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1951 Lanchester LD10 - Rear Wing Removal


vulgalour

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Further to the above, did a bit more fettling on the Lanchester today. I've got some more things connected, but I'm still having some issues.

Brake light switch - you have to remove the floor to get to it, but once you have it's easy to wire in. Looks pretty new compared to the rest of the car and moves freely, but doesn't make the brake lights come on. Brake rods are reluctant to return, as though the grease has got dry and gummy, which it probably has. Switch itself doesn't appear to have any issues.

Rear lights and number plate light - all connected including earth points. Can't get any life out of any of them, not sure why yet.

Horns - bolted to the car, ready to wire up. These were tested off the car and do work. However, I can't test them on the car until I've put the relevant connectors on the wires and replaced the stator tube wiring

Pass/Spot Light - Dismantled, cleaned off the copious amounts of corrosion on the connectors and bulb, rewired, and reassembled. Can't get any life out of it yet, I understand it should come on with main beam, but it isn't. This could still be poor connections and just need more cleaning, the bulb tested okay off the car, but may have blown post-assembly.

Investigated the control box. There's two contact breaker points in there, both were corroded. Cleaned them up as best I could. The dynamo is now intermittent when it comes to rotating, so I suspect more cleaning and adjusting is required in the control box. It's also possible the dynamo itself is sticking/dirty, so I'll be removing that to give it a thorough clean. I don't believe the wiring on the dynamo is incorrect, but it's almost impossible to see the connections with it installed.

Semaphores - connected up yesterday but the stator tube wiring isn't in at the moment, and I need that for the indicator switch to work, so these are currently untested.

There's some items that need to be installed/connected, but not many now.

Fog Light - I haven't put any wiring in for this, it's not standard so doesn't have wiring with the new harness. I do have a period correct switch to use, I just don't have wire for it. For the time being, this is just for show.

Headlights - I only have main beam. The dim/dip floor switch does work, but for some reason I have no dipped beam at the moment. This could be because the front sidelights aren't wired up, it could be because there's one more connector on the back of the headlights than there are wires in the harness. It may even be what that mystery black/white wire was for. I don't know on this, I didn't get that far this weekend.

Sidelights - Not wired up yet. I bought some dual function bulbs since they're going to be indicators too, but the bulbs I got have the wrong legs on which is my fault since I ordered the wrong ones. Once I've got the correct bulbs, I can get these wired up.

Rear indicators - Not bought these yet, so the wires don't go to anything at the moment.

Cigarette lighter/power socket - Just the earth wire to connect and some minor fettling to make sure everything fits in the holder properly.

Wipers - not connected yet. Need to strip down and repack the motor with fresh grease since the old grease has gone dry and hard.

Flasher relay - Just the earth wire to connect and some minor fettling to find a better solution for securing the flasher cans out of the way. Probably need to get different flasher cans too since the bimetallic ones I've got probably won't work with the LED indicator bulbs.

Starter Motor - Just the earth wire to connect. This is a case of just bolting the earth wire eyelet to the inner wing, ran out of time to get around to it this weekend. I could ideally do with a new power cable since the one on the car is badly routed and has some historic bodges I'd like to eliminate. Custom job since it's so long, but parts to make one appear to be readily available.

Heater - Not even looked at installing this because it needs the core repairing.

Interior light - Don't have the correct size bulb for this, so haven't wired it up yet.

I suspect that because there's so many earth wires I've not yet connected that's why I'm having some issues with lights at the moment. I'm also using the bulbs the car came to us with because they all worked, new bulbs will be fitted throughout as soon as I've got them and will likely aid with testing. I've been getting a bit work blind trying to find the issues and I'm pretty sure it's something obvious I can't see because I've been looking at it too long. A break and a fresh pair of eyes on the work will probably sort it out fairly quickly. I'm now at the point where what's left is fiddly jobs that take far longer to sort than they should, for no real reason. Things like having to remove the front seat and floor to inspect and wire in the brake light switch really slow you down.

Almost there though. I think this job would have been more fun with a friend, and a lot more fun if my work space had been such that I could have left the car and the wiring just laid out in one space as I worked through it all. Having to unpack and pack away every day I want to work on the car has really been a headache.


 

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Princess news briefly.

I had one 5 mile errand to run. I know I can do that before the car consumes all its oil and water so thought I'd chance it. Checked fluids etc before setting off and all was well. At cold idle, small bubbles appearing in the expansion bottle. Off we went, car drove normally, temperature gauge rose normally, no issues.

First stop (it was one of those stop-start errands sort of a thing), everything was the same so I carried on.

Stop two and the bubbles in the coolant had become larger and more frequent, coolant level had dropped a bit, but I was less than a mile from home so I did the thing I needed to do and then made my way home.

Once home, engine was up to full operating temperature, coolant hadn't dropped any further, and the bubbles had completely stopped even when revving the engine. It was like the head gasket had fixed itself. That was a bit weird.

Now, I will be doing a compression check on this both when the engine is cold and when the engine is hot. Reason being, a friend suggested it sounds like a cracked head. That could also explain why it seems to keep blowing head gaskets but why there's nothing visibly wrong with them when the head is removed. I do know the O series suffered from casting issues with some heads, so it's entirely likely I have a bad head on this car. Quite why a cracked head wouldn't show up when it was pressure tested and skimmed last I'm not sure.

Anyway, the engine is still getting rebuilt by someone else, but I will do a compression test over the weekend and report back on the findings, see if we can see any difference between a hot and a cold engine. Perhaps the issue with this engine has been a bad head all along and that's why it's been so difficult to pinpoint.  A leakdown test, as suggested over on the blue forum, is also a sensible choice if I can find someone to do it since I don't have the kit required to do it myself.

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About twenty years ago I owned a VW T4 Transporter with the 2.4 litre diesel. It developed a cooling system issue. I spent a lot of money having the head gasket changed by a VW "specialist", to no avail. On the suggestion of the farmer who runs a campsite we use, that it could be a porous engine casting, I chucked in a bottle of Radweld. That seemed to cure the problem, at least till we got rid of it.I used to see it around for at least another ten years. Worth a try? I don't particularly like the idea of the stuff, but needs must, sometimes. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Quite an important one this for the project since it marks the point that all the old wiring is removed from the car. The little tails attached to items don't count, they're basically just labels so we know what things are at this point. The whole harness is as of this video finally out.

We'll start underneath the driver's seat where you can see the wires for the brake light switch. I snipped these off on the old loom side because I wasn't sure what was underneath the red electrical tape at this point and wanted to leave the longest wire I could on the switch side.

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I'd already spent some time threading the old wiring through the chassis with string attached to the loose end so I had a return path established. Along the way I had to remove the wire clamps and I also had to work blind since you can't really see what you're doing without removing the body from the chassis or getting the car on a lift, neither of which were options for me.

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As I got to the A pillar, the chassis becomes totally boxed in so you can't see what you're doing even if it were a bare chassis. I needed to be able to access the back edge of the chassis before it became blind and the engine bay side of the top of the chassis, at the same time. Pat wasn't available to help so I'd have to partially dismantle things to do this. Where my hand is here is about where I needed to be on the other side of the inner arch. The gap where you see the blue wire coming out isn't big enough for me to get my hand through and into a place I need it to be to guide the arch.

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You can just see the two sections of wiring through the gap where they emerge out of the top of the chassis here.

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I removed pretty much all the inner arch fixings so I could finegle the panel out just enough to get my hand in for this job, I'll need to reassemble everything later. If you have the space to remove the inner and outer wing, I'd recommend it, and then leave them off until you've finished reassembling and testing everything. Unfortunately, I didn't the space to be storing removed panels at the time of recording, so I'm doing it this way.

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I gradually fed the old wiring through until I had it all out and the strings in the path the old wiring took. That makes it sound a lot easier than it was.

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The relief I had seeing the old wiring pulled out and in front of the car bordered on joy. This was one of those milestones where in theory at least, things should start getting better. This had ended up being a surprisingly grimy job to do.

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I did have to make a decision about the re-routing of the new wiring. Above you can see the strings go through a triangular and a round hole, one for each wiring section. I opted to put both through the round hole because I felt like they were less likely to chafe or get snagged on the corners of the triangular hole that way. I don't believe there should be a grommet here as there was no witness marks to suggest there ever had been one so I didn't put one in.

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Back in the engine bay, a few things had finally been worked out. The main wiring in the cabing needs to be fed in from the engine bay side of the bulkhead through this point and finished with a large grommet. This grommet was provided with the wiring loom, so that's something. It had taken me quite a few attempts to figure out how to correctly route the wiring here, good old trial and error there.

