0024 The Electrics get sorted
23rd July 2020
And I go for a ride in a sidecar !
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| Sorting out electrics |
Things continue to move slowly, which I am finding very frustrating. The
carbs are still under repair, but last Monday one major advancement
occurred - Phil Palmer from Shed 13 Kustom Electrics came round and
helped me sort out the electics. He still left me plenty to do, but atleast he found why the fuses kept blowing. It
took Phil a while to go through the mess of wiring that is currently in
place, and after chasing a few red herrings, he said "There is a short
in the front right hand indicator". I couldn't believe this - I had
taken great care with the wiring down in the lights, and if the LH unit
was working, why wasn't the RH one ? Anyway, I took the indicator apart
- And guess what ? I had
mixed up the two wires and put them on the
wrong pins !! Whoopsadaisy ! I just swapped over the
two wires,
and bingo, indicators work, 4-way flashers work, and no fuse blown !!
After making a few more changes that I need for wiring in a tacho
instead of a clock, and a couple of other items, Phil left me to tidy up
my mess !!
Next chore was to get the gauges wired up and into their sockets in the dash, and this was not easy. My original dashboard was a disaster, too far gone with damage from the hot Australian sun for any kind of repair, so I had bought a new fibreglass dash from S Africa - Right hand drive dashboards are like hens teeth. LH Drive ones are easy to get from the US, but I had no choice but to go this route, and even fixing it to the metal dash base had been a nightmare. The gauges actually locate in the metal base, but are held in place by the fibreglass cover, so
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| Getting the gauges installed |
the correct distance between the two is crucial for the gauges to be held firmly in position. When I first put the gauges in, they fell right through the fibreglass section and were loose, so I had to come up with some way of spacing them out. Eventually I bought some hard foam strips which I glued into circles to fit tightly round the gauges. The plan was that this would hold the gauges in the correct position. After several hours of working how to best to do it, I finally tried inserting my first gauge - And it nearly worked ! So I made thicker hard firm hoops, and this gave the gauge the support it needed to locate firmly into position. Eventually I managed to do the same for the other two gauges, and finally, all were in place, and working. Big relief for me as I have been really struggling with this issue.
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| Heading out |
I took a break from the car to go and see a friend of mine. Dean is a 4WD specialist, and he not only helped me find and buy my Landcruiser in 2013, but prepped it for my round the world trip, and then during the trip was always ready to help me when I had mechanical issues. Last year he retired and planned to do the same trip that I had done, but on a
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| Passenger's view |
motorcycle, leaving last March. However Corona virus put a stop to that, so he has now purchased a Russian Ural sidecar, fitted it to his BMW, and he and his wife are now off around Australia. I haven't been in a sidecar since I was a teenager, so I went round to see him for a ride in his new toy. We went out for about half an hour, and I couldn't stop smiling the whole time. A great morning !
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| Oil temp & pressure gauges |
It was then back to work on Clementine, and fitting the VDO oil pressure and temperature gauges. A bracket to mount these gauges had arrived and once I found a place to mount it. I started wiring them all up, which took quite a while, and once all finished, I tested them and they had power and lights, so looking good. Need the engine running before I can be sure they are fully working.
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| Wiper blades fitted |
I then cleaned up, painted, and then fitted the wiper arms. I had put new blades in earlier, so once painted, I quickly fitted them.
And they work too - Looking good ! I moved onto the passenger side door trim and carpets - Since the passenger side is now effectively complete, I need to glue in the foot well carpets on the front firewall. The metal door trim strip had to be fitted first, and this took some time as the seat belts all needed to be removed (again !), and the carpet cut and amended as necessary around the seat belt bracket. Then it was time to glue the carpet in place - And as I trial fitted the carpet pieces that were made to "factory design", it was unfortunately obvious that the fit was not perfect, and I had to spend some time working out how best to install the carpets so they fitted as well as possible. (In hindsight, perhaps I should have just had carpets made from scratch by a local company ? Maybe next time !!). Eventually I got the side trim in, and then the front section, gluing them piece by piece, and waiting for the glue to "go off" before I could not the next piece, and by the end of the day had the left hand side completed ! Time to put the passenger seat in !!
