Hi
Busy last few days but very little to show for it, again I am just pottering around as the center carpet won't be here before I go back away on Tuesday for 4 weeks.
Most of the jobs have been wiring, these have mostly been straight forward although a couple of problems have come up. Phil the electrician has been around a couple of times but mostly this is to steer me in the right direction then I have been doing the jobs and he checks them over the next night.
One of the problems that came to light is one I never even dreamed off and that is the indicators flashing to fast, Phil picked up on this when he first came round and couldn't understand it until on Wednesday night when he realised that I had fitted LED rear lights then it dawned on him. The problem was that the load had dropped and the relay was working faster as the speed of the indicators is load related on the relay, so in effect I had taken out the rear indicators. This Phil recons may be an MOT failure, so to fix the problem he has given me some Resistors to fit in the system.
I need 2 x 11 ohms one for each side or 2 x 22 ohms on each side which i now have, very simple to fit, one lead fits into the indicator circuit while the other end goes to earth, we did a test yesterday and it worked perfectly as the flasher relay now has the correct amount of load to give the required flashing speed.
I have also wired up the radio and had that working on MP 3, unfortunately the original speakers are a bit broken so I have seen a nice set of Pioneer surface mounted speakers which shall sit behind the seats. I have run the speaker cable to the boot area and hid the wire behind the carpet, I also re-routed the aerial cable from the drivers side to the passenger side as it would not reach with the radio being moved.
I have been looking for the correct aerial for some months now, I do not want an electric aerial but a bee sting and have been unable to find a suitable one. Phil said I should look for a Rubber duck aerial which I had never heard of so a quick search on eBay and I found an old but new stock item.
I need to do a slight modification to it as the angle is a little out but other than that it fits a treat.
I sorted out all of the mess of wiring under the dash and fitted the ends to the appropriate switches.
It may still look a bit of a mess but believe it or not that's what yours looks like when you remove the center console and pull out all of the wires.
There will be no cigarette lighter as I have used that hole for the starter button so I am utilizing it as a power supply, this will be bracketed behind the console and the power adapter will be plugged in and attached within reach for the MP 3 and sat nav etc. As yet I have been unable to get power to the lighter illumination which is not really a problem but I would like to know why that circuit is dead. Another dead circuit is the fog light which is a much more serious matter, when I first wired this in it worked great, the dash light lite and the fog light lite but when I tried it the next day it was totally dead. The fuse is fine but there is no power getting to the fuse so at the moment I am scratching my head, I haven't tested the fan unit yet but on a meter test there is power.
The starter button was the next in line, I bought this as a kit and it contains everything to fit.
This is the power loom that comes with the kit, it has a relay and illuminated starter switch which clips into the starter button, it was recommended by the suppliers to fit an inline 5 amp fuse which I have done. The other parts are the push button and the snap lock wire fittings of which I had a bit of a problem with.
There are 6 connections on the loom, 2 x heavy wires which go to the ignition switch, 2 x power connections which attach to the cigarette lighter wires and 2 x illumination wires which are supposes to go the cigarette lighter illumination wires but as mine are not working I had to find some where else for them to fit.
Maybe a little difficult to make out but you need the yellow/black wire and the red wire from the dash, these are the ones you see in the movies that when you rip the wires out and touch them together you hot wire the car. I originally thought the red and black but that didn't work so I tried the yellow/black and black and away it went.
I had a little difficulty with the snap lock connectors as after first fitting to the black wire, I tried to remove it and snapped the knife section so I went back to the best method and that was soldering a connection on. I soldered both wires and taped them up, I used the snap locks on the cigarette power and earth and away it went, a bit daunting at first but very simple in practice.The illumination came from one of the dash gauges and all it needs now is to clip onto the starter button and its done.
Another job was to fit the dash fully which meant firstly fitting the cowl around the steering column, I can't remember it being this difficult to remove but believe me it was very difficult to fit. typically it wasn't till it was fitted that I realised that I could adjust the steering column to give me a little more play, not much but a little, probably would't have helped but it has allowed me to lower the column a little to take into account of the dash sticking out the thickness of the new veneered section as it was touching the cowl. I also riveted the underside brackets in position.
There are 4 nuts to slacken on the frame work.
2 at the front you can see and 2 on the back bulkhead which allows the whole assembly to drop a little.
I also spent some time trying to figure out where the top section of the center console was secured under the dash, still can't figure it out but when I had it fitted I released that the choke pull was in a really bad position as it was right in front of the gear stick.
After a bit of a think I remembered I had a nice award badge issued to Panther in 1984 for winning first prize for the Kallista design.
So out with the choke cable and on with the badge.
I then had to figure out where the choke cable would go and I had very limited choice in the matter so I drilled a hole in the only place available and it fits in great.
The warning panel is a degree or so out but that's Ok.
I also got the interior light working, I fit the passenger side door switch and wired that up to the circuit and fit the wires under the dash.
I slipped a bit of shrink wrap over the wire before feeding through the door and connecting to the switch.
The wiring circuit has a live to one side of the lamp and 2 connection on the opposite side. One connection is a positive earth so that you can switch the light to be on permanently and the other connection attaches to the wire from the both doors to act a broken earth which is connected when the door is open and the sprung pin is released to make the circuit.
Another job done on the door was the broken door release lever.
I marked of where it needed attaching and removed it from the door lock to weld.
It works perfectly now.
The door caps also needed restoration as the veneer is cracked right through on both caps.
I had bought Birds eye maple veneer to cover it and made up a softener for the veneer but the more I thought about it the more I knew I would make a complete arse of it so after a bit of thought I decided that they would look better contrasting the door cards. I have plenty of veneer on the dash so a bit of colour on the caps would look great.
I had to remove the cracks or they would just come through the paint work so out with the sanding disk.
I sanded out all of the cracks down to base wood.
I then filled and sanded smooth.
After 3 coats of primer, sanding down between coats.
Then around 6 coats of the red base coat.
Not done yet although they are starting to look good, I shall start the lacquer tomorrow and give them around 6 coats before polishing back and waxing.
I have used my new airbrush to spray these and I am rather pleased with it, I bet no one new that Snap on make airbrushes and I bet even less people have heard of Bluepoint.
I am not to sure of the relationship but basically Blue point tools are Snap on, the airbrush instructions even have Snap on in brackets next to Blue point logo. I found this out quite a while ago and am always looking for Blue point tools on eBay and buy them when I can as they are Snap on at a quarter of the price.
So now you know.
See ya Paul
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