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Similarly the speedo cable which has a hole in the bulkhead just large enough for the head of the cable to go through providing you remove the grommet first. I slid the grommet onto the cable before fitting. At the time of writing, I'm still not happy with the cable routing from the bulkhead to the gearbox so I'll be removing the gearbox end of the connector and seeing if I can resolve that, right now it just seems to be too loose and floppy and looks like it ought to run through or along the chassis to keep it secure.

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I began feeding the new wiring through, using the strings as guides, with my only change being to run both sections through the round hole in the chassis. This made things quite tidy and didn't appear to put any strain or stress on anything. It was really nice to see new wires going in here.

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I soon encountered my first issue, which was where the wiring enters the chassis, turns ninety degrees to go through a blind section, and then exits into the open section of the chassis. I found it easiest to feed each wire run in turn through the triangular hole here so I had some loose, then push it gradually through the chassis rail until it emerged in the open section where the chassis rails forked. Fiddly work.

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Once out, I could check the lengths were roughly correct by lining up the plastic sheathing on the new wiring in the engine bay with the amount of wire that would be exposed outside the chassis, and lining up the brake switch wiring spur roughly with the location of the brake switch under the drivers seat.

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With that done it was a case of feeding and shuffling the new wire through the chassis rail, using the access holes on the inside to help and making sure the wire and string didn't get snagged in the narrow end of the guide brackets inside the chassis. Later I'll refit the wiring clamps once I'm sure it all works and everything is tested, no point doing it now since if I have to remove anything for any reason it would be one extra step I could do without. Once all the wiring was fed through and I'd got as far as the fuel tank at the back, the next challenge presented itself.

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There's a cross beam in front of the fuel tank that the two separate wiring sections have to go around. Because of the way the chassis is built, you can't just thread the wiring down the whole length, it has to exit in front of the cross beam, loop over it, and re-enter the chassis behind it. The run with the fuel tank sender wire goes underneath, and the run without goes over the top.

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When you've gone over-under the cross beam, the wiring has to re-enter the chassis and shuffle along until it gets to the cross beam behind the fuel tank where you do the same thing, only this time make sure the fuel sender wire doesn't go back into the chassis and instead goes along the cross beam to the fuel sender in the top of the tank.

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The fuel sender wire wiring section doesn't re-enter the chassis, that comes out at the cross beam. The other wiring section does go through the chassis and doubles back. At least, that's how the original wiring ran on this car so I have to assume that's how it should be. Both wiring sections ended up where they should be in the end so hopefully it's correct.

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With all that done, when you look under the car the wiring is practically invisible now. Unless you know where to look for it, there's no obvious sign that it's there, which is what cause the initial confusion when trying to figure this one out. I'm used to wiring that runs inside a car, until this car I wouldn't have thought to look inside the chassis for it. A nice tidy job really.

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You can see here the really long battery cable that runs from the battery on the left of the image to the starter motor on the right. That's going to have to be a custom cable and one that I might get made rather than attempting to DIY since there are some jobs lately that I just want to give someone else some money to do for me. We shall see.

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Our next Lanchester video instalment is on Tuesday the 26th of April, so tune in for that. The write-up for that will happen some time later.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Potentially stupid question time.  Pat and I are a bit stumped on something the Lanchester is doing with its lights.

Front sidelights and indicators aren't yet wired up.  We don't think this will have a bearing on the issue, but I mention it just in case it does.

Turn on sidelights - running lights and number plate light come on at the back as they should

Turn on headlights (dipped beam) - headlights come on normally.  Running lights and number plate light go off.

What we can't figure out is why it's doing this.  What would cause the rear lights to go off as soon as you turn the headlights on?

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Are the rear lights earthed seperately or are they earthed via the loom? If the latter then the rears could be earthing via the headlights due to a crossed connection.

Or

Simply a mis-assembly or mis-connection to the switch such as feed and headlight connections swapped?

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Likely the switch, dirty contact from flashover connecting and disconnecting the headlights, on the slider for the sidelight circuit.

It doesn't have the same type of operation as my Pontiac, I don't think- where the tail/dash are on one terminal, front parking lights on one terminal, headlights on another; front lights are either or but not both head/park, while tail/dash are on with both? If so you might have the tail lights wired to the front parking light terminal.

