Going too far with things

[jakebullet]

Have you gone too far trying to make things just perfect on a shed?

I think I may have crossed the line. I improved the wipers on Gerald the C1 by swapping the wiper stalk. As standard there's only one intermittent wipe time, but if you raid a toyota auris stalk it's a straight swap and by magic you've got variable intermittent time.

Trouble is the auris stalk has low & high positions for the rear wiper, and only high works on the C1, 'cos the car is only designed to have a single speed rear wiper. It's been bugging me for months, when I should really do what the rest of sane peeps do and treat low as a 2nd off.

First I thought I could connect low & high so they both turn the wiper on. But why not make low be intermittent? I could get a magic circuit board from China to do that for a tenner or so. Then one night I had a better plan.... why not make low variable intermittent by using a VW type 99 variable wipe relay? I would be the envy of C1 lickers everywhere. Make it so!

I compared stalks, and auris has a few more pins. So I hatched a plan of go to u-pull-it, raid a spare stalk and a wiring plug, and acquire a type 99 relay. Plus get a none busted aerial. It's only a 107 mile round trip WCPGW? er, I came back with an aerial. No auris stalks, and golf mk3's are no longer common. Only a tenner in fuel in Gerald.

To ebay! Spare stalk £12.99, golf relay £8.50. I then realised I haven't got a clue about the C1 wiring diagram so bought a haynes book of lies only to find it's rubbish. Paperback now, and the wiring diagram is not detailed. Maybe it will come in when something breaks.

I then realised yaris uses the same stalk as C1, and I could get a yaris wiring diagram on t'interweb. Got an auris one too so I could work out the differences. Turns out auris low is just a switch, and auris has a module to do the intermittent rear wiper, so I could be on to a winner with my VW relay. Next problem is C1 switches the earth wire, and VW is switching 12v. So I just need a double relay module pcb for £7.20 to make the VW relay see 12v, and then have the output converted back to earth.

Connected it all up on the table, and it doesn't work properly. VW relay is expecting an input from the wiper park switch. It expects it to go +12v when motor is running, and be earthed in wiper park position. Fucksocks. Without this input the relay just stays on. If I fake it by connecting the wire manually to +12v followed by earth the variable time & everything works. But the C1 isn't wired like that and I don't want to rewire it. So now I'm waiting on another pcb that will simulate* the park switch for only £10.

So I'm pretty confident it will all work, and I've only spent £50 developing a pointless feature.....

[bunglebus]

And I thought I was being clever fitting MK3 Escort variable speed intermittent wipe to my MK1 Fiesta 

[Christine]

My mk1 Fiesta sports central locking... remote central locking at that !  And a nearside  door mirror..

[vaughant]

I went too far with my old Leon. 

Amazed the £300 PoS scraped through its mot with only a few advisories and excited by it's actually excellent performance/economy combo I decided to fix all ills with the car, starting with those pesky wiper blades that were one of the advisories. 

Using asdas finest parts and after a particularity gruelling shift, I removed the first one and replaced it with no dramas but the second sprung onto the screen with furious force. 

 

Forking eck. 

 

I gently lifted it hoping god would see I was only trying to be good but alas a little spider had appeared and by the time I drove over a few speed bumps the crack went from top to bottom. 

FFS. 

Rewarded me by spending £300 on its next mot only for the water pump to shit itself a week later. 

 

[New POD]

I'm the opposite. 

After doing some formal ILS training years ago. Which defined reliability the way the MOD sees it, I now only really worry about things that stop you actually completing your journey or passing an MOT. 

When my rear wiper failed on my mk3 Astra, I left it. Every now and then I would wipe the sort off with a cloth. 

When the heated seat stopped working in my Honda accord: MEH 

When the hatch struts on a mk2 cavalier failed, I got a bit of wood. 

It's what the MOD call dedregrated performance.  Won't stop you completing the mission. 

 

 

[vaughant]

On 10/21/2020 at 8:08 AM, New POD said:

I'm the opposite. 

After doing some formal ILS training years ago. Which defined reliability the way the MOD sees it, I now only really worry about things that stop you actually completing your journey or passing an MOT. 

When my rear wiper failed on my mk3 Astra, I left it. Every now and then I would wipe the sort off with a cloth. 

When the heated seat stopped working in my Honda accord: MEH 

When the hatch struts on a mk2 cavalier failed, I got a bit of wood. 

It's what the MOD call dedregrated performance.  Won't stop you completing the mission. 

