1981 Midas Coupe - Project Zippy.

The garage was in an absolute state, so I have spent some considerable time cleaning it up. Once clean, I then proceeded to make some more mess. I have no spacers for the window winders. Being Mk1 Fiesta items, there will be Ford tax. I had a look around the garage to see if there was anything I could use. I have cut two rings from a pipe I had lying around (a bit of RC40, possibly), which I may modify. It's also possible I may just use them as a template to make a fibreglass buck. I am undecided at present, but as always, I'll figure something out.

The replacement bolts for the winder mechanism turned up - some lovely short stainless M6 Bolts. They're all fitted. Murphy's Law dictated I immediately found the old ones, in a pot marked "winder bolts". On the shelf where I was convinced I had already looked. Ah well. The stainless ones look nice. And will be in a place where they cannot be seen. Awesome.

I also gave the door lock knobs a quick rub down and a coat of black as they were dirty and covered in overspray. They now look rather swish.

Potential winder spacers. Or the start of potential winder spacers, anyway.



Shiny new bolts!



Old bolts located, just after the new ones arrived. Now, what was I thinking about? Oh yeah, that's right. Yeehaw.



Swish knobs.

Great work buddy she’s coming on nicely

Just a very quick little update, and it's something I have been meaning to do for AGES. That little some was to sort an earthing point on the front subframe. So in I went with a drill and made a hole for an appropriate bolt. The more difficult thing was to get an tool in place to clean off the paint surrounding the hole. Sounds easy in practice, but when there's 1293cc of BL's finest and a Midas bodyshell in the way, it makes it a bit awkward. Eventually I managed to get in there by removing the coil and its bracket plus taking the entire filter system off the Powerfile. I ended up with about 3mm clearance, but this was enough room to attack the paint with 8 grit belt.

Paint removed, I used a couple of star washers and nipped it up. Now any earth leads can terminate here and be secured with a nut. Excellent.

Believe it or not Glen, I could not get the drill down that far 😆

But still, good to know for the future.

Doing my best to avoid putting the door back together, which I can assure you is a hateful task, I took care of a couple of minor jobs which Mr Tink suggested I deal with. Task one was to run an earth cable from the started solenoid - this was a very simple thing to do - a couple of rings on a bit of wire and Roberto is your mother's Italian-sounding brother.

Task two was extend the horn cable from one side of the car to the other. This should have been a simple solder and heatshrink job. Of course, it was not. I took the insulation off the wire at the passenger side of the car. It was completely oxidised. Not good. So I went a bit further up the loom, and tried again. Nope, still blackened. So I tried just by the junction to the driver's side headlight. A little better, but still mostly black.

Given that I am very scared of electrics (more from a point of view of worrying what fires I might cause because I don't understand how electricity works), I did something that I am proud of. I looked at a wiring loom diagram in the Haynes manual (for a Mini). And UNDERSTOOD it. The purple and black wire for the horn does not go through the fuse box, so I followed the wire back to the plug for the column stalk, went forward a few inches, and cut it. I stripped off the insulation and it was beautifully copper-coloured wire. Excellent! So I ran a new wire alongside the main wiring loom, taping it up as I went along, and then soldered the two together, remembering to put the heatshrink on first. Before I wired them up permanently, I tested the horns directly on the battery. A small car needs to be noticed in case of danger. It will be. My ears are still ringing.

"Extend this cable" said Tink. Nope.



Attempt 3 looked very much like attempts 1 & 2. A repeat of oxidisation.



So I took the vast majority of the oxidised wire out of the equation by doing this!

Well I can only apologise for the ridiculously glacial approach to updating this thread. Life has been getting in the way a bit, and there has been much stress which I will not go into on here. However, on the upside, today has been a day of significant progress.

My good friend and all-round electrickery guru Tink had suddenly become available (he'd escaped the wife and kids for a day), and he said he'd happily spend a few hours going through the electrics on the car (my bugbear) and we'd get some things working. I pushed Zippy out into the daylight and realised just how dirty the poor little thing was. However, no rest for the wicked - out came the soldering iron and other assorted electrical tools, and I put the kettle on for Tink. He arrived, deposited his boy at the party over the road and we set to. Or rather, he did, and I cut wires and soldered as required.

