Out in the van today noted that I had lost the nearside front speaker.
From prior experience I knew this was almost certainly going to be down to the spaghetti associated with the stereo getting caught when reinstalling the engine cover as despite a couple of strategically positioned cable ties it still managed to get utterly in the way. Therefore there was roughly a 50% chance of something getting pulled out every time the cover went back in.
The cause of this isn't hard to see. Not helped by the fact that there really isn't much under there to anchor anything to.
This was a classic case of me looking at it and thinking "that will take me half an hour to tidy up" and then proceeding to lose about 80% of an afternoon.
The eventual result of a lot of swearing, dropping things through the floor and poking myself in the ribs on the driver's side seat runners.
If you look even vaguely closely you can see that calling it tidy would be a vast overstatement, but it's a huge amount better than it was and less likely to cause issues down the road.
Most notably that huge chunk of terminal strip has been ousted in favour of a bunch of Wago connectors. I know some people don't like them, but I've never had any problems with them, and nothing is going anywhere here. They're far less likely to vibrate loose than screw terminals, and I definitely didn't have the time to faff about soldering and heat shrinking things together today - as that would be the way to properly do this. If I go back in here one day to reroute the power feed (I'd ideally like the head unit to be powered from the leisure battery so I can run it without worrying about draining the vehicle one when stationary) I will probably go down that road then.
One of the other changes I made was to add a local ground...apparently whoever originally fitted the ISO harness never connected the ground pin! The head unit was grounded entirely through the antenna shield and/or the fitting cage (the dash moulding is actually metal under the vinyl finish). I ran that to a ring terminal I fitted under one of the dash retaining bolts.
The downside of the arrangement is that there is no longer enough slack to allow the head unit to be removed - you need to unplug it from the back first. Though given that is entirely doable with the dash layout in the van and will add about two minutes to the job, if that's the price to pay for getting the wiring out of the way of the engine cover, I'll gladly pay it. That cover comes off far more often than I have the head unit out of the dash.
While I had things in bits anyway I took the opportunity to fix a couple of issues where illumination was concerned. One was that there was no connection to the illumination circuit from the head unit. This meant that it was waaaaaaaaaaay too bright and lit the entire cab up when driving at night, even with the brightness manually turned down. Secondly was that I'd never wired up the illumination when I fitted the compass (read: Put it there to cover the hole in the dash top left when I removed the old alarm volumetric sensor). Thirdly the illumination for the cigarette lighter didn't work.
The first and second points were easy enough to sort. So the head unit now dims to a more sensible level automatically when the lights are turned on, and the compass now glows a night vision friendly deep red colour when the headlights are on.
The camera has of course decided to make it look far brighter than it really is.
Haven't been able to sort the lighting on the cigarette lighter though. Pretty sure it's just a blown bulb but there's no way to get to the back of it to replace it. I can just about touch the housing with the tips of my fingers if I pull the blower switch out - but the illumination bit is on the far side of it so that gains me absolutely nothing. Reckon it's something I would need to literally pull the whole front dash moulding out to get to. That will have to happen one day when I get the scuttle replaced...so it can be replaced with an LED then, until then it will just have to continue bugging my OCD after dark.
It doesn't really *look* like I've done anything here does it?
The only clue from the driver's seat is that the wiring being tidied up means you can no longer see any of it - several wires used to be visible down below the hazard light switch. Not any more.
The difference is very apparent when refitting the engine cover though. It just slots into place now rather than requiring ten minutes of fighting to get it to sit right without snagging the wiring.
I'm pretty sure getting that trapped in the seal was the cause of the clip on the nearside having a broken handle. Someone tried to force it. If anyone knows of a spare one of these clamps sitting around somewhere, please let me know.
My nearside one is missing most of the handle so requires a screwdriver to lever it open/closed which is less than ideal. I have tried to buy them from a couple of breakers over the last couple of years, but they've apparently deemed it to be too low a value a part to be worth replying to me - well aside from the one guy who wanted £60 plus VAT and postage for one...which seemed a little...steep...to me!
From prior experience I knew this was almost certainly going to be down to the spaghetti associated with the stereo getting caught when reinstalling the engine cover as despite a couple of strategically positioned cable ties it still managed to get utterly in the way. Therefore there was roughly a 50% chance of something getting pulled out every time the cover went back in.
The cause of this isn't hard to see. Not helped by the fact that there really isn't much under there to anchor anything to.
This was a classic case of me looking at it and thinking "that will take me half an hour to tidy up" and then proceeding to lose about 80% of an afternoon.
The eventual result of a lot of swearing, dropping things through the floor and poking myself in the ribs on the driver's side seat runners.
If you look even vaguely closely you can see that calling it tidy would be a vast overstatement, but it's a huge amount better than it was and less likely to cause issues down the road.
Most notably that huge chunk of terminal strip has been ousted in favour of a bunch of Wago connectors. I know some people don't like them, but I've never had any problems with them, and nothing is going anywhere here. They're far less likely to vibrate loose than screw terminals, and I definitely didn't have the time to faff about soldering and heat shrinking things together today - as that would be the way to properly do this. If I go back in here one day to reroute the power feed (I'd ideally like the head unit to be powered from the leisure battery so I can run it without worrying about draining the vehicle one when stationary) I will probably go down that road then.
One of the other changes I made was to add a local ground...apparently whoever originally fitted the ISO harness never connected the ground pin! The head unit was grounded entirely through the antenna shield and/or the fitting cage (the dash moulding is actually metal under the vinyl finish). I ran that to a ring terminal I fitted under one of the dash retaining bolts.
The downside of the arrangement is that there is no longer enough slack to allow the head unit to be removed - you need to unplug it from the back first. Though given that is entirely doable with the dash layout in the van and will add about two minutes to the job, if that's the price to pay for getting the wiring out of the way of the engine cover, I'll gladly pay it. That cover comes off far more often than I have the head unit out of the dash.
While I had things in bits anyway I took the opportunity to fix a couple of issues where illumination was concerned. One was that there was no connection to the illumination circuit from the head unit. This meant that it was waaaaaaaaaaay too bright and lit the entire cab up when driving at night, even with the brightness manually turned down. Secondly was that I'd never wired up the illumination when I fitted the compass (read: Put it there to cover the hole in the dash top left when I removed the old alarm volumetric sensor). Thirdly the illumination for the cigarette lighter didn't work.
The first and second points were easy enough to sort. So the head unit now dims to a more sensible level automatically when the lights are turned on, and the compass now glows a night vision friendly deep red colour when the headlights are on.
The camera has of course decided to make it look far brighter than it really is.
Haven't been able to sort the lighting on the cigarette lighter though. Pretty sure it's just a blown bulb but there's no way to get to the back of it to replace it. I can just about touch the housing with the tips of my fingers if I pull the blower switch out - but the illumination bit is on the far side of it so that gains me absolutely nothing. Reckon it's something I would need to literally pull the whole front dash moulding out to get to. That will have to happen one day when I get the scuttle replaced...so it can be replaced with an LED then, until then it will just have to continue bugging my OCD after dark.
It doesn't really *look* like I've done anything here does it?
The only clue from the driver's seat is that the wiring being tidied up means you can no longer see any of it - several wires used to be visible down below the hazard light switch. Not any more.
The difference is very apparent when refitting the engine cover though. It just slots into place now rather than requiring ten minutes of fighting to get it to sit right without snagging the wiring.
I'm pretty sure getting that trapped in the seal was the cause of the clip on the nearside having a broken handle. Someone tried to force it. If anyone knows of a spare one of these clamps sitting around somewhere, please let me know.
My nearside one is missing most of the handle so requires a screwdriver to lever it open/closed which is less than ideal. I have tried to buy them from a couple of breakers over the last couple of years, but they've apparently deemed it to be too low a value a part to be worth replying to me - well aside from the one guy who wanted £60 plus VAT and postage for one...which seemed a little...steep...to me!