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| Side trim & carpets in |
But then I realised I had some other things to do before i could put the seats in - First of all the back seat. This would be easier to install before the front seat was in, so I finally brought the back seat squab out from its resting place of the last 2 months - The dining room !! But first, i remembered another time consuming item I needed to do to the seat before installation - Fit an electrical shield underneath ! The battery sits
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| Protection under seat |
immediately below the seat, and if the springs under the seat come in contact with the battery terminals, disaster awaits. And VW's are quite famous for such occurrances, so I needed to take precautions. I used a flexible kitchen cutting board as they are stong and flexible, cut it to says, punched holes around the edges, and zip tied it in place above the battery, so shielding the metal springs. I also fitted plastic caps over the terminals themselves - double insurance, and one less thing to worry about.
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| Rear & pax seats in |
Like the seat back, the lower squab is also a very tight fit, and it took some time of wiggling it this way and that before it would drop into place. When it finally did, I then had to try to get it to fit onto the two steel pins which hold it in place from below without damaging the seat cover itself from underneath. Done - Not easy, but done. There certainly is a knack to these things, and hopefully the next time I have to take the seat out or put it in will be easier !
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| Seat base on backwards ! |
When I fitted the front seat backs to their bases, the first one was straightforward, but the second one
had me scratching my head - Until I realised that Steve the upholsterer had actually fitted the seat squab onto its base
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| Worn seat latches |
backwards ! I took it back to Steve rather than attempting this relatively simple correction myself, and after a bit of a laugh about it, he soon unclipped it and rotated it to its correct position, no harm done. While doing this, I also found that one of the latches that enable the seat back to flip forwards was worn and would not release easily. On inspection I realised that repeated usage had just worn a groove in the lever, which meant it wasn't fully able to disengage. A quick trip down to my metal guru Andrew and he welded up the space and filled out the groove in the lever, and once refitted, it all worked perfectly.
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| Sorting the glove box out |
Way way back in time, the VW manual instructed me to remove the glove box in order to reach the
nuts behind the dashboard that hold the grab handle and thus the whole dashboard in place. However this was one of those things that proved to be harder than expected, and the cardboard box itself suffered major damage, partly due to frustration on my part, I must admit. Now it was time to fix the damage ! I had carefully kept the broken pieces, and with the aid of some craft glue I managed to fix all the pieces back into position. However the carboard itself was suffering from age, and continually shed dust every time it was touched - A solution was needed. I found some grey felt in my pile of "stuff" on my shelves, and carefully cut out shapes that would enable me to line the box and not only look good, but also give it a whole new lease on life. This is a work in
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| Gear shift sticker on ashtray |
progress at this time, as I needed to move on to other tasks, I put it aside for now. In the meantime the glove box door was fitted with new allen head bolts (because the factory screws are almost impossible to fit without scratching the paint !), and the original ashtray (which I had cleaned inside and out and painted some months ago) went back in - With a new gear shift pattern sticker on the front, as per the original.
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| Voltmeter |
Meanwhile I had purchased a cheap digital voltmeter from Jaycar,
and I made up a small mounting bracket out of alloy, and then painting it satin black. I made sure it was all working as intended by testing it on a 9v battery - all good ! I find voltmeters very reassuring in older cars as they enable you to easily verify that the alternator (or in this case, the original generator) is working correctly, and charging the battery. I want to avoid fitting an alternator if possible because it requires several modifications to the cooling covers of the engine, so with only 30 - 35 amps available, and a number of modern electrical items to fit (like GPS, phone chargers, and radio), I need to keep a close eye on the current I am using.
With the gauges all wired up and fitted and working, I spent some time getting all the wiring back under the dash - It really is a mess under there ! I was told by someone who works on VW's a lot that when it came to Type 3's, it seems that they just lost the plot and stuffed the wiring up out of sight and forgot about it ! I think they are right ! There are still some things to sort out, but right now I want to get the car running and registered.
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| All the insides now sitted |
With the wiring tucked away, I was then able to glue in the driver's side carpet, and then fit the driver's seat. With that in, I fitted the steering wheel and horn ring (which took a bit of fettling to get it working correctly), as well as a thicker leather steering wheel cover to hid some of the unsightly scratches on the wheel, as well as make it more comfortable to hold - the original skinny plastic wheel is really not very "tactile" !! Very smart, and makes the car almost look finished - Just need to get the engine running !