Electrics are strange - easy if you know what you're doing, and utterly terrifying if you're a complete novice such as myself. Watching someone who is a bit of an expert is great fun indeed. We work well together anyway, and being part of the process as Tink worked his way through the various systems was a delight. There was a good bit of laughter as we were amazed that various things actually worked, as this is a 43 year old car with a similarly aged loom. Accidentally setting the horn off as my neighbour walked past with a jug of boiling water was highly amusing (sorry Lianne!). Getting frustrated by a dodgy earth wire was easily sorted by cutting it off and running a completely new wire.

So, after connecting things and checking them with probes and testing many many things, we could list the following:

Things that work:

Horns; Sidelights; Headlights (dip and main beam); Indicators; Hazard Lights (front and rear); Rear Lights; Reverse Lights, Brake Lights; Numberplate Light; Fuel Pump; Electric Fan (squeaky); Fog Light; and Starter Motor - we only gave it a little bump as I am not ready to try starting the engine yet - however that bit was REALLY exciting! We only needed to replace 2 bulbs, which was a surprise.

Things not yet tested or installed: Wiper Motor and Washers (one of which was a casualty of moving stuff around the bulkhead); Interior Light as well as Door Pins and Hatch Pin; any wiring for a stereo; installing a brake light switch - it's a Mk1 pedal box with a dual line braking system so there's not one fitted at present; any wiring for an alarm system; and the Fuel Sender wiring has yet to be connected.

Things which don't work or need replacing:

The ignition switch on the steering column really isn't very good. There are numerous dodgy connections, and although it could be taken apart and cleaned, I will need to spend ages attempting to undo the horrible shear bolts, and by the time I have finished that, I will WANT to throw the bleeping thing in the bin anyway.

Plus the fuse box we used for testing was an old 1980s Mini one, and was horrendous. Loose fuses, curse word connections etc. This will be replaced with something better.

Tink has given me a list of additional things to sort, which I shall deal with, and hopefully by the next time I do an update, certain things will have been dealt with. I need to also sort the loose connection on the fan and also make it not squeal.

Zippy out of the garage for the first time in ages...





Tink as happy as a pig in brown stuff - sorting electrics!





Things were labelled up, once each circuit had been checked to make sure it was working



And just to prove that lights WERE working!

A quick little update for you. Tink left me a small list of things to do, so I have started going through it.

Number one was that the wiper wires needed to be joined up to the plug he'd left me. Out came the solder, the iron and the heatshrink. I had to shorten one of the wires due to a bit of corrosion, but once past that initial inch or so, it was beautiful copper again, and took the solder with no problems. I also needed to sort a longer earth cable. That was easy.

Number two really was a number two. Tink had advised me that the ignition switch was somewhat faulty. He did say it could be taken apart to attempt a fix, but there would likely be a question mark over whether it would work properly. Given it had been in the car (and standing pretty much since 1999), it was an easy decision to spend a little bit and get a brand new one. This has been ordered and it should turn up tomorrow, should the delivery e-mail be believed. The issue then was removing the current switch. Unfortunately these are fitted using shear bolts, and there are various "work-arounds" that profess to get the stubs to turn. Unfortunately the remains of the bolts are in a shrouded area, which makes it virtually impossible to "grind a slot into the bolt stub", even using a Dremel. Another suggestion is to use a punch to gently tap the bolts round so they undo. I chose this as my initial solution. This had one specific effect: it made me swear, and produce appropriate anger that I downed tools and went inside for a bit of a think.

Once I reappeared, there was a third option. I was getting a new switch. Therefore I didn't need the old one. Grinning maniacally, I grabbed the angle grinder with a cutting disc, and a few minutes of careful use saw the old switch off in pieces. Examination of the old bolts showed that I'd have really struggled to "tap it round"; there was corrosion on the threads which had basically adhered the screw to the housing. I guess 25 odd years of neglect does that to a key switch. I will continue once I have received the new one.


Wiper wiring now connected, soldered and heat shrunk. I've tidied the wiring up since the picture was taken.



The remains of the key switch after it met my friend the angle grinder...



And one of the bolts which showed a bit of corrosion, meaning it would NOT move. It ain't gonna move now!

Nuts... 


Another quick update which is heavier on the pictures. Came back from taking Mrs Bounce to the opticians after she bent her glasses (no, I didn't sit on them...) and had received an e-mail to say my "Royal Mail parcel has been left in your safe place". Apparently my safe place is just dumped on the doorstep. Thankfully nobody had nicked it, and if they had, they would doubtless have been a bit disappointed if they were expecting a smart speaker or something electrical.