 

Phil

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The switch should go:

  • Click 1 - dashboard lights, sidelights front and rear.  Rear number plate light.
  • Click 2  - dashboard lights, dipped headlights, sidelights front and rear.  Rear number plate light.
  • Foot switch for main beam.

From what folks have suggested thus far, it seems likely we've got corroded contacts and/or incorrect wiring, both of which are fairly easy to sort at least.

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I have spent today methodically making sure the Lanchester doesn't work anymore.  Removed the switch, decided against dismantling it to rebuild, squirted cleaner in it instead which flushed all sorts of detritus out and improved the feel of the switch so it's more clicky and less sludgy.  Cross referenced my various wiring diagrams including one for the switch itself, and things were just as they were before.  This either means there's still a problem in the switch or there's a problem with my wiring, but since I can't see what the problem with the switch wiring could be, I turned my attention to the other wiring on the car.

1352310334_c11switch.jpg_thumb.jpg.806040aa6c0abcafd80c7b0cd3895abf.jpg

Then I tried to work out which of the references I was working from was correct.  It was so frustrating I made a crib sheet, like so.

1217267984_WiringDiagramCribSheet.jpg.f4a731b5a97af2d5b4d33898e9a9a83d.jpg

This made things about as clear as mud.  It's worth noting on the 46-7 diagram the reference letters/numbers for the voltage regulator are different to the other references I've got, so could well be incorrect.  Spent most of the day trying to find some commonality and common sense with what was on the car and gradually made sure the lights all stopped working completely.  No idea what I've done to be honest, the battery isn't showing as flat so I imagine I must have done something wrong, or the ignition switch has completely failed or something, I don't know.

I've tried to go through a system at a time to get things to work, going with sidelights, headlights, and main beam.  In trying to fix the headlight/sidelight issue I've only succeeded in making everything inoperative and I've no idea how.  Below is the updated wiring diagram to show where I'm at with things.  I must have wired something up stupid, or I've burned out a component or something.   I just want it to work.

231182919_HybridDiagram.thumb.jpg.c290d262bd042e3e441e945e32ac93d9.jpg

 

 

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1 hour ago, vulgalour said:

I have spent today methodically making sure the Lanchester doesn't work anymore.  Removed the switch, decided against dismantling it to rebuild, squirted cleaner in it instead which flushed all sorts of detritus out and improved the feel of the switch so it's more clicky and less sludgy.  Cross referenced my various wiring diagrams including one for the switch itself, and things were just as they were before.  This either means there's still a problem in the switch or there's a problem with my wiring, but since I can't see what the problem with the switch wiring could be, I turned my attention to the other wiring on the car.

1352310334_c11switch.jpg_thumb.jpg.806040aa6c0abcafd80c7b0cd3895abf.jpg

Then I tried to work out which of the references I was working from was correct.  It was so frustrating I made a crib sheet, like so.

1217267984_WiringDiagramCribSheet.jpg.f4a731b5a97af2d5b4d33898e9a9a83d.jpg

This made things about as clear as mud.  It's worth noting on the 46-7 diagram the reference letters/numbers for the voltage regulator are different to the other references I've got, so could well be incorrect.  Spent most of the day trying to find some commonality and common sense with what was on the car and gradually made sure the lights all stopped working completely.  No idea what I've done to be honest, the battery isn't showing as flat so I imagine I must have done something wrong, or the ignition switch has completely failed or something, I don't know.

I've tried to go through a system at a time to get things to work, going with sidelights, headlights, and main beam.  In trying to fix the headlight/sidelight issue I've only succeeded in making everything inoperative and I've no idea how.  Below is the updated wiring diagram to show where I'm at with things.  I must have wired something up stupid, or I've burned out a component or something.   I just want it to work.

231182919_HybridDiagram.thumb.jpg.c290d262bd042e3e441e945e32ac93d9.jpg

 

 

Multimeter to the rescue perhaps?  I would be checking continuity across switch terminals (switch(es) disconnected from everything) to ensure the switch is switching; checking that components which are supposed to be earthed actually are; checking end to end continuity of individual branches of the harness whilst disconnected from components, then if things have checked out in a manner unlikely to cause fire, connect all components correctly (based on earlier checks) and gingerly connect the battery with everything switched off.  There should not be any significant current drain (arcing) when you do so. If all is well,  check to see if volts are reaching the intended components when required.  Old switches are very good at working intermittently, so be prepared to by-pass a switch temporarily to check the wiring circuit. Bear in mind that I realise you are a methodical worker and that you have probably embarked on this course of action already.  At least the Lanchester's wiring is relatively simple compared with a modern car - something I try to remind myself when tackling my Reliant's occasional electrical problems which can be equally frustrating. Good luck!  I'm looking forward to seeing this old-school quality car mobile again.

