andyf
South West
Posts: 415
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Jun 25, 2012 10:30:05 GMT
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That wiring looks like fun  That flasher unit is probably an electronic conversion. The original 2 pin non electronic flasher units were unreliable, causing flashers to vary speed according to engine revs etc. Fitting a more modern electronic flasher is easy and makes the flashers more reliable, but means fitting an earth to the new flasher unit which is what your PO looks to have done. I would change the blue wire for a black one because I`m anal like that, but apart from that it is probably wired correctly. Good luck with the rest of the wiring though ;D |
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1980 Triumph TR7.
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Jun 25, 2012 11:40:40 GMT
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Oh the joys of electrics and wiring...!!! I have some gremlins lurking in my Toledo's Lucas sponsored wires at the moment which is proving quite annoying but I'm sure we'll get there. The Princess is looking just as good as ever sir so keep up the superb preservation work...  |
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***GARAGE CURRENTLY EMPTY***
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Jun 25, 2012 16:09:22 GMT
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Another wiring update. I really need my Dad here to talk me through this because no matter how well I try to educate myself with info from the internet and books and whatnot, I'm a bit lost on this and with my Dad being trained as an electrician (okay, not auto-electrician, but it's the same basic principles) he can help me understand better what's going on. First thing I did was go to the local shop and get myself as many bullet fuses as he had in stock and a spade connector to sort out that dodgy earth. On investigation, two fuses were a bit dead.  I restocked the fuse box with brand new 16amp and 8 amp fuses, as per the book. Checked the back of the fuse box again for loose wires or corrosion of which there is none, everything is healthy and secure. I didn't know how to use the multimeter here so I'm waiting for Dad's direction on that one. This is the fuse box before.  This is the fuse box now.  Additionally, I rechecked that spade connector which was still showing no circuit, trimmed and spliced in the new connector (no pictures, camera ate them) and now have a circuit at this connector, but it made no difference to the oddity with the lights. However, my interior light now only comes on when the passenger door opens and not when the driver's door opens. I was a bit stumped by all this as now I appeared to have good earth in both suspected locations and yet I still had disco lights. I made a start trying to understand the wiring loom in the boot, if I didn't have a commitment to the Waddington show at the end of the week I would have pulled the loom out but I'd rather the car have odd lights than no lights. So, I chased where new connectors had been put in, with this being the first one you come across behind the number plate light. As far as I can remember, one of the black female plugs has always been devoid of a matching male plug and swapping the male plug to the empty female just makes my fog lights come on permanently.  Worked along to find out what else was hiding and found a loose wire. A-ha! thinks I, this will be the root of the problem.  I noticed there was a scrap of copper wiring in the chock block that matched the exposed wires of this newly discovered wire, so I tidied it up anew.  Plugged it in and...  ... nothing changed. I tried unplugging the red wire and nothing changed. I tried putting it in that empty female connector and the fog lights came on (switch was off). So now I have no idea what's going on. I have this sinking feeling that when Dad helps me go through the wiring loom properly that I'm going to end up having to remove the wiring loom to chase a dodgy earth wire and while the loom is at least nice and simple on the Princess, it's still not something I want to do. I don't understand wiring diagrams, unfortunately, I understand the principle behind them and that they work in a similar fashion to the London Underground maps but that's as far as I can get. I'm wondering if the fault is in the headlight or brake circuit, even though I understand that an earth fault can cause oddness across the board. The reason for this thinking is that I only get the problem with the lights when both sidelights/headlights are on and I then press the brake pedal, and it's the pressing of the brake pedal that always causes the problem, nothing else. |
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So, recently I went to the RAF Waddington show where I displayed the Princess to the delight of the vast majority of the visiting public, the only exception being three grumpy old men that muttered "those things were always breaking down" as they wandered over to the ancient Austin Seven and Ford Thames truck. I was genuinely amazed at how many people had favourable comments, memories and took photographs of the old girl and turned that amazement right back at them when they saw that the owner wasn't an octogenarian. The day before the show my boyfriend and I had cleaned the car, put some air in the leaky tyre and parked her up at my parents where there isn't any mud. Unfortunately, the day of the show the tyre wouldn't hold more than 3psi so I had to hurriedly fit the ancient King Pin spare in the boot, which had the delightful habit of making the car pull to the left constantly but didn't vibrate through the steering wheel like the leaking tyre did. By the time we got to the club meet up point, the King Pin was removed - again, by me, in a cream linen two piece suit, I still don't get why I had to do this job - and swapped with the back tyre on the same side, eliminating the pulling completely. It's yet another job to resolve but I didn't have an option so we did about 120 miles on the dodgy cracked King Pin, sometimes at speeds of 70mph. Sadly, I wasn't allowed to do the drive there and back on doctor's orders, but this meant my boyfriend got to enjoy himself at the wheel, and gripe about the lack of power steering, the heavy clutch (which I thought was actually regular-to-light) and everything needing a lot more work. What we did find on the day is that the brakes are quite good, if they hadn't been we'd've had a Mk1 Ford Fiesta bonnet mascot when a highly modified Mk1 Ford Sierra estate span out on a roundabout at low speed that was surprisingly greasy. We also found out the Princess loves my boyfriend, but as soon as we swapped seats for registration, she didn't like me so much and the radiator fan bearing made an horrific noise and then the car stalled. Boyfriend gets back in for the drive home and car is good as gold, typically. So, when we got to the showground when I was hoping to get some pre-visitor snaps of some of the cars that had turned up, we instead sat in the car.  But eventually the weather picked up and it was actually a great day out, with some great moments from the public who seemed more delighted to see a beige Princess than the white Mk2 Ford Escort parked next to me. Comment of the show was directed at the Escort next to me: "That looks a like a Lada". Maybe there's hope yet and the general public aren't so unwashed as I'd been led to believe. Here's some snaps of her on the showground.    Before the show, when we were cleaning the car, I had a little discovery. I've been toying with moving the front number plate so that it fixes straight to the air scoop rather than sitting vertically, in the hope that it would tidy up the front and aid with cooling a bit. I'm not sure if I can do this yet because I'm not sure how structural the central bracket is to the bumper.  I've never really had need to poke around under the front bumper so imagine my surprise when I found something back there. Could it still have a key inside?  Why yes, it could! Covered in Waxoyl and still works, so I now have 3 keys for the doors and boot.  For now, the box is sat in the house while I decide whether or not to reinstate it. I wonder how long it's been there? |
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I used to have one of those on my Chevette, in case of locking the keys in the boot  Wonder what I did with it... |
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bortaf
Posted a lot
Posts: 4,549
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R.I.P photobucket
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Jul 28, 2012 19:08:53 GMT
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I don't think I am going to use the Keep-a-Key, I'll just keep it as a novelty, perhaps have it on the dashboard at shows or something. Today, I found this bulb in the driver's footwell. Checked my dash lights and they all appear to work so I'm not entirely sure where this has come from, unless it's been rattling around in the back of the dash and has only recently dropped out. I've put it in the centre console for now until I figure out where it should live.  However, this is actually another one of my OCD updates, I got bored of deep-cleaning the kitchen (a job I don't particularly enjoy) so I decided it would be much more fun to clean this.  I've been wanting an excuse to get cracking with the engine bay so that I can see how bad it really is, the muck in there hides a fair amount of paint bodgery I'm not best thrilled about. Much of the area between the engine and bulkhead looks like this.  This ducting for the air filter has been sprayed silver, I'm not sure why, and was done in situ judging by the silver overspray all around it. Annoying, as it gives me more work to rectify it properly, but perhaps I can get a better looking section of pipe to replace it?  I want to replace the ducting with something new eventually, but for now I moved it out of the way, disconnected and removed the washer bottle to clean it inside and out and got the metalwork somewhat better looking than before. The washer bottle is actually pretty clean inside with very minimal discolouration to the plastic, but the outside has some very well ingrained dirt that I'm not sure of the best way to remove without damaging the finish on the plastic.  The wheel arch came up great, for all the paint is pretty shocking up close.  Some of the paint bodgery made me laugh despairingly. In this and other areas, new paint has been thickly applied by brush over the old, unprepared paint, minor rust blemishes and oil. Suffice to say, a fair amount of the top coat came off with soapy water revealing what is fairly good original paint beneath with the rust staining being just that, the actual rusty areas being very tiny little spots that I'll treat once everything is cleaned up.   So at the end of play, with my fingers looking like prunes and feeling a bit tingly from excessive water and cleaning agents (I have no marigolds/latex gloves), this is how it looked. Right hand side just about done, left hand side as was.  Dad's going to help me go through the wiring loom between Monday (when I'm off to hospital for head scans) and Thursday (when I have a job interview) to see if we can't find this electrical fault. |
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Looking good  , cracking job on the engine bay, B&Q may be worth a look for the heat exchanger tubing, think i last seen it in the central heating/plumbing section, not quite the same stuff (more very thin aluminium) but would do the job. My sister had a Princess in 1985, fond memories of travelling in it at the time, it was actually a Morris 1800, a very early Princess (before they were called Princess, they were Austin, Morris or Wolseley followed by the engine size), those versions are just about extinct now, my sisters old one is anyway, her boyfriend at the time ran it off the road and over a tree stump  |
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72 Pontiac Firebird Formula 400. 95 BMW E34 525i Manual. 80 Lotus Elite, sold  86 Mk4 Escort RWD V8, sold |
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Jul 30, 2012 19:32:09 GMT
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markgenesis: B&Q is a good idea actually, there's a shorter section of that type of aluminium ducting on the second bit of the air pipe so it would match nicely. _____ Update time again! In readiness for pressing her into daily commuter duties I wanted to make sure the Princess would sail through her next MoT which means one or two niggles need sorting out. I still have to fit the other steering rack gaiter and buy at least 1 tyre to replace the perished one, 2 so I can replace the spare if it can't be repaired and prevented from leaking again. I should be sorting out tyres in the next couple of days, when there's some spare funds. Other items on my list for the MoT were getting the electrics to behave, which meant calling on the services of my Dad. After this, the only thing I can really see her failing on is the little bit of rust on the rear arch bottom (gaffer tape as a temp fix) and emissions, everything else works as it ought and there's no crusty bits underneath that I know of. Oh, and maybe the brakes, I think the drums are probably out of balance so I'll take a look at those when I do the steering rack gaiter. First thing I did was turn the bonnet rams around after being convinced they were upside down. This now means the bonnet shuts with much less resistance than before, this is not an improvement.  The other fail was the tape I'd used to hold the sound proofing back tidily, seems to have lasted overnight but no longer, which is a shame. Shall have to find a better solution to tidy this bit up.  Had a look at the wiring from the old electric fuel pump and removed some of it that wasn't needed.  Plugged the two relay halves together to tidy things up a bit too.  Then made an effort to tidy up the messy wires on the battery so they're not crossing all over everything. Turns out I have the wrong battery fitted, which I didn't know, and by the looks of things it's a replacement earth/negative cable. This is how I did it.   Then Dad pointed out the earth cable could be done better and safer.   My Dad is, as I've said before, a bit of an electrical wizard as far as I'm concerned. He helped me understand how to read what the wiring was doing and we discovered the cause of the fault in the lights, though it wasn't what either of us had suspected at all. After checking the connectors and the rear light clusters themselves, it turns out the bulb holder parts are conductive while the plugs maintain earth, the bulbs are all fine and the fault wasn't making itself known. We checked and checked again, Dad consulting the rather large wiring diagram for the rear lights while I tried very hard to learn something. After we found the problem was somewhere in the left hand brake light we tried plugging the left hand stuff into the right hand side.  This eliminated the connectors and the right hand cluster as being at fault, it was definitely something about that left hand cluster, but we couldn't see what. The only obvious damage at first was the slightly lifting of the conductive coating.  In puzzlement, Dad removed the light cluster and the lenses to inspect it better, and that's when we found the problem that had, until that point, been invisible. It's likely I caused the problem when I checked the bulbs shortly after getting the car.  The conductive covering had been removed from the plastic base material which meant the brake light couldn't earth properly, causing the disco lights. Now, it had been mentioned that "there's a problem with the earth", but this is not what we expected it to be. This was repaired with the cunning use of Bacofoil and aluminium tape (the glue is non-conductive on the aluminium tape, so the foil was needed).   I also found out why I couldn't get the rear lights as clean as I wanted, the back of the lenses were filthy.  So they got cleaned up. When we plugged everything back together it all worked properly, with none of the previous craziness. Job jobbed! Last thing to do was put the rear lights back together and she's ready to hit the road again, with all the lights on and doing what they should. Success!  
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75nut
Part of things
Posts: 512
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Jul 30, 2012 21:23:55 GMT
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Loving ur OCD updates lol! I'm just the same , can't leave those little things alone, bits of dirt and paintwork that aint quite right!
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90 Alfa 75 3.0 V6 Cloverleaf
79 MGB Roadster
88 Saab 900i Convertible
94 MK1 MX5 1.6
05 Volvo V70
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Jul 31, 2012 13:00:32 GMT
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Just read the entire thread and enjoyed it a huge amount! Particularly when you found the Keep-A Key. I bought one for my Dad in Halfords and he kept it in the wheel arch of the brown Datsun 120Y around 30 years ago. Keep on cleaning!
