[anjan_c2007]

Felt the need to start such a thread as something of this kind took place with my Lady Love,the Landmaster. I will tell about it in the later paras but will now harp upon the scope of this thread.
I would request my fellow teambhpians to please tell about alternatives they have either devised or fabricated or sourced and have emerged with success not in any way affecting the originality of the car or bike in question.Many spares are simply impossible to procure and the vintage beauty is immobilised in many cases for the want of such a spare or spares.
Coming back to my Landmaster,its starting system was posing many niggling problems since many months. I had written about the self activator in a "Spares" thread here, as it had conked off due to the self starter armature getting jammed (bush problem) and needing a lot of battery power, that burnt the contacts of the self activator.
Teambhpians Indrojit and Piyush had readily offered help with the activator problem and I thank them for their efforts.
Thankfully, I could get a brand new "Made in England" Lucas self activator at Kolkata during my trip there last week.
The self starter switch is operated from the dash (extreme right under the meters) that engages the activator and has a wire system,which pulls the activator to make up the contact and engage the self starter.
As there was no earthing in my car, the wire melted away while fitting was in progress and there was a big spark.The electrical system was then earthed, but now how about getting such a wire to replace the burnt one? My mechanic (garage owner) told his worker to get an accelerator cable of the Bajaj scooter which he intended to fit with the switch.
The worker enroute to the spares shop got a novel idea. Why go for a simple cable and not something just like the original? He had worked upon Minidors and Vikrams (both three wheelers) which too have a wire operated self switch.He bought two of these wires (not with cable as the Landmaster cable was intact) for me @ Rs 15 each.
And when he arrived at the workshop, the wire was found to be longer than needed.At one end it was the wire, while at the other there was a welded metallic rod with threading to fit the self switch.The wire was greased and routed from within the "Made in England" cable. And Eureka! The Landmaster's self switch smugly got fitted the threading as long lost friends.
The extra wire was cut and sized to reach upto the self activator.The system is working fantastically now.
I decry the electrician who told me to switch over to the Ambassador's ignition key operated ignition system and get rid of the switch- self activator. I had curtly told him that the old system was working for 55 years and now with a stroke it would be foolhardy to change over to the Ambassadorial system.
I hope fellow members whosoever have switch operated self starters in their old cars can use the Minidor/Vikram starter switch wire (or cable if the cable is missing) to run their starters in case the original wire fails.Even the choke or accelerator cables/ wires can be substituted with these 3 wheeler cables that are plentifully available even in villages!

[kevinephraim]

A very nice thread to start Anjan!

We here in india are lacking in many many original or repro spares for our vintage and classic cars unlike US and UK where they are easily available. Though many may call this the "JUGAAD fix" thread, it is what works and finally at the end of the day what we want is what works!

I hope there are others out there who will input the max into this thread.