 

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 Car wiring diagrams absolutely suck!

I have used circuit diagrams for as long as I can remember: they show HOW things should be connected AND how it should work.

Those wiring diagrams only show where the wires go, not what the switch etc. does. Makes fault finding so much harder than it need be, even for a car as electrically minimalist as this Lanchester. It will be something simple. Which makes it more frustrating somehow. 

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Pulled the switch off the car today and tested it for continuity.  Every function is doing something, and it's always the same something, but what I don't know is if the somethings it's doing are the correct somethings.  Here's a diagram.

1043796877_AllFunctions.thumb.jpg.8a701fbbc81c21d3cd8458b872c7ac0f.jpg

On the two wiring diagrams I have for this car that show the switch, neither suggests connecting anything to socket L and since it's unlabelled in the diagrams I can find for this switch, I don't know what it's supposed to do.  I'd wired the switch as below.

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Colours for the above are:

red - rear sidelights and number plate light
red - front sidelights
yellow (x2) - A at switch to A1 at voltage regulator
white (x2) - A3 a switch to A3 at voltage regulator
white/black - Clock/dashboard (I don't know where this is supposed to connect)
blue - headlamp dip switch
 
I don't really understand why any of this would mean the sidelights go out when the headlights come on or, as is currently the case, nothing works at all.  Oh, and from pulling the old wiring to now this wiring job has so far taken me ten months, which is why I'm a bit stressed about it.
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8 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Pulled the switch off the car today and tested it for continuity.  Every function is doing something, and it's always the same something, but what I don't know is if the somethings it's doing are the correct somethings.  Here's a diagram.

1043796877_AllFunctions.thumb.jpg.8a701fbbc81c21d3cd8458b872c7ac0f.jpg

On the two wiring diagrams I have for this car that show the switch, neither suggests connecting anything to socket L and since it's unlabelled in the diagrams I can find for this switch, I don't know what it's supposed to do.  I'd wired the switch as below.

1936497731_WiringAsWas.jpg.8765deefdc653c8a88f0753f012982fd.jpg

Colours for the above are:

red - rear sidelights and number plate light
red - front sidelights
yellow (x2) - A at switch to A1 at voltage regulator
white (x2) - A3 a switch to A3 at voltage regulator
white/black - Clock/dashboard (I don't know where this is supposed to connect)
blue - headlamp dip switch
 
I don't really understand why any of this would mean the sidelights go out when the headlights come on or, as is currently the case, nothing works at all.  Oh, and from pulling the old wiring to now this wiring job has so far taken me ten months, which is why I'm a bit stressed about it.

Hmmmm...It may do that if you have a poor earth or connection. Go through every single connection and check and all the earths. It may be a good idea to run a new earth too. Also the swith may have an invisible short circuit. 

Good hunting 🦁 

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On 5/8/2022 at 8:04 PM, vulgalour said:

I have spent today methodically making sure the Lanchester doesn't work anymore.  Removed the switch, decided against dismantling it to rebuild, squirted cleaner in it instead which flushed all sorts of detritus out and improved the feel of the switch so it's more clicky and less sludgy.  Cross referenced my various wiring diagrams including one for the switch itself, and things were just as they were before.  This either means there's still a problem in the switch or there's a problem with my wiring, but since I can't see what the problem with the switch wiring could be, I turned my attention to the other wiring on the car.

1352310334_c11switch.jpg_thumb.jpg.806040aa6c0abcafd80c7b0cd3895abf.jpg

Then I tried to work out which of the references I was working from was correct.  It was so frustrating I made a crib sheet, like so.

1217267984_WiringDiagramCribSheet.jpg.f4a731b5a97af2d5b4d33898e9a9a83d.jpg

This made things about as clear as mud.  It's worth noting on the 46-7 diagram the reference letters/numbers for the voltage regulator are different to the other references I've got, so could well be incorrect.  Spent most of the day trying to find some commonality and common sense with what was on the car and gradually made sure the lights all stopped working completely.  No idea what I've done to be honest, the battery isn't showing as flat so I imagine I must have done something wrong, or the ignition switch has completely failed or something, I don't know.

