Month: September 2012

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MOT/DMV updates

The battery is now strapped down to the battery bracket. Rather unnecessary if you ask me (I know, no one asked) with an AGM type battery – it can be mounted in any position, and there isn’t anything to leak out in the event of an accident.

http://www.batterystuff.com/kb/articles/battery-articles/battery-basics.html

The parking brake now works on both sides – this design has additional calipers on the rear discs on both sides, with a wire leading to the emergency brake handle in the car. With 2 tonnes to stop in a potential situation, both calipers really need to do their job in order to have any chance at stopping the car.

The speedometer is working now, it turned out that the generator or elbow angle was not working correctly. We tried hooking it up directly to the output of the transmission and suddenly everything worked.

Although it appears that the speedo, while working, is showing the wrong speed – 100km/h shows as about 60. Could be that one of the poles of the generator isn’t working as it should. Time to order a replacement.

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Exhaust

The exhaust had started to wheeze and even leak a little recently, resulting in unpleasant noxious fumes in the cabin. It was especially problematic with the windows down, and with as much beautiful warm sunny weather we have here, a lot of driving is done with the windows rolled down…

A quick inspection revealed that the PO had connected the headers to the exhaust pipes without any gasket or clamp, and it was surprising it didn’t make more noise than it did.

2 olive gaskets and exhaust clamps later and the beast is purring like a 2 tonne kitten, not a whiff of exhaust to be had in the cabin anymore.

Nice. Ready for the next problem!

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Speedometer

Tried out some different things with a mechanic friend today and got the speedometer to work. We kept checking each part of the puzzle, and found that the angle on the impulse generator was causing the problems with the speedometer not working. Connecting the generator directly to the output of the gear on the transmission resulted in the speedo working, but showing too low a speed. Inspecting the angle, it doesn’t appear to offer any change to the rotational speed hitting the generator module, leading us to suspect a problem with the generator itself.

So now I need to find a replacement generator and angle and see of everything works after swapping in a new unit.