Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

Lovely cars there Zel... My choice, by far is the blue 205 GTi

The blue 205 apparently is apparently propelled by the engine and gearbox from a 306 GTi-6.

Spoilt beyond redemption then The owner should be severely admonished for doing such a dastardly thing

Bet it goes well though

[Rp0thejester]

If it saved it from the scrap them fair play to the owner, also a wolf in sheep's clothing. Must be fun at the lights!!

[Gibbo2286]

Pretty sure the Rover is an aftermarket paint job, don't like it myself but everyone has their own taste.

[Zelandeth]

Had a couple of people ask me what's inside the huge great air box that looks like an exhaust silencer. The answer is a fair amount of empty space and a very ordinary air cleaner element.



Not sure what this has actually come from (and it helpfully has zero markings on), as at least when most of the documents I've read on these cars were written, the correct elements were unavailable and this one isn't the worst fit at all.

Had very little time available today but was determined to tick at least one thing off the to do list. Today's was functionally irrelevant but felt like an achievement.

Spot the difference. Well aside from the location and time of day anyway...





Hopefully those being missing will stop being the thing that everyone I speak to about the car in person immediately points out to me now.

Also had a look at the passenger door.

The issue is clear to see here.



The top of the door sits the best part of 1/4" too far out. Which now I've noticed a very distinct gouge directly above the trailing edge of the door and paint flaked off the gutter I almost wonder if the door top has been bent by someone breaking in (or attempting to).

The whole upper edge sits too far out though, which means that most of the leading edge sits proud of the gutter.



The result of this being absolutely horrendous amounts of wind noise. It is honestly quieter with the passenger window open than closed.

Here's the driver's side for comparison.



That door has dropped slightly through wear so doesn't contact the seal along the top edge very well, but even so it doesn't make an undue racket. The passenger side is horrendous though.

There doesn't seem to be any adjustment range left in the hinge setup, so I think a bit of brute force may well just be needed here to convince the top of the door to sit closer to where it's meant to.

[MattBLancs]

Depending on the dimensions, perhaps you could convert it to the cylindrical filter as per 306 XUD (would need the central rod extending and a new "cap" to seal the end

Picture from Eurocarparts / Google

Also on eBay
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175275953160?

[Gibbo2286]

The big fat box air cleaner used to be referred to as an intake air silencer Zel, the bent door I would get a firm grip on the top and bend it back making sure first that the window is in a position to avoid being broken, usually fully closed.

[Rp0thejester]

Had a couple of people ask me what's inside the huge great air box that looks like an exhaust silencer. The answer is a fair amount of empty space and a very ordinary air cleaner element.



Not sure what this has actually come from (and it helpfully has zero markings on), as at least when most of the documents I've read on these cars were written, the correct elements were unavailable and this one isn't the worst fit at all.

Had very little time available today but was determined to tick at least one thing off the to do list. Today's was functionally irrelevant but felt like an achievement.

Spot the difference. Well aside from the location and time of day anyway...





Hopefully those being missing will stop being the thing that everyone I speak to about the car in person immediately points out to me now.

Also had a look at the passenger door.

The issue is clear to see here.



The top of the door sits the best part of 1/4" too far out. Which now I've noticed a very distinct gouge directly above the trailing edge of the door and paint flaked off the gutter I almost wonder if the door top has been bent by someone breaking in (or attempting to).

The whole upper edge sits too far out though, which means that most of the leading edge sits proud of the gutter.



The result of this being absolutely horrendous amounts of wind noise. It is honestly quieter with the passenger window open than closed.

Here's the driver's side for comparison.



That door has dropped slightly through wear so doesn't contact the seal along the top edge very well, but even so it doesn't make an undue racket. The passenger side is horrendous though.

There doesn't seem to be any adjustment range left in the hinge setup, so I think a bit of brute force may well just be needed here to convince the top of the door to sit closer to where it's meant to.

She's looking beautiful!! It's hard to believe at times the age of her!!

[Zelandeth]

Learned a couple of things yesterday.

1. Those doors are exceptionally sturdy.

2. The bottom hinge isn't bolted to the passenger door.

I suspect this may have something to do with the alignment issues...

[CitroJim]

I suspect this may have something to do with the alignment issues...

