[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Or even better a real life test:

Decisive. I'm afraid I'd be in the fly-swatter camp!

[Jeroen]

Finally arrived:

This box was advertised on one of these Facebook adds. I make it a rule never ever to buy from anything that shows up on my FB feed. But I liked the look of this and it was cheap. So I ordered it. Like four months ago. It was an American company, but this stuff comes straight from China. Took four months from when I put my order in and my credit card was charged. Never mind. I have some good use for some of these!



I can get these from places like HBM, car parts stores as well, but they are usually brand specific. This is a good selection of all round stuff. (I hope)

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Put my new box with fastners to good use straight away. You will recall a few months ago I started working on a little cover plate underneath the spoiler. Somehow I had lost the original. It covers the hole into which the third brake light is fitted.

The little cover plate was easily made. But I could not find screws, bolts or anything that would attach it. Enter my new fasteners.



Pretty near damn perfect I say!



Two fasteners used. 413 to go, so I feel confident about the future, fastener wise that is!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Just received this massive box:



Inside, 8 LED TL tubes with 8 dummy starters.



So this will be my Saturday morning job. Replace all of the old fluorescent tubes. I will take all the starters, capacitors and other bits out. Each LED tube gets wired into the 220VAC directly, using the same two old wall switches from before. So I won’t be needing the dummy starters either. I prefer to rip out all the old electronic bits. In theory they should hardly draw any current, but why leave it connected.

So all the rewiring is to be done inside the Light fitting casing. Not a huge job I would think. Just need to move all the cars out of the way. I don’t want any mishaps! I can just see myself dropping a screwdriver right smack on top of my cars! All of a sudden this would become a very costly job.

I will try to take some simple JPEG images before and after to see if I can catch any colour differences. (Many of my images are shot in RAW and colour temperature doesn’t really matter as I correct for that in Lightroom when editing the images. )

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Saturday: Change fluorescent tube to LED tube day!

Here we go:

First thing I moved the Jaguar and Spider out of the way. Got my ladder out and had a good look at the wiring of this thing.



Quite a bit of wiring in there. I decided to take the whole fixture of the ceiling and put it on my worktable to have a proper look and figure out what is what



In all honesty, it was pretty straight forward once I had loosened up all the wiring.



These LED tubes need power only to one side. So even more wiring to get rid off!



Cut away some of the wiring, re-arranged some wiring.



Made a little make shift 220VAC connection to test the new wiring arrangement



Looks good so back onto the ceiling



For the next fixture I decided to leave it on the ceiling. I knew the re-wiring was pretty straight forward. Quickly rewired and testing



All good to go, so I pulled out all the other pieces of wiring. I also pulled out all the starters, the capacitors and the ballasts.

Lot of stuff that came out. I will try to flog it on the internet







Also, I pulled out a lot of wiring:



This is an image I took last night with the old fluorescent tubes:



And this one I took this evening with the new LED tubes:



So a little more natural light by the looks of it!

With all the cars out of the garage I also took the opportunity to mop the floor with a good degreaser/hot water mixture:





After I had finished I decided to take the Mercedes W123 for a little spin. Had not driven it for at least 6-7 weeks. So I drove over to one of our favourite spots. The marina at Drimmelen:

Had a very typical Dutch lunch; Uitsmijter (Three eggs on bread with ham).



On the way back a quick stop at the car wash



So all good to go again.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

When we were staying in France with our friends Cees and Annelies, Cees presented me with another little project.

Recently he was given an old dentist vacuum pump by someone. However, it wouldn’t work. So we opened it up and the con rod was broken.



I also opened up and inspected the pump itself. Very simple membrane and even simpler valves. All looks in good order.

The reason the con rod broke was the bearing. It was in very poor condition. So I reckon it overheated and came close to seizing. This thing is driven by a sizeable e-motor, so when the bearing seized it snapped the con rod.

So I need to find a new bearing (easy) and to either repair this one, or make a new one.

Hopefully my workshop soldering is on in a few weeks. Maybe it can be soldered with the right technique. Not so sure about making a new one. Obviously, Would simply take a piece of aluminium round bar and turn it in the required shape. But I think it will be considerable more heavy than the original. It is very very light. I suppose it is some kind of aluminium cast. Not sure.

Cees had already tried to find this company or representation. I have just spend a half hour googling, but nothing has come up yet. I might have one lead and I just mailed them. Even so, fixing stuff is always more fun and way more interesting than replacing it with new!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Got some suggestions on my Dutch model engine forum on the material for the con rod. It is likely to be Zamak. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamak )

So essentially a zinc aluminium alloy. It used for many different applications. Including toys. This made me think. You might recall I tried removing the paint of my first Jaguar XJR model some time ago. Whichever paint stripper I tried it would not work, so finally I put a torch to it.

And subsequently it collapsed, even before any paint peeled off! I had another look at it and it looks and feels similar to this con rod.

I found a specialist not too far from here, but he was very doubtful whether he could solder this. (and it would cost a lot!)

I will carefully measure and photograph it some more. Then I will take it with me to my workshop soldering. Maybe I can attempt to fix it, if I melt it, I will make a new one out of aluminium.

Jeroen

[Sutripta]

Zamak/ Mazak is normally referred to as pot metal. Would be an odd choice of material (but not impossible) for something which will have a fair degree of mechanical stress, and is hidden from view. Soldering/ welding etc. you are unlikely to maintain centre to centre distances and parallelism.

Sutripta

[Jeroen]

As I mentioned before, over the last 7-8 months all car related events and exhibition have been cancelled and or postponed. Two of my favourite ones were rescheduled to be held in a few weeks. The British Cars & LifeStyle exhibition and the British Car Part show. A few days ago both were cancelled/rescheduled for 2021. Both rely on a mix of clubs and commercial enterprises attending. Apparently on both it was the (classic) car clubs that were not comfortable participating. Shame, but it is what it is.

Some rallies and some tours are happening. By and large people feel more comfortable being out and about with others, than being stuck in an event hall with thousands of people. Next week my Jaguar forum club is organising it’s annual “Zeelandrit”. A tour in the province of Zeeland, organised by Raymond the owner of G&G Services. The Jaguar specialist featured several times in this thread. Looking forward to it.

That same weekend my old neighbour Toon is bringing his Mercedes W123 Coupe over as well. One of this windows appears to be stuck. We always enjoyed helping each other out when we lived next door to one another. Toon and his car feature in this thread on some of the first pages. (We were still neighbours at that time).

So no major car events by the looks of it. But at least a couple of car related things to look forward to next weekend.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

I spend a little time on my cars today. Mainly checking a few things and making a list of jobs to do in the coming months. Some of it is likely to be pushed out to the winter stop.



On the Mercedes W123 not much. I am still not entirely happy with how the engine runs. I have all the parts for a carburator overhaul, so I might want to do that. Also, still not 100% happy with the wheel allignement either. Still pulls a bit to the right.

Not much on the Jaguar XJR; the special registration plate holder at the front I made several years ago needs a respray.

The list on the Alfa Spider is a little longer. I will replace the rear discs, pads and hoses during this winter stop. With the wheels off the car and the car on axle stands I will also replace the rear axle bumps and straps. These are really precautionary safety devices. They limit the (vertical) travel of the rear axle. Over the years the straps just wear out. There is bits of them trailing underneath the car. Theoretically a simple job, but in practice very often difficult because the bits have not been removed since the car was build!

I have the odd little rust spot here and there. Need to remove the panel in front of the windscreen. Fiddly job.

Ever since out trip to France my door has been squealing when driving. Specifically on bumpy roads where the car chassis gets torqued. It sounds as if some of the rubbers almost scrapes along the metal of the door. I tried a few things on the road, grease and vaseline on the rubbers. That did stop it but only for a few hours. So I need to investigate some more.

Finally, I need to get the driver doorcard sorted. I have replaced all the various clips that hold it in place several times over. But it keeps getting loose. With my new box of fasteners I might have a better solution.

Now just to find some time, when not working, building my model engine, cycling etc.

I also noticed that I overlooked one complete set of fluorescent fittings when replacing them earlier. Somehow I never noticed the fifth one that I hung over the corner with my L-shaped worktop! The good news though; these are relative new tubes. When I throw the switch they light up almost straight away. I also have kept the spare tube. So for now I will leave it.


Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

"Spider Oil"

Must be hard to get. I bet it takes tens of thousands of spiders to make 1 litre

[Sutripta]

^^^
There is a world of difference between the.cold pressed extra virgin and the merely pure stuff not to mention the stuff which is blended/ bulked with castor oil.

In any case animal rights activists are on the case. (Some PETA members have a severe case of arachnophobia and have cried off the case).

Sutripta

[Jeroen]

I am so glad you guys are enjoying my thread and reading and studying it meticulously, 😀, not putting anything out of context, 😆

[Jeroen]

Today is a very long and late night working day. I will have calls till 2300pm. So I decided to pop over to HBM first thing this morning and exchange the incorrect piloted counterbores I bought earlier. The rest of the week and the weekend are completely filled up with all kinds of stuff.

Exchanging things is never a problem with them. But I did not want to leave it too long.

So I got myself this very nice workshop stool instead! I mostly stand at my workbenches, certainly when working with the lathe and the mini mill. I am very pleased with the height of my workbench as it is pretty perfect for standing at. I don’t need to bend over!

But when checking stuff, measuring, comparing, reading drawing and such, it is nice to be able rest my bum sometimes.



Its got one of these vertical adjustable thingies, so it make for a very comfortable way of sitting at my (relative) high workbench.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

I get the impression that... nobody does machining sitting down?

What is the reason for that? Is it a safety thing, that one cannot jump back? Or an alertness thing?