Those of you used to my pretty regular updates may have noted I've been quiet lately.
Yeah...we've had quite a lot of work going on with the house over the last week or so.
Basically the entire roof has been dismantled and rebuilt. Several of the gable end rafters were totally rotten, most of the battens on the one side due to a broken ridge tile that had been there for ages. Plus basically all the soffits were shot...oh, and the roof light turned out to be pretty much at the end of its life.
So all stripped back. New felt throughout, new battens, new soffits (all roughly 90 metres of it!), new roof light, new ridge tiles, and a shedload of new tiles as a bunch were broken. That's going to be about £30K worth of work.
Interesting (in a nerdy sort of way) to see some signs of the origins of our house though.
We obviously know about the BBC involvement in the building of the property, but it's still interesting to see actual signs of it. This rafter sadly was rotten so is gone now.
We're paying the price here for a combination of some less than optimal construction methods used (it was built pretty rapidly), and headaches because the previous owners had just painted over problems rather than actually fixing them...which given the costs involved in gaining access to the areas in question is really frustrating. The soffits coming off are the original wooden ones, which after 41 years were probably past their best 15-20 years ago...what's going on is UPVC and has a 20 years warranty.
It's astonishing how much time this sort of stuff eats up, even though my input is needed for about 30 seconds at a time on most occasions it means you can't really *do* anything as inevitably every time you do, the doorbell goes again.
So a decent chunk of time has been spent finally putting together the webpage for the Invacar. Using an appropriate piece of hardware as my development platform of course...because I'm me.
Still bugs me that the display on this thing always looks awful in photos...this is closer to how it actually looks in person, though obviously it's pin sharp in person.
Contrast for an LCD panel from 1988 really is decent, and quite attractive with that deep blue colour.
The main page itself is still being worked on as it's quite a monster, but the FAQ that goes along with it is more or less done. There are a few tweaks still to be made, but it's mostly done and is now live
over here. Trying to get some of the misinformation out there dealt with has been a continual issue since day one, and there's really no good single information source we've found - so there's been quite a lot of thought put into what is on that page.
In terms of fleet news, hasn't been anything going on. Simply as I've had no time to get properly stuck into anything.
Though despite that, something has followed me home again.
Sadly just on loan for a few days. Though I must have nearly bought one of these cars about a dozen times, and every time I drive this one I remember why. I know from a purely practical standpoint they're not great...they're not fast, they're not great handling cars, they're noisy and the build quality is variable throughout but tends towards unacceptable. However they always just feel like charming old cars to me, and there's just something that is oh so right about sitting here.
I like how they feel to drive, and this one was a lot more relaxed at speed once I noticed this switch.
This is the third time I've driven this car, however previously completely missed that it had overdrive. Heh...never said I was the brightest spark.
My "fee" for borrowing it for a few days was to investigate a few electrical gremlins.
[] Dead radio.
[] Dead rev counter.
[] Missing rubber grip on clutch pedal (replacement supplied).
[] No dash lighting.
The dash lighting took precisely five seconds to solve. Giving the panel lighting rheostat a bit of vigorous twiddling pretty much immediately restored operation of the circuit. Just about visible in daylight at the right angle.
At night it's more obvious that it's working.
Well, just about! Not exactly the brightest dash lighting, but it does the job.
Much cozier than anything modern.
Clutch rubber pad replacement was exactly as simple as you would expect. Not even all that awkward.
The issue with the radio became pretty immediately apparent once I pulled the head unit out of the dash.
Yeah, not being attached to anything wouldn't help! Obviously hasn't ever been hooked up either.
The wiring tail in the car was for a standard ISO connector, whereas the socket on the head unit is a finer pitch.
Helpfully the fitting kit turned out to be stashed in the armrest storage compartment.
Which also gave me the opportunity to happen to this appalling mess.
Sadly I failed to grab a photo once it was tidied up. However once actually wired up, we had a working radio.
Something more period appropriate will be going in shortly, but this is now working at least.
While I was sorting the spaghetti behind there I discovered the lamp holder which should have been clipped into the indicator light for the rest window demister just floating around behind the panel.
Which I naturally returned to where it should live. So that can now be ticked off the list, even though it wasn't on there to start with.
Have to wonder how many years it is since that worked.
The rev counter is a little more tricky. Everything looks fine at the coil end of things, though it's spliced into the loom somewhere other than actually at the ground terminal of the coil. So a dodgy contact is still on the cards.
I figured I'd pull it out the dash...but the rev counter doesn't quite fit past the indicator stalk housing.
I literally need about another 1/8". *Sigh.*
I'll have another poke at that shortly and see if I can get it out of the dash. I have a sneaking feeling though that the instrument itself may be at fault. Especially as it has sprung back to life, albeit reading low, on a couple of occasions.
This has been quite good for the sanity through as it's been something I can dip in and out of investigating while within earshot of anybody who had questions for me!
Let's see if I can get the rev counter sorted tomorrow.
I added another item to my list about 1/4 a mile into driving it. The mirrors. They both wobbled around all over the shop and rattled horribly. It was going to drive me around the twist.
There were two issues I found firstly was that the screw holding them onto the brackets were both loose. Secondly the mirror glass was loose in the units. Some closed cell foam blocks behind the glass (they had some fitted but they weren't thick enough) sorted that.
The mirrors now no longer rattle, nor do they wobble - well, no more than you should expect in an MGB anyway.
As we had some heavy rain forecast I wanted to do some temporary patching over one of the tears in the sunroof (through which you could see straight through to the cabin).
The sunroof really needs to be replaced, but this will help keep the worst out. It's definitely reduced the amount of wind noise anyway.
So just need to do a bit more digging on the rev counter issue then she will be heading back to her owner to go safely into winter hibernation.
Definitely need one of these on fleet one day, I really do like these old crates.
This has been quite good for the sanity through as it's been something I can dip in and out of investigating while within earshot of anybody who had questions for me!
