Practically Classics Forum

A bad day!

I spent all morning in the pouring rain stripping out the lpg
system on that car in the scrapyard.
Only to get to where there should have been a control
modual for the lpg system to have been hacked out of the
loom!

A total waste of time for me but I did manage to get a full
size wheel as a spare for mother.

I spent 2 hours in the bath then 4 hours in bed piled high
with blankets and quilts to try and get warm again.

The LED lights arrived on thursday, but I had just put them to
one side till last night. I cut off the plugs and made a long run
wiring loomfor routing around the inside of the boot lid.

I do some of my best work at night when everybody else is out
of my hair.



I have used the void left by the boot lid reinforcement to place
the lights. The wiring has since been tucked inside the cable
wrap which takes the high level brake light cables.





I fitted the LED lights after sorting out a wiring fault on the boot
lights which would have either caused a fire or just keep running
the battery flat.

The car and the horse box have had to be moved ready for dad.
He will be starting on an overhaul of the boat trailer soon.
With the weather being okay, dad has been in the garage and on
the drive making replacement gates (so no space for me to do
what I wanted to do!)as the current ones are starting to rot.

No photos today, but a little work done ready for the next dry day.
I pulled out a bit of metal plate and marked it ready for cutting with
a grinder. This plate will be bolted onto the top of the transmission
mount to hold the coil pack behind the fusebox.

The trailer can bus relay only needs the power supply from front to
back to power it, as all other wires for the towbar electrics are
hooked up. I will mount the can bus relay next to reverse parking
sensor modual once the power supply cable is connected.

I have picked up some stainless steel bolts to replace those on the
towbar electrical socket once I have removed the only rotten bolt left
holding it on.

While the weather was good a few things were done.
A fixing plate was cut and drilled, one of the oil cooler radiator fixing
bars re drilled and cut to length. The replacement coolant filler neck
adapter plate was drilled (but not completed)

I have made a decision on the EGR system. For the moment I will
blank off the hole with the blanking plates I made today, so I can get
the engine running. So that I can save for the custom pipe for the egr.



A quick blast of heat resistant paint before hanging them up in the
tool shed.



Although the removal of the EGR System may throw a code and the
Check Engine Light may have been lit under normal circumstances.

However as the Voyager instrument cluster would display the gauges
and lights from reading the can bus system, the MK1 Neon doesn't
operate the same way and would normally have it's own wire.

So when Christine does to go to the MOT test either with or without the
EGR System, the Check Engine light will need to lit then go off as it did
previously, to get around this #i will connect this light into the ABS light.
Does anyone think they will pass this?

. edited by me at 13:30. Reason - see Rick's post below.

Technically that'd be illegal, so I wouldn't be advising you to do anything like that on a public forum.

Why not just leave the valve connected?

Luxobarge wrote:Technically that'd be illegal, so I wouldn't be advising you to do anything like that on a public forum.

Why not just leave the valve connected?

As the Voyagers egr valve was on the old intake manifold and the damaged I
would be having to use the one off the neon, which has no bracket to hold it
up and and all of the pipe for the egr system will not fit.
As I sid before the voyager and teh neon mk1 run on 2 different systems and
the there is no wire from the voyager ecu to run the Check Engine light. On
the Voyager the Instrument panel runs and displays information which is
passed to to it on the can bus system. The neon mk1 instruments each one
had it's own wire from the enginebay wether it was the ecu or a sensor.

Here is one of the tweaters finished.





Heres what it looked like outside when it stopped raining,
and looking at the next lot of rain heading my way!







I feel my build is a little exposed!!

Well the blanking plate on the manifold has been fitted and I
used plenty of gasket seal.



The other blanking plate I made for the exhaust manifold was
too small, so I made another.. A couple of coats of heat
resistant paint.

And while the paint was drying I opened the box that came in
the post this morning, and was greeted with this which I bought
off the bay of E. £6 inc postage only one snag there is no plug
and wiring on the back to run the gauge acording to the ebay
listing.



While the grinder was out, I carefully cut through the horrid plastic
surround, and removed it. After a quick rummage through my draw
of old smiths gauges, and found a glass dial face and a chrome ring
to go on.



Now that looks a lot better, I'll do more on the Air/Fuel Ratio gauge
tonight after supper.

I started back on the Blanking Plate for the exhaust manifold. And it
was in a bad spot for me as I ended up with cutting my arm many
times on the heat shield. As I was doing it blind and everything by
touch, and it was in such a place I could only do an 8th of a turn
each tome wiyh an open ended 13mm spanner. I couldn't see what
was about to happen next!!!!

The lower bolt F'ing sheered in two!!!!

By this time I had been doing stuff all day and my body had been
pushed past it's limit. As I turned around to throw the spanner at
the open door of the tool shed as I was P'ed off!! It was if my right
ankle wasn't there, and I went down like a ton of bricks.

Hot bath and a fish supper before I contemplate anything.

I think the top bolt is in tight and I did put plenty exhaust assembly
paste on. So I am in two minds as to what I should do.

a) Leave it as it is till I fire up the engine and hope that the hole is
plugged up and wont require me to have to redo it!

OR

b) Take the Exhaust manifold off and drill and tap it for another bolt!

Well the Air/Fuel Ratio gauge guts removed, and as luck would
have it I recognised that the socket was very close to the plug
used by the a drive(3.5 inch floppy disc drive) of a computers
power supply wiring loom.

So a little trimming of a a plug off athe old pc wiring loom and I
have it ready to go into the harness of the car. Even better was
the fact that on the circuit board has the wire colours displayed.



And this is what was upposed to be the light, but it doesn't work.



I might get an standard led light and put it in to replace it.