You never know Zel Hope it's all easy and straightforward to fix!

[Zelandeth]

Finally!



That only took us a month and 12 days if my math is right. To sort a brake imbalance issue due to a sticking caliper.

Of course as this has been a farce from square one (through no real fault of the garage by the way), the job had one last laugh to have...want to guess what the weather looked like here when I got the call to say it was ready?





Thunder storm decided that was the perfect moment to arrive - exactly the sort of conditions I wanted for a five or so mile bike ride...so I took the Caddy and thankfully found somewhere nearby to park up until I could get a lift back later in the day to retrieve that rather than getting drowned or struck by lightning.


The passenger door on the Rover I discovered only had one loose bolt in the lower hinge rather than three.



Having properly secured it down there has definitely helped with the alignment.





Still sitting a bit further out at the top edge than it should be, but a lot better than it was. Wind noise is still far worse than the driver's side, but is less deafening than it used to be. So progress in the right direction at least.

[mickthemaverick]

They are not the lightest doors on the P4 so with a non functioning bottom hinge it is likely that the torque imposed on the top hinge when the door was opened may well have pulled that hinge forward a touch and you may be able to adjust it back to the correct position!

[CitroJim]

Excellent news on both fronts Zel

I recall no heavy rain at all yesterday... Just a coupe of light, short storms. Must have been very localised!

[Zelandeth]

The "I refuse to be beaten by this thing" theme has continued with the latest electronics project.



The desoldering station is an absolute game changer. Doesn't eliminate work entirely when dealing with old, heavily oxidised/corroded solder joints on these boards (which is why it's set so high in the photo), but does vastly reduce it. Removing components which don't have really awful solder takes seconds. Worth every penny of the £70 or so it cost.



For one it allowed me to reasonably undertake an experiment. Transferring all of the top side transistors from the "parts board" which I was fairly convinced nothing would be fried on - mainly because this is the extent of the corrosion on it!



Guess what...the partial short remains. One of the smaller FETs continues to immediately get roasting hot. I managed to trace the line switching it via another FET array to one of the pins on one of the microcontrollers. Lifting that pin switches the device off and the short vanishes - which means the problem is downstream of the thing actually getting hot most likely...and despite my best efforts I can't trace that usefully to save my life as it splits off in several directions, at least two of which appear to be via one of the internal layers on the board. Most likely the culprit is one of the surface mount components on the underside of the board.

So...new plan. Switch to another board. There is another one which was at least trying to work with the caps changed, even with one of the transistors on the top literally blown to bits (which is part of the battery charging circuit I think).

So everything save for the big inductors, power resistors and ICs has been removed from the topside of the board. Allowing me to thoroughly clean it and leaving me with a pile of bits. Something I have ordered from Farnell is a component analyser which should be able to ID and test things like this lot.



Which up till now aside from the diode test function on my multimeter I've really had no way to do anything with. Several helpfully have no markings at all or custom part numbers on so I've no idea what they even are. Between all the boards I have, hopefully we can get a full set with none which are obviously faulty.

If that doesn't result in a working board...well I guess I start working through doing a similar remove - test - swap routine for the surface mount actives underneath the board. Which I'd really rather not as I *really* am not set up for surface mount rework, but if I have to I have to.

If that doesn't work...well then I just give in and build us an alternative power supply.

One of the other faulty boards is actually working to the point it's flashing an error code which probably would point me right to where the fault is if I had a service manual for the board...sadly as this was just a "replace and return to base" component as far as Toshiba was concerned there were never any "field service" guides produced which go into things like decoding the flash codes. That one has several badly damaged traces though, so I think is a bit of a lost cause as I suspect I'd be chasing my tail trying to repair that for years once you throw in a couple of corroded layer-to-layer vias into the equation as well.

[Hell Razor5543]

I was near Swindon today (heading to Marlborough) when I spotted a TPA on a trailer. I am not sure which would be rarer or more fun, but I think the one I saw might be a tad more expensive. TPA 709, which (according to the DVLA) is a 1953 AC car of some sort, with a 2l engine.

[CitroJim]

Zel, I admire you tenacity with those laptop PSUs...

Definitely going to get one of those desoldering stations