For that I needed some carburettors. Steve has had all sorts of
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| The carbs come back |
problems with them, mainly because the body of one of them had been twisted quite badly, meaning none of the faces sealed. It has taken him a long time of gently heating and then using a press to gradually straighten it out, repeatedly doing this until finally it was correct. In the meantime Andrew had found some small rod of the correct size to remake new accelerator rods, to replace the totally destroyed original units that we started with. Overall, the repair of these carbs has been one of the major complications in the rebuild, due to this model of Solex carb being so rare, and spare parts being unobtainable. But they were now finished !
Once home, I set to work to fit them. On the VW they are hidden away on either side of the engine and not too easy to reach, but I eventually got them fitted and bolted down. various fuel lines and vaccuum tubes had to be fitted up, and this took a while too. Eventually everything was ready, and after running up and down to the local petrol station with my 5 litre fuel can I put 20 litres in the tank, I put a squirt of fuel into each carb, and turned the key ............and she fired immediately !! 😊 After over 6 months of work this was a great moment.
However, she would not keep running, and after the fuel in the carb was used, she stopped. I checked the fuel lines, and it seemed that fuel was not getting through from the tank. I checked under the tank, and the fuel filter was full of fuel, so what was the problem ? One by one I pulled the lines off, and blew them out, but they were all fine. I even removed and fitted a new fuel pump, but that made no difference - the (rebuilt) original was evidently working just fine. By now it was the end of the day, so I went to supper and bed, perplexed and thinking about the problem.
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| Fuel filter removed |
Next morning, after thinking about it, I planned to take the fuel filter off from below the fuel tank and check it out, knowing I would get fuel on me because I was squeezed under the car. However when the hose came off in my hands, it caught me by surprise and I got absolutely covered in
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| Twisted neck of filter |
fuel - in my face, eyes, everywhere, and that stuff STINGS ! I had to get a piece of pre-prepared blanked hose back on to stop the flow before I squirmed out from under the car and rinsed myself down, so I was really hurting by the time I got out, and it took me some time to get my eyes washed out. Later, when I pulled the plastic fuel filter off the hose I found the end of the filter was almost totally blocked because it had somehow got twisted when I fitted it to the pipe some 5 months ago ! No wonder no fuel was getting through to the carbs !
With everything sorted, I fired her up again - and she ran !! Albeit very roughly - It seemed she was missing on at least one cylinder - But at least she was running. I wasn't about to pull the carbs apart due to my inexperience with them - I would wait for Steve - So over the next couple of days I decided to redo a lot of the ignition wiring to make sure that that was all good. I fitted a new coil, new spark plug leads, and a new rotor arm in the distributor. I also double checked the timing and made sure that I hadn't made any mistakes there. Finally, on Saturday, Steve came over. Before he arrived I took the top off the right hand carb and found the float bowl full
Firing her up for the first time
of fuel. I then took the top of the left hand carb - and the float bowl was empty ! Steve arrived at that moment, and after fiddling with it for a while, he found that the little needle valve was sticking, and not allowing fuel to flow into the carb ! We still had an original needle, and after fitting that and putting everything back together, we fired her up........and she ran almost perfectly, at last. Steve spent some time resetting the idle jets to obtain a steady idle, and matched the two carbs using a length of plastic pipe as a stethoscope, and soon Clementine was sitting there idling smoothly. What a great feeling for me after so long and so many frustrations.
After Steve left, I fitted the oil filled air filter for the first time since I removed it on Day 1, double checked everything else. and then took Clementine out for a quick first drive round the block. All the gears worked, brakes worked (but need bedding in !), steering might need adjustment as a little play at straight ahead, but other than that, all good. She pulled strongly, and I think I am going to enjoy driving her over the coming months. Happy at last. Now the weekend, I will get a (compulsory) safety inspection done on Monday, and as soon as I have that, I can get her insured and registered. There are still a number of minor things that need doing, but they can wait until I have her registered and on the road. For now, the major work is over ! First Drive !
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