Quiet on the Forum!! What are you doing to your car?

It seems real quiet on the forum right now. So just to I just wondered what winter fixes and mods you are all carrying out right now?

I spent Christmas welding some small scabs on the drivers door up ... well about 7 actually. Had to shove the cans of paint down the trousers to keep em warm and heat the door with a paint strip gun. But the result looks good.

New water pump turned up today for the housing and pipe thats already been cleaned from the spare motor. Also Cam tensioner has a new bearing. All should go on at the weekend.

End of the month is a production car trial so after that I'm sourcing a new carpet and still trying to work out what to do about seats. Theres a Strada Abarth scrapper for sale that I'm thinking about having just for the seats!!

Thats about it..... I think.

Clutch slave cylinder still to do & would really like to get my OZ alloys refurbed for the summer, (finances allowing!) So, like the forum, a bit quiet really!

heers,

Nige

Just pulled the front bumper off and am refurbing some old 1300 indicator units.

Next job is the rear bumper .. and filling all the holes that are left behind (with grommets for now).

Finally I'll chop the end off the air intake pipe to give a bit more air intakeability and give her a good service.

Roll on 1st March

The boot of my car is slowly turning into a workbench! Also I dropped a spare loudspeaker onto the front end - big bit of paint chipped off
I really need to re-organise the garage.

Dismantled half the interior of 'Albert' to fit a manual choke and various electrical fixes/mods.

Install improved electric fuel pump control with 'fuel off' warning light and resettable crash switch.

Headlight relay mods to remove load from switches.

Fit front fogs with centre console switch and warning light in instrument pod.

Modify headlight Pod motor relay electrics to stop pods coming up when only side-lights are selected.

Removed those orange diffusers from the intrument lighting.

Removed those annoying dim-dip coils.

Treated a few bits of rust bubbling under the previous re-spray (not a proper fill and finish, just de-rusted and painted to match the car)

My lights are much brighter now and I can keep the pods down (much nicer profile) until it is dark enough to need headlights to see ahead .

Had a nightmare getting the fuse/relay box back together (how did Bertone get all those wires in such a small space!) but did in the end and got most of the work done by the end of December apart from putting the drivers seat back in, but that was done on New Years Day so we could take him out for a roof-off drive :lol: .

Still got to change the reversing light switch and fit the 65 Amp Bosch Alternator (warning light glows at idle with lights on and came on full intermittently during the 1st Jan drive so I think the current one is on the way out).

When the weather gets better I'm hoping to sort out the rear bumper mount which has suffered accident damage (inherited the damage with the car) and possibly get the wheels re-furbished as the corroded alloy and peeling lacquer look is annoying me. Don't want to go OTT though as the car will never be pristine and was only bought for cheap fun driving.

Albert now lives in the garage with my bikes as he doesn't like sitting out in the rain (the seats are much more comfortable when they are dry).

I'm surprised during this seasonal off road period there are not many techinical questions popping up on the Forum or do people pack them up for winter and only worry about fixing them when they don't start again in the spring?

Looks like a good selection of events coming up in 2007 so hoping to get to some and meet some more Club members (and no Paul I am not going to Ireland even though it will be grate, and I do believe you have been before!)

Cheers,

Bruce

Bruce,

Sounds like you've been a busy chap ! There are some things on your list that I've been considering too - the headlight pod behaviour for one. I found some info on Xweb re how to do this - is that where you got your how-to guide or is there some info on this forum somewhere (or are you just REALLY clever ??!) :lol:

Also, can you explain what you've done with the headlight coil-thing, and what effect it has - sounds interesting.

More questions to follow, no doubt !

At last I got around to changing the radiator. Decided to rub down and repaint the flaky old fan shrouds and radiator crossmember-used black Smoothrite for a decent finish. Fitted a second cooling fan at the same time. Also finished a general service and will start on improving the brakes as the next job. Roll on the better weather!!
Cheers Chris.

Chris,

I'd love to think it was just me being clever but the dim-dip and pod mod started off with me applying the headlight mods produced by 'Bones' and available on this Forum. It did take a bit of thought to modify Bones' design though so I might take credit for that bit. Mind you I have not looked on Xweb at all so must have a look and see what they say.