 

 

Ah that's where Honda got their production philosophy from 🤣🤣. 

Actually Ford were the worst, run the machine until it literally breaks and then patch it and run some more however their equipment was many light years in front of what Honda even currently use now bar maybe 6 machines..... And we weren't the most modern factory by any stretch. 

Offshore drilling was a lot more regulated, a lot more basic with a back up for everything but very solid over engineered equipment to be fair. 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

I thought I was abead of the game fitting variable intermittent wash/wipe to my old Mk2 Golf with a relay pinched from a Mk3. Small fry compared to your efforts @jakebullet 😅

[DaveDorson]

Yes.

I have been known to go way over top when doing stuff..

[Kringle]

Not sure if this counts.

A hinge broke on the wife's ancient laptop and tape held for a while before I thought I'll make a new chassis for it... Ended up using a wooden artists box to transfer all the components, using tiny bits of dowel to make mounting points for the motherboard and a ply surround for the monitor.

As is the way with my life, the reality never matches up with the image in my mind. Proper shit.

[jakebullet]

Other circuit board has arrived, and it works!

I think I may* have to tidy the wiring a bit for car use, and add boring things like a fuse. It's also a bit GPO relay clunky, but probably won't hear it over the road noise in the C1.

 

[Dan_ZTT]

On 10/20/2020 at 11:42 PM, jakebullet said:

Have you gone too far trying to make things just perfect on a shed?

Ha. I'm jealous of your dedication but it's the exact opposite here, I would prefer to wilfully ignore / drive around a minor issue and resent spending even a single penny on fixing it. My wing mirror is held on with gaffer tape though, and every time I start my car it flashes up 'suspension fault' on the dash, so I guess it's swings & roundabouts...

[beko1987]

There's a similar utterly pointless JOB I want to do on my xsara, which is replacing bits of the dash and obtaining parts from a higher spec car to fit the onboard computer in and getting range, mpg, better trip stats etc

I've already mostly given up as the parts are unobtanium in 2020 short of me visiting every scrap xsara left and hoping... But in the back of my mind its still a job I'd like to do (but probably never will) 

[sierraman]

There’s loads of stuff I could do that I would have fannied about with years ago like spraying with aerosols or fitting better trim, but then I had fuck all to do back then except go to work, get pissed and fuck about with the car. 

[RayMK]

I generally steer clear of electrical work, so hats off for persevering with the wiper stalk mods.

Going too far with things used to be something I had to do to keep mobile. I could not afford to pay to get maintenance done when early in the house buying and children arriving cycle.  My philosophy when forced to tackle jobs like changing the rear suspension bushes on my first Stellar - it became an almost annual MOT task -  was to buy more tools to make the jobs less of a chore.  The bushes still took a day and a half to do.  Some of the tools I've bought to ease* jobs have never been used since e.g. crows foot ( edit: spanners, not sockets).  Bloody awkward things to use.  When trying to replace the kingpin on my Reliant in the 1990s, I bought pullers (hardly used since) and progressively heavy hammers.  Now the hammers have seen a lot of use, particularly the lump hammer with a shortened shaft.  I broke it before handing the king pin removal to a Reliant dealer, having being thoroughly defeated. Morale was improved by mending the hammer.

Garages and professionals can have my money.  They save me so many wasted weekends, discomfort and pain.  

[bunglebus]

I hate letting other people work on my car, as they rarely do things to my self-imposed high standards. I did decide paying to get the cambelt done was better than buggering it up myself though. That and preferring the DIY option to spending money. 

[DaveDorson]

23 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

I hate letting other people work on my car, as they rarely do things to my self-imposed high standards. I did decide paying to get the cambelt done was better than buggering it up myself though. That and preferring the DIY option to spending money. 

The few occasions when I've asked someone else to work on my cars, I've either been charged more than the expected, or they've pissed me off and done a half arsed job that I could have done better myself, and often taken longer.

A couple of the local garages won't even quote me for work anymore, as I've given them a gob full when they've tried to fob me off, and frankly I wouldn't use them again if you paid me anyway.

I recognise that I'm a bit fussy when it comes to having stuff done on my cars.  However I'm only like that because you've got to be some kind of a dribbling shit gibbon if it's your job to do something all day every day, and an IT monkey can do a better job in his free time than you can.

[sierraman]

‘But the Autodata manual says you can do it in 1.2 hours!’

[bunglebus]

Yeah and Gus the gorilla smashes it out in 0.9 to earn bonus