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Currently: 1974 Beetle - Golf -
Previously: e38 735i, e34 525iSE, 1972 Beetle, 1991 Scirocco Scala, Morris Minor, 1983 Polo Breadvan, 1991 Mazda MX6
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Jul 31, 2012 18:09:25 GMT
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Read the whole thread, must say you have a lot of patience ! In a good way that is, the car is coming along nicely and those taillights look like new !
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34 B Ford V8 Flathead Hotrod
55 International L170 (Cummins 6BT)
65 Mustang V8 supercharged Coupe
58 Plymouth Belvedere (Christine)
05 Dodge Ram 1500 HEMI
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Jul 31, 2012 19:09:35 GMT
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Jul 31, 2012 19:40:27 GMT
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@ianboyd: Thanks for the tip @75, 65 & Doc: Thanks for the compliments, and the Keep-a-Key story, they must have been a popular thing back in the day. ___ Today, went for my first run out in the Princess since RAF Waddington a month ago. Must have done a good job cleaning her because the rain still beads on the paint and muck doesn't stick, which I was thrilled about. I was also thrilled at my working lights, I managed to get all the way down the overgrown lane, past the police Volvo waiting at the end and out of their sight before they started playing up again. Looks like I'll need a new cluster back to fix the problem permanently. I also think a lot of the vibration through the wheel is due to the wheel I consigned to the boot whose tyre will only hold 3psi because with the nasty old Kingpin on the back the steering wheel doesn't vibrate at all and the ride is smoother. I dropped in to see Dad on my way to the superduperwupermarket and he showed me some rather excellent wheels he has planned for the Carina. While bumbling around the interwebs, trying to remember the name of a VW post van (Fridolin, not Frikadellen) we came across a website with wonderful things on it. Namely, said website has a steering wheel I want for the Princess, but it's $200 USD and they don't have UK postage listed... and it's for a truck.  18" of lovely, lovely steering wheel. I want it. |
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Last Edit: Jul 31, 2012 19:48:59 GMT by Deleted
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Have those kids stopped pushing through the fence and snapping bits off your car?
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Currently: 1974 Beetle - Golf -
Previously: e38 735i, e34 525iSE, 1972 Beetle, 1991 Scirocco Scala, Morris Minor, 1983 Polo Breadvan, 1991 Mazda MX6
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doctorblack: They do seem to have, I think they've moved on to a new area as my neighbours haven't had any complaints either since we had the police out. ____ Today I did a bit more on the Princess, I feel she deserves it after returning an average of 37mpg on the last £30 I put in the tank. Not only that, it's needed so that I can get to job interviews safely. When I trundled out for my interview yesterday I heard something go *ka-donk!* against the front of the car and was annoyed to find, when I hopped out, that I'd managed to stand up the bit of concrete that broke off the bottom of the drive (and is very heavy, which is why I haven't moved it).  I did not get away Scot free with it either, so now both my front wings have battle scars. It looks better in the pictures, it's going to be a curse word of a thing to fix properly.   Worst of all, it's managed to make a mess of the arch trim which is made of unobtanium and was, until now, pretty much okay.  Ah well. So, on to the major job of the day which is the boot. It's another bit of the car that's been scruffy since I got her, but because of reasons I hadn't got around to a proper deep clean of it. First up was to remove the old carpet/matt thing which sheds everywhere and is falling apart. I'm keeping it safe in the house so I can get a new carpet made up to the correct shape when I get the cabin carpets done, I'm also hoping to get the rest of the boot trimmed out in carpet to match.  Found another nick-nack when I cleared the boot out. I'm not sure if the car, or just the people in the car have been to Ibiza, but it must have been some time ago. Pictured with the bonnet mascot for scale.  So, everything out of the boot I could give it all a vacuum to get the worst bits out. In the back corners there's a bit of surface rust which I'll go into detail about in a bit.  After a good dose of Cillit Bang to get rid of the grease, dust and other ground in muck, the main floor came up okay. It all got wiped over with plain water afterwards to get rid of any of the Cillit Bang that might be left so the (admittedly poor) paint wouldn't get unduly damaged.  The sides got the same treatment. The spare wheel well appears to have been repaired before and there was a slimy grease on top of the thick black paint that was a pain to remove and could do with a bit more attention yet. Also managed to partially clear out the drain hole enough for water to escape.  I need to fettle it a bit more to really get it spotless, but it's a lot better than it was. There's the odd bit of rust and glue staining and a few paint dribbles, but mostly it's just in need of some fresh trim panels.  