Spyder restoration - long time coming

[peteracs]

As another aside I took stock of the stainless strips for the edge of the carpet next to the doors and the stainless strips above the sills and at the bottom of the doors. All were in need of a good clean and had a number of scratches. I remembered an old old Wheeler Dealers episode where they were renovating a Frogeye. Mike took the aluminium trim strips to a specialist polisher and the results were amazing. So, decided to look into how to polish stainless and came up with a company who were on Ebay. I gave them a ring and had a sensible conversation ending in buying a kit of three wheels and three polishes. The first is to get the surface scratches out, the next is to start returning to a shine and the final is to give it the normal stainless shine. This arrived promptly and was not expensive at just over £20 delivered. I have started on the carpet strip which was particularly bad with glue, paint and some bitumous adhesive. I first cleaned with Jizer, then rinsed and followed with Cif and finally used a Stanley Blade to remove the stubborn paint overspray. Then set to with the polishing kit. The results are as I had hoped with a nice even shine. Below are a couple of photos, the first is the one of the carpet strips before starting and the other the finished one. Not sure how well they will show the difference in the photos, but in the flesh a great result.

[peteracs]

The company is Metal Finishing Supplies, Cannock. Here is the kit which also includes a mandrel for a drill (not shown). Their card is included in the photo.

[WestonE]

Nice Work

I cheated and took bits to Pete the Polisher on West Wycombe Road. He does a lot of work for TV name restorations is very local and fairly cheap. Bumpers are more of a problem. I had to get my 2 front IE types done elsewhere and did not like the cost frankly. It would have taken a LONG time with a grinder mop and a lot of space.

Eric 

[peteracs]

Hi Eric

It helps that I am effectively retired so have more time than a lot of folk and have no target date for finishing the car. I am also enjoying finding out about these little skills and having a go at them. Some of the things I have done will be a bit on the bodge it side, but hopefully will be a decent result in the end.

Just in the middle of unscrambling the various odd wires for the dash. On this version you get wiring for things which do not exist/future use which is quite amusing as well as a switch which does nothing and has nothing attached to it.... Keeps you on your toes!

Peter

[peteracs]

I have now completed the headlining and fitted the seals around the windscreen, doors, targa roof and rear hood. The headlining took an age as never tried it before, the result is ok, but would not want to have to do many (any?) more of them. I have left the light aperture for after I have tested the electrics as once fitted I do not want to take it out again.....

[WestonE]

Hi Peter Impressive work!

I have this to look forward to and I am dreading it frankly. I have the new headlining sections ready to go, