phone but on a full size screen I find it very tiring for some reason.  Vauxpedia is a really interesting site but very hard on the eyes for that reason. 

[Richard_FM]

2 hours ago, adw1977 said:

On the subject of white text on a black background, I find it OK on a phone but on a full size screen I find it very tiring for some reason.  Vauxpedia is a really interesting site but very hard on the eyes for that reason. 

One trick is to highlight the text & hopefully it becomes an easier on the eye colour combination.

[adw1977]

29 minutes ago, Richard_FM said:

One trick is to highlight the text & hopefully it becomes an easier on the eye colour combination.

Sadly that doesn't work with Vauxpedia because all the text is actually pictures of text for some reason!

[Zelandeth]

15 hours ago, adw1977 said:

On the subject of white text on a black background, I find it OK on a phone but on a full size screen I find it very tiring for some reason.  Vauxpedia is a really interesting site but very hard on the eyes for that reason. 

I do wonder if tweaking the background so it's a dark grey.  So the stark white on black contrast is reduced slightly.

Would be dead quick for me to tweak that if folks thought it was worth a try.

[Mrs6C]

If a white or pale coloured background isn't possible, you could try grey text on a black background, perhaps? Something where the contrast between the two colours is sufficient to distinguish the text but not enough to jar the eye, would be good. 

[LightBulbFun]

26 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I do wonder if tweaking the background so it's a dark grey.  So the stark white on black contrast is reduced slightly.

Would be dead quick for me to tweak that if folks thought it was worth a try.

Noo dont change the website! I like how (much like Ians bus stop) its been the same for the 15 or so years I have been following your website! its one of the very few constants in my life LOL

 

personally I think the text is perfectly readable even full screen on my overly large monitor   

[mat_the_cat]

Regarding the rev counter, have you established the presence of a signal at the head end? You may know this already, but if not this link might be useful:

http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/tachtest.htm

I remember doing quite a bit of finding out how a rev counter works, when I was converting the one on the Stellar to show the correct speed with a V8. Trouble is, it was 20 years ago so I'm struggling to remember most of it - testing with a battery charger is about the only thing which stuck in my mind!

[AnnoyingPentium]

I'm with Dez on the site design. I like the design and I'm able to access it on the decrepit computers that vastly outnumber me in this house.

Ultimately up to you though.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, mat_the_cat said:

Regarding the rev counter, have you established the presence of a signal at the head end? You may know this already, but if not this link might be useful:

http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/tachtest.htm

I remember doing quite a bit of finding out how a rev counter works, when I was converting the one on the Stellar to show the correct speed with a V8. Trouble is, it was 20 years ago so I'm struggling to remember most of it - testing with a battery charger is about the only thing which stuck in my mind!

Simple enough test.  Will give it a look.  Though given that the coil current if my understanding is right on the earlier setup has to go *through* the rev counter, if there was a break in the circuit we would have no spark.

I do need to look into the theory of operation at some point as I wouldn't mind having one in TPA, but decently period looking options set up for 2 cylinder engines don't exactly grow on trees so I'd probably need to convert it.

Regarding web design, yeah I am in a way loathe to change too much.  However it's primarily there as an information resource, and if design choices I made when I was in my mid teens (the overall colour scheme etc goes waaaaaay back to version 1.0 which I put together in a computing class back in 1998) are putting people off reading it that's something I need to address.

It's bad enough that Google already depreciates the presence in search results because I don't use HTTPS.  Likewise I've had to make some changes (nudging up the font size, declaration of viewport size, tweaking the location of clickable elements etc) already.  Otherwise the search console throws up accessibility errors and will refuse to index the page.  Sorting that out was quite a lot of work.  Haven't a clue where to even start with HTTPS and given it seems pretty pointless given there is no user data or anything being exchanged as it's all read only content, it just seems like unnecessary complications for no real benefit aside from ticking a box in Google's site report.

If there are simple minor tweaks I can make to improve readability, I'm more than willing to try that.

Switching the background colour out for a slightly less deep black is easy as I can just tweak the image that's used.  Changing the text colour on the other hand would mean editing every single page - see also my earlier comments about wanting to implement CSS.  If that was done I could implement a site wide change to something like that just by tweaking one value then.

I'm reminded of the point at which I figured out how frames worked and suddenly didn't need to hard code each of the links to every other page in the footer of EVERY DAMNED PAGE.  That was one of the things which kicked me into really doing anything with it as it reduced the time to get a new page up by about 70%.

Being able to load it correctly on a Windows 3.11 machine is an amusing party trick, but I'm reluctant to prioritise that over the site serving it's intended purpose.

If I did a major overhaul though I'd take a snapshot of the "old" site though and ensure it remained live for such technical amusement purposes - as I do like being able to do that.  

[AnnoyingPentium]

9 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Regarding web design, yeah I am in a way loathe to change too much.  However it's primarily there as an information resource, and if design choices I made when I was in my mid teens (the overall colour scheme etc goes waaaaaay back to version 1.0 which I put together in a computing class back in 1998) are putting people off reading it that's something I need to address.

It's bad enough that Google already depreciates the presence in search results because I don't use HTTPS.  Likewise I've had to make some changes (nudging up the font size, declaration of viewport size, tweaking the location of clickable elements etc) already.  Otherwise the search console throws up accessibility errors and will refuse to index the page.  Sorting that out was quite a lot of work.

If there are simple minor tweaks I can make to improve readability, I'm more than willing to try that.

Switching the background colour out for a slightly less deep black is easy as I can just tweak the image that's used.  Changing the text colour on the other hand would mean editing every single page - see also my earlier comments about wanting to implement CSS.  If that was done I could implement a site wide change to something like that just by tweaking one value then.

I'm reminded of the point at which I figured out how frames worked and suddenly didn't need to hard code each of the links to every other pages in the footer of EVERY DAMNED PAGE.  That was one of the things which kicked me into really doing anything with it as it reduced the time to get a new page up by about 70%.

Being able to load it correctly on a Windows 3.11 machine is an amusing party trick, but I'm reluctant to prioritise that over the site serving it's intended purpose.

If I did a major overhaul though I'd take a snapshot of the "old" site though and ensure it remained live for such technical amusement purposes - as I do like being able to do that.  

Yep, I completely understand. As you say, it's best to do what benefits yourself and the page first and foremost, as accessibility is an important thing these days, so making it more accessible is always a good thing! I'm not against the addition of CSS really, I think it would be rather neat to see.

[Zelandeth]

I do have some of the design elements for version 3.0 already drawn up, just need to figure out how to make everything fit and work together properly, and yeah, get CSS working to save me vast amounts of time.

If I ever go ahead with it the overall theme *will* be majorly changed, reflecting the focus having moved pretty much entirely to a technical nature these days.  The function these days bears absolutely zero resemblance to what I had in mind back in 1998 after all.  I'll be damned if I'm making it look flat and modern though, that's just not my style.  Intention is to make it look at least reasonably convincingly like you're viewing a technical manual or similar from inside a Windows 3.1 application. 

I was originally going for Amiga Workbench 3.0, but realised that it's actually not great looking with the standard icon sets and such...my install doesn't really look much like it did coming out the box.  RiscOS was another contender as it's a huge personal favourite, but it would be tricky to get things like the fonts right, and the tendency for software to shun any on screen UI in favour of fully context sensitive pop up menus would both be confusing as all hell for someone who's not used to it - and damned near impossible to implement on a web page.  Whereas a Windows 3.1 style UI is pretty simple to make look right and feel reasonably convincing while also being easy to follow.

[1970mgb]

6 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Simple enough test.  Will give it a look.  Though given that the coil current if my understanding is right on the earlier setup has to go *through* the rev counter, if there was a break in the circuit we would have no spark.

I do need to look into the theory of operation at some point as I wouldn't mind having one in TPA, but decently period looking options set up for 2 cylinder engines don't exactly grow on trees so I'd probably need to convert it.

I have zero experience with this particular style of Smith's gauges, but the others I'm familiar with are marked either RVI or RVC.

RVI is "voltage sensing" and should be wired in series with the coil. RVC is "current sensing" and is wired parallel to the coil.

As a side note, I swapped the original RVI for an RVC when I installed a CDI ignition. I THINK US market went over to RVC in 72(or was it after 72?) and all gauges in the US are interchangeable 68-76. RVC are a bit more forgiving of working with alternative/electronic ignitions, which is why I changed it.

[Zelandeth]

Regarding website and colour schemes, I've swapped out the original background image for what's hopefully a discreet texture that's a dark grey rather than black.  Let me know if that's any easier on the eyes, I do have another that's again slightly lighter lined up to try as well.

[Zelandeth]

Successfully coaxed this mechanism back into life yesterday.

There was one casualty of its journey across the Atlantic in the form of the neon which provides the illumination as one of the wires snapped off, though that was an easy fix.

Cleaned the inside of the display window too as it was quite grubby.

Whole thing will be coming apart again soon for a good deep clean, I wanted to have it proven working before I spent the time doing that though.

Unfortunately this has now highlighted to me that my 60Hz supply well...isn't.  It's gaining the best part of a minute an hour.

So will need to have a think about that.  Will investigate whether there's any ability to fine tune the frequency on my supply, but doubt it.  Replacing the motor is a non starter as it's flipping tiny compared to any 1rpm synchronous motors I've been able to find so far.

Guess I could swap it out for a tiny stepper motor run off an Arduino or similar as the timing there should be more than precise enough...though that seems like overkill.

Bit irked that this inverter supply is so far off frequency wise...with all electronic control it's not hard to get a stable frequency.

[Mrs6C]

8 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Regarding website and colour schemes, I've swapped out the original background image for what's hopefully a discreet texture that's a dark grey rather than black.  Let me know if that's any easier on the eyes, I do have another that's again slightly lighter lined up to try as well.

That looks much better IMHO and both the green and white texts are much easier to read.

[Zelandeth]

This afternoon while trying to ignore the roofers sounding like they're literally tearing the house to shreds I've been messing with the website.  The Invacar FAQ is now properly live, linked to from the rest of the site and once Google's indexing system catches up should be searchable.

I've also updated the BX's page to show it's moved on and added a placeholder for the Cavalier's spot once it gets started.  Going to try to keep reasonably on top of that once the project really starts rather than trying to play catch up like I have with the one for TPA...

Also fixed an orphaned page in one of the lighting sections.  Not totally sure how I managed it, but I'd apparently managed to delete the entry from the section index at some point.

[Zelandeth]

MOT day for the Caddy tomorrow, so gave it a quick clean.  I always try to turn up with vehicles looking presentable.

Lights, washers etc have all been checked...so hopefully won't end up failing on something trivial.  Well hopefully it won't fail at all, but if it was on something trivial I'd kick myself!

Always unnerving the first time you put a car in for a test in your ownership.  Guess we will find out in the morning how my luck is doing.

[Zelandeth]

I'll take that for a result with zero prep aside from a quick clean.

Blew 0.20 m-1 on the smoke test (after idling for quite a while) - fair improvement on the 0.92 from last year.  Always nice to see hard figures confirming that stuff you have done has improved things.

[Zelandeth]

Not been much going on here...because...well not much has been going on here with the cars.  The Caddy has been continuing to just be An Car, though I'm sure the CV joints which have always tended to click a bit on full lock have started to get louder lately.  I may need to actually do something about that sooner than later - I've had a CV joint explode on me once before and it's not an experience I wish to repeat.

The van and TPA just haven't been out much.  It's been cold and wet and miserable in typically English early winter fashion.  Given the tendency for Mercedes vans of this vintage to dissolve I tend to try to avoid driving that too much when it's wet, and TPA stays off the road in such conditions mainly because the windscreen demister is bloody useless.

Today though the weather was far too nice not to take TPA out for a run to conduct the day's errands.

Not really expecting her to be out all that much now until the spring, but if we get crisp days like today and I can actually get out of the driveway (we tend to get buried parking wise because we're right next to a school) I'll of course take the opportunity. 

The low sun did a really good job of demonstrating to me though that I really needed to clean the windscreen so that was first on the to do list when I got home.  Really need to do the inside of the one on the Caddy too as it's got a horrible hazy film on it despite being cleaned not long ago.

Really getting utterly and completely sick of sodding fliers being left on our cars.

Two of these on all three cars out there when I got back from walking the dog today.  Seriously, just sod off!  There's the third mob who have left stuff on at least one of the cars this week.  Maybe I should electrify the windscreen wipers...

I did take the van out for a half hour run as well just to keep things free and get it warmed through.  Man I'd stopped realising quite HOW harsh and fidgety the ride in the Caddy is.  Really is the one thing which lets it down. 

There's very much no room at the inn here just now, with me already overspilling the available driveway spaces by 1, the Cavalier parked on what used to be lawn.  The Cavalier is also already here, planned out to be the main project for the start of next year.  If I were to buy another car I would most likely end up being murdered with dull spoons by the rest of the family (the neighbours across the street would probably help) too. 

Um...So precisely WHY have I just sent an email inquiring about viewing another car then? 

Life, why do you be like this?

[Zelandeth]

Initially I thought the seller wasn't going to respond, though checking my spam folder it turned out they had within the hour.  Thanks GMail.

So all being well I'll be viewing it on Saturday.  Overall impression so far is "Rough round the edges." Ideally needs paint, and I want to take a good look at the underside as the MOT history shows there's been some welding done (no surprise on a car in its mid 30s) so I want to see to what standard.  Sounds like a suspension bush refresh and a decent set of tyres probably wouldn't go amiss.  

However it seems a reasonable base to work with unless the rust is worse than expected.  There are a few model specific bits of interior trim which would be nigh impossible to find replacements for which all look fine thankfully.  

This is a car I've had before, albeit very briefly, a long while ago but it made a big impression on me at the time.

Watch this space I guess.  Still not quite sure if I'll class the car being in better or worse shape than expected as the luckier outcome yet!

Edit: Confirmed we're on for Saturday.  If I buy it I am going to be in sooooo much trouble.

[LightBulbFun]

if it makes you feel any better, I came very close to buying this, which probably makes what your about to do look sensible  

only reason I did not is because I literally had nowhere to put it

if I had somewhere i totally would have

of course only after the auction end, did the thought occur to me that I should of done an @wuvvum and bought a large van to keep it in...

[Dobloseven]

14 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Initially I thought the seller wasn't going to respond, though checking my spam folder it turned out they had within the hour.  Thanks GMail.

So all being well I'll be viewing it on Saturday.  Overall impression so far is "Rough round the edges." Ideally needs paint, and I want to take a good look at the underside as the MOT history shows there's been some welding done (no surprise on a car in its mid 30s) so I want to see to what standard.  Sounds like a suspension bush refresh and a decent set of tyres probably wouldn't go amiss.  

However it seems a reasonable base to work with unless the rust is worse than expected.  There are a few model specific bits of interior trim which would be nigh impossible to find replacements for which all look fine thankfully.  

This is a car I've had before, albeit very briefly, a long while ago but it made a big impression on me at the time.

Watch this space I guess.  Still not quite sure if I'll class the car being in better or worse shape than expected as the luckier outcome yet!

Edit: Confirmed we're on for Saturday.  If I buy it I am going to be in sooooo much trouble.

Please tell me it's not a Renault 25!

[Zelandeth]

5 hours ago, Dobloseven said:

Please tell me it's not a Renault 25!

Why ever not, I seem to recall you being rather fond of your one...

Let's face it, I've bought a lot sillier things over the years...

[Dobloseven]

58 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Why ever not, I seem to recall you being rather fond of your one...

Let's face it, I've bought a lot sillier things over the years...

Yes, it's a nice old car. Just been out in it today to a café for a meal. Didn't think I'd have it for so long, was planning to secure its future in my custody and move it on as it's not really my thing. Must say I've enjoyed fettling it and chronicling the work on AS. Noticed a brown Phase 1 Monaco on C&C..........

[Zelandeth]

So we're on our way.

Should be there in about an hour.  Let's see what we find.

[Zelandeth]

Oops.

Well I've just A - Made a load of work for myself.  B - Ensured my imminent demise. C - Made a load of work for myself.

[timolloyd]

That is lovely. And with your methodical attention to detail, it’s lucky to have found you. Look forward to reading more.

[LightBulbFun]

38 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Oops.

Well I've just A - Made a load of work for myself.  B - Ensured my imminent demise. C - Made a load of work for myself.

as the person who can just sit back relax and enjoy the posts as you, as above, methodically work through it

I very much approve! I also dont know all that much about big Renaults from this time period so I look forward to finding out more about everything  

I notice it does have a fairly decent amount of MOT on it, so hopefully that should make life a bit easier getting it all sorted!