So into the garage I went, and gave the lock mechanism a squirt of some special lock lubricant my friend Ray had given me (he used to be a locksmith). Why? The mechanism felt a bit "sticky", most likely because it had been sat on a shelf in a warehouse for a bit. And before tightening up those bolts, I remembered to line it up with the plastic covers first. It would have been a bit galling if I'd forgotten to do this... Once I'd established that everything was correctly aligned, i tightened everything up, and of course, the shear bolts did their thing. It's my intention to never move it again!


Here is a box, a musical box, wound up, and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside - can you guess what is in it today?





One of Lucas' finest ignition switches, complete with 2 keys.





The key switch was a touch notchy - so I gave it a blast of this and it's now as smooth as silk. Cheers Ray!





I lined it up with the cowling, before...





...tightening up the shear bolts, which, unsurprisingly...





...did this!

I am steadily working my way through Tink's list of jobs that need to be sorted. The next on the list was something he'd noticed when playing about under the dash with wiring: the throttle cable was at a funny angle. This was completely down to me. I was certain I'd done it right but I was obviously tired and rushing at the time. The plan was simple - pull out the inner cable and re-insert it through the hole that made more sense - i.e. opposite the top on the throttle pedal, as opposed to a couple of centimetres off. At least it would have been simple. The reason it wasn't? Some idiot who shall remain nameless but bears a striking resemblance to me had put a brake limiter valve in the way of the correct hole. Now, this sounded as though it was not too bad a scenario, but the thing to remember about the Midas is that, like the Mini it is based on, it is rather small. This means that once everything is in place, it's really rather difficult to move it much more than a couple of millimetres. I took the brake limiter valve off.

So here's how I managed to fix it. Firstly, the throttle cable was held in place by a proper "Heath Robinson" bracket with a brazed-on guide for the cable. This had been created by a previous owner. I didn't understand why they hadn't simply drilled a hole into the fibreglass to hold the end of the outer cable's ferrule. So I did this, and put the homemade bracket "to one side". Of course, I couldn't get the drill in there without taking off the coil and the breather, so I used one of my favourite tools - the right-angled drill chuck! This is a brilliant bit of kit and worked so well. I had bought a new limiter valve some time ago which I was going to fit anyway - the one on there was secondhand, and as EVERYTHING else in the braking system is new, it was a no-brainer to fit this as well. The issue was how. The new path the cable took was exactly in the middle of the valve's body - drilling through it would be an expensive way to ruin the brakes. It had to move!

I looked at the design of the valve, and on the top I noticed an indentation, which looked almost perfect for the outer plastic sheath of a throttle cable to run over. I decided that this was going to be the way to do it. This meant I needed to effectively move the valve about an inch diagonally down towards the centre of the car. Only I couldn't. The bracket which held the clutch hose was in the way, and no amount of persuasion was going to work. Instead, I got creative. Out came the oscillating multi-tool, and I cut a 1/4" silver off the side of said bracket. The new valve fitted, the throttle cable went nicely over the top and I only needed to do some minor bending to the master cylinder brake pipes to ensure that everything connected together properly. Excellent. I even managed to get the spring back on to the clutch arm without swearing! I now just have the fun task of filling in the numerous holes from previous owners (and me) so it all looks a bit tidier.

Talking of tidy, I also needed to sort a fuse box. I don't like fuse boxes in the engine - I simply don't understand why they need to be subjected to heat and/or damp, when they can be inside, where it is also easier to check to see if a fuse needs to be replaced. I have never been a fan of the Mini fuse box, so we're going to have a look at using a newer blade fuse design. Both Tink and I came up with the idea of having the lid for the fuses under the bottom of the dashboard. I marked up where it needed to sit before cutting an appropriate hole using the oscillating tool. A quick bit of filing saw the fuse box fit in nicely before the holes were drilled to bolt it into place. A quick check saw the fuse box poking out nicely under the dash. Nice.

Cable used to go through the top hole and was at a funny angle. It needed to be passed through the hole about an inch below it. This was unhelpful...



Brazed homemade bracket needed to go, so I put it "elsewhere"...



Brake Valve needed to move, but there wasn't room.



There are too many holes in this bulkhead. Which one should we use?



It's this one!



However, it needed a hole enlarging to hold the ferrule, so out came this awesome bit of kit.



Much better than that silly bracket!



New valve to be fitted - but where exactly?



Goes in here quite nicely, after taking a bit of the bracket off with power tool violence and bending some pipes a bit.



A hole was cut into the dashboard shelf to accommodate the fuse box.



Fits in there really well!



Fuses are easily accessed from below.