I've tried to go through a system at a time to get things to work, going with sidelights, headlights, and main beam.  In trying to fix the headlight/sidelight issue I've only succeeded in making everything inoperative and I've no idea how.  Below is the updated wiring diagram to show where I'm at with things.  I must have wired something up stupid, or I've burned out a component or something.   I just want it to work.

231182919_HybridDiagram.thumb.jpg.c290d262bd042e3e441e945e32ac93d9.jpg

 

 

If the wiring diagram above is correct then i get the following conclusion re the ignition switch:

T: 12V- power  always present regardless of switch status

L: Switched 12v - power feed to side lights and dash light switch 

H headlight 12V- power feed to main beam/dipped via footswitch.

Going via the diagram it's unclear what A3 and A actually do, of the top of head thinking is that A3 is a 12v- feed from the switch to energize the dynamo regulator and put on the ignition warning light A being possibly a means to earth the circuit upon shutdown to stop the engine running on the dynamo in the absence of a diode. The other function diagrams contradict the main  car diagram however.

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Yeah, I missed that mistake on the big diagram, it should be shown as per the separate switch diagram, I just managed to not see the lack of update there.  Happens when you've been looking at a thing for long enough.

Last night fresh eyes managed to point out a couple of items:

  • I hadn't updated the whole big diagram so the ignition switch wiring is shown as incorrect.  I'll update this and repost. (exactly as @Jikovron points out)
  • The 46-7 wiring diagram has an RF91 regulator.
  • The hand drawn wiring diagram has an RF95 regulator.

So part of my confusion is that the wiring diagrams I have access to for this car are all wrong in one way or another.  I should have started by trying to find diagrams for the RF95 regulator and the PLC6 ignition switch and ignored the wiring diagrams completely.  That way I would have stood a better chance of actually getting this all plugged in correctly.

My concern now is that I've definitely wired things incorrectly and that may have damaged the regulator and the ignition switch.  Or the regulator and ignition switch may have already been damaged or faulty when we got the car which has led to the initial confusion.  All is not lost, regulator and switch are both available new amazingly, I suspect because of the American love of British sports cars from this period which share the same components.

The plan is for on Thursday (weather permitting), Pat and I are going to attempt to go through every system as though we've only just installed the wiring and ignore everything that's 'correct'.  Once we've done that we can start working out what plugs in where and hopefully start doing some fault finding.  Worst case, we'll get someone else in to go through it and sort out whatever it is that I've done wrong, though we dread to think what the labour cost on that might be.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Had another attempt at this today.  I followed what seems to be the correct instructions for the RF95 regulator box and the PLC6 ignition switch.  However, something is still wrong.

As soon as I turned the ignition on, the wiper motor was running.  It seems the switch (the knobs on the dashboard) is reluctant to disengage, so I just unwired the wiper motor for testing purposes.

Headlights work normally and don't turn off the rear lights now.

Rear side and brake lights don't work at all.  Bulbs are good, wiring seems correct and good, but I can't get anything out of them at all.

Number plate light glows dimly when ignition is turned on, which is shouldn't do.  It otherwise operates normally when side/head lights are turned on.  What's weird about this is the number plate wiring piggybacks off the rear lights so if it's coming on with sidelights the rear lights should be too.  Couldn't find any connections or earth points amiss on this.

Haven't tested anything else, I was just trying to get the lights working today.  I think I'm going to have to get someone else in to sort this out because I feel like I'm just going around in circles at this point.  It's likely I've wired something incorrectly.  It's also likely there's a faulty component, intermittent or otherwise, that's manifesting problems that aren't actually of my making.  I haven't the experience to know what's causing the problems that are happening.  I do have information, but again my lack of experience is making it difficult for me to understand the information.

If it hadn't been for the wiring, the car would probably be driving by now, it's really held everything up.  If you are, or know of, someone in the Maidstone area that would be interested in trying to help me figure out what on earth is wrong with this job, please let me know.  I'm a bit skint as I type this unfortunately, which is why I'm not bothering a business with the request for help.  I suspect someone with experience will take one look at it, move two wires, and it'll all be sorted.

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Another update on this - there will be pictures and videos and stuff in the future, for now I just want to keep you abreast of progress - since Pat and I spent some time figuring some stuff out.

Ignoring the Lanchester wiring diagrams and focusing instead on the RF95 regulator box wiring diagram and the PLC6 ignition switch wiring diagram, we managed to get quite a few systems operational and eliminate the weird light gremlin.  This is very good.  However, the starter motor doesn't want to engage properly now, it seems to be stuck so I'll have to pull that off and bench test it.  I'd also got the field and main wires on the dynamo the wrong way around and when trying to remove said wires to correct this, the eyelet sheared off the wire and instead of the nut coming undone, the post is now loose and spinning.  Additionally, there is literally no space to get at the stud to tighten it up and hold it while undoing the nut so the dynamo is going to have to be removed from the car to sort that out.

The good thing is I now have all of these systems working:

  • Headlight dip
  • Headlight main
  • Rear sidelights (no brake lights, the switch seems to be the culprit here)
  • Rear number plate light
  • Oil light
  • Instrument panel lights

I probably have the interior light circuit working but didn't test it with a bulb because I forgot.  It was working, so it should still be working.  Horns and semaphores aren't wired up yet, nor are the front sidelights, so I don't know if they work or not.  The Ignition light does work, but I'm not sure yet if it works exactly properly because as with the above, I haven't tested it properly yet so I'm ignoring it for now.  I do need to get a new pair of headlight bulbs, one of the dipped filaments has burned out (you can see it sat in the bottom of the bulb) but that's hardly surprising since they're the lights the car came to us with.

The key to getting this working was to have Pat read out what circuit should be going where and then do that one bit at a time.  The previous work labelling and checking continuity helped enormously and while there was nothing massively amiss with what I'd done, it did help identify issues like the dynamo being wired incorrectly.  We also no longer have the issue of the headlights turning the rear lights off, I don't know what was causing that, but something we did today resolved it.

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6 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

Another update on this - there will be pictures and videos and stuff in the future, for now I just want to keep you abreast of progress - since Pat and I spent some time figuring some stuff out.

Ignoring the Lanchester wiring diagrams and focusing instead on the RF95 regulator box wiring diagram and the PLC6 ignition switch wiring diagram, we managed to get quite a few systems operational and eliminate the weird light gremlin.  This is very good.  However, the starter motor doesn't want to engage properly now, it seems to be stuck so I'll have to pull that off and bench test it.  I'd also got the field and main wires on the dynamo the wrong way around and when trying to remove said wires to correct this, the eyelet sheared off the wire and instead of the nut coming undone, the post is now loose and spinning.  Additionally, there is literally no space to get at the stud to tighten it up and hold it while undoing the nut so the dynamo is going to have to be removed from the car to sort that out.

The good thing is I now have all of these systems working:

  • Headlight dip
  • Headlight main
  • Rear sidelights (no brake lights, the switch seems to be the culprit here)
  • Rear number plate light
  • Oil light
  • Instrument panel lights

I probably have the interior light circuit working but didn't test it with a bulb because I forgot.  It was working, so it should still be working.  Horns and semaphores aren't wired up yet, nor are the front sidelights, so I don't know if they work or not.  The Ignition light does work, but I'm not sure yet if it works exactly properly because as with the above, I haven't tested it properly yet so I'm ignoring it for now.  I do need to get a new pair of headlight bulbs, one of the dipped filaments has burned out (you can see it sat in the bottom of the bulb) but that's hardly surprising since they're the lights the car came to us with.

The key to getting this working was to have Pat read out what circuit should be going where and then do that one bit at a time.  The previous work labelling and checking continuity helped enormously and while there was nothing massively amiss with what I'd done, it did help identify issues like the dynamo being wired incorrectly.  We also no longer have the issue of the headlights turning the rear lights off, I don't know what was causing that, but something we did today resolved it.

Well done!  That should turn down the frustration a notch or two.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Today, you may be correct in that assertion.  Pat and I have spent some time today trying to figure out why the rear lights aren't working.

  • Fuses - both good
  • Earth points - all good
  • Power supply to wire ends- all good, and healthy
  • Battery condition - fully charged and healthy
  • Bulbs - in perfect working order

You'd expect, therefore, that everything would be fine, right?  Nope.  Even though it all checks out as perfectly functional, the rear lights refuse to turn on.  On the plus side, we know the wiring for the stop/brake function is good but that the brake switch seems to be iffy.  The brake switch isn't the cause of the rear lights not working though, we isolated it from the system and still nada even though everything checks out as perfectly normal and good.

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