There's some bubbling on this corner at the back. This side it seems to be little more than surface crust and I'll tackle it another day when I can be bothered (it has been a long day today). The underlying metal seems okay, but I am expecting some holing, I just hope that this isn't a structural area. I can't see what it covers, and from underneath there's no sign of a captive bolt or similar that I need to worry about so with a bit of luck it will just be boot floor.  This bit could do with more work and I need to find or make some light cluster covers to protect them from getting bashed, especially when the spare wheel is put in or taken out of the boot.  Here we are with this side all tidied up and clean. I had to scrub the spare wheel because, typically, the wheel I wanted to put in the car would be the one with ground-in dog poo on the tyre. This is one of the ancient Kingpins that I've not been able to afford to replace yet and is to be used only in absolute emergency, mainly because it makes a squeaking noise and the rubber is cracking all over. Not good. I've not yet experienced driving through a tyre blowout and I don't particularly want to.  Other side of the boot before I set to work. The plastic cover goes over the fuel pipe and really helps smarten things up well.  I had to remove said cover as it had overspray and dirt ingrained on it. Gave it a jolly good scrub. I need to have another crack at it to get the last bits of paint off, but most of the time this is invisible unless for some reason you're curled up in the boot. After I'd scrubbed it with an old green scourer - quite useful for removing paint from plastic without damaging the plastic, unlike a new green scourer which can be too harsh - and soapy water I gave it a wipe over with some Autoglym Rubber & Vinyl to freshen up the appearance of the plastic.   As on the other side, this area has some corrosion. The difference is that this area has got a split in the metal so it's worse. Again, I can't see anything structural that attaches to it and the only interruption to the area is that wire which, I think, goes to the old in tank fuel pump (could be wrong). This area does need welding, I'm hoping it will either not fail the MoT or can be done before it if I have some cash before the 15th of September. As far as I can tell, it's outside of the prescribed area for suspension components and with there being no rear seat belts there's no prescribed area to worry about for that either.  Presumably because this side doesn't have the spare wheel, it was cleaner and easier to get up to scratch.  I didn't go overboard with the bit behind the plastic trim here, there didn't seem to be too much point.  All done! Looks much better and smells nice and fresh. I very quickly made it look worse by putting Stuff back in, like my bonnet cane and emergency jack.  The other job today was to get that Kingpin off. Bank of Mum and Dad offered me a short term loan with favourable rates so I could go and get tyres organised. This old Kingpin really is shot, it shouldn't be anywhere near my car or the road! Had I been stopped by the Police I'm pretty sure it would have been fines and points ahoy.  We went to a tyre place in Mansfield (I've forgotten the name) in Dad's Carina. We didn't put the Kingpin in the car, instead we took the tyre that's fairly new but only holds 3psi. The place took the tyre off, sanded the rusty rim (cause of the leak) and put a new valve in for me for £15.  Brother pointed out that this tyre is directional, so it's on the correct side of the car. I'm hoping it won't leak again so I'll be checking on it tomorrow to see what happens. None of my tyres match; three part worns and one nearly new, all with good tread with that antediluvian Kingpin in the boot. Eventually, I want to replace all five tyres with good new ones or at the very least matching part worns, but it's all money I don't have right now.  Gave all the tyres a scrub to get the mud off and trundled the car back into the garage for the day. I should have given her a wash but I was not in the mood and she's clean enough for now. Might wash her properly tomorrow and valet the interior, we shall see. 
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I expect that is the first time the word antediluvian has been used on this website. Good work Sir!
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Currently: 1974 Beetle - Golf -
Previously: e38 735i, e34 525iSE, 1972 Beetle, 1991 Scirocco Scala, Morris Minor, 1983 Polo Breadvan, 1991 Mazda MX6
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good work, nice to see someone showing these unsung heros some love!there is one in my local scrappy if you need any bits!!
tyre is fine, police wont say a thing, tyre cracking is still a MOT pass as I found out!
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 cars: orion 1600 i ghia mk2 orion 2.2 vtec ghia mk1 |
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Any of the interior trim for the boot would be of use if you can find out what there is and how much. Oh, and if you can get me the registration number, that would be handy for the Wedgister I'm working on (but haven't updated for a while).
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Aug 10, 2012 14:30:06 GMT
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I like the pre-made speaker holes on the parcel shelf, they're just crying out for some late 70's ICE... Good work in the boot, it looks ruddy-bloody spotless...!!! |
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***GARAGE CURRENTLY EMPTY***
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Wonder what I did with it...
, cracking job on the engine bay, B&Q may be worth a look for the heat exchanger tubing, think i last seen it in the central heating/plumbing section, not quite the same stuff (more very thin aluminium) but would do the job.