Bones suggested swapping relays to change their functionality (and one was effectively redundant anyway) but as I looked closer at his wiring diagram I noticed that you could completely eliminate the dim-dip coils (and the relay mod, as this was in the dim-dip circuit) by simply removing the two additional fuses mentioned in his article. The fuses are located with the other "extra" bits on the bottom left of the fusebox on my '86 model. The main effect is the lights are no longer on so they don't need to come up with the sidelights.

I have also now got brighter lights and lost a delay that I experienced when flicking between dip and main, ie the lights would stay off for half a second between one going off and the other coming on. It doesn't seem a long time but it makes you think when doing it going round a corner or just after passing another car (when you have been dazzled anyway). These two benefits may actualy be as a result of the headlight relay mods rather than removing the dim-dip because I did it all at the same time.

I was also thinking of getting the pods to rise when flashing as per Bones' mod list as I had done this on my original 1981 model (which was a much easier mod to do) but decided not to bother in the end as I have few occasions when I need to flash and I can just as easily slide the light switch on and then off again. However, I did realise he had not looked at stopping the pods rising when only sidelights are on. This is probably because he had retained the dim-dip function which of course puts the headlights on dim as well as the sidelights, so they would need to be up.

Having looked at the Haynes wiring diagram (which is pretty good even if it is not in colour) I worked out that just by changing the supply for the two relay feeds on the pod-up relay you could keep them down when just sidelights are on. I did the mod and it works a treat.

If you would like a bit more detail let me know and I will try and produce a guide.

Cheers,

Bruce

Bruce,

You are a star. I am desperately wanting to do a similar headlight mod. The dim dip coils have got to go. I'm sure they are sapping current (rather than volts) and making the lights dim. Any more info appreciated - please pm if you wanna keep it secret for the magazine.

I'm excited right now. I think I've just found so Strada Abarth seats for the car!!!!! And yes they are Red & Black. Boy George the 80's were good!

Looks like I might need to produce a couple of guides for the mag and Forum. :shock:

Has anyone else out there done pod mods or dim-dip mods?

The pod-mod (good name !) from Xweb involves putting a switch in line with the relay, which you can mount in the dashboard in a spare slot, so that you can turn off the feature at any time.

This sounds ideal as you can drive around all day with "running lights" on and pods down, and at dusk turn the mod off so that the pods rise.

I can't find the link to the article, but I'll keep looking.

My pod-mod does not provide a switch override option it just keeps the pods down when in the 'sidelight' position on the light switch, but as the headlights are not illuminated on sidelight selection (if you remove the dim-dip function) why would you want to overide and put the pods up anyway :

If you want, or need, to drive during the day with full headlights (as opposed to just sidelights) then slide the headlight switch to 'headlight' and as if by magic the pods come up at the same time as the lights come on.

I had a look at Xweb last night, it's certainly got plenty of discussion threads (albeit US derived). Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have a search function. Chris, have you gone through each page in search of useful info?

Fixed my heater - the valve was full of scale
Put a new cam cover gasket on
Put a 4 - 1manifold on and a bad boy exhaust system

I have been busy






Tim ps Bruce: i like the no pod lift fix - i might try it

Tim,

Just out of interest, what silencer did you use? Where did you get it? And how did you hang it? So to speak. For reference, I think the manifold was an old Auto Sensations one. Do you agree?

Simon

Hi Simon,

Bought all the parts from Jetex, they do all silencers and bends pipes etc available online. Its a 2" system and is really too boomy for an everycar. but ok for a occcasional one. Ok is tickover though and light cruising.

Hanging was hard as they dont sell much, tried halfrauds who sell rubbers but nothing to connect to them ,,, duh. SO I used rubbers and bent bolts at 90 degrees and then bolt them through the boot floor. On the bottom used jubilee clips as a circle and put them through the rubber. May look to change this at a later date.

Manifold no idea its an ebay item, but it fitted well. Driving it seems to have more top end and the pull of the second choke seems better in 4th

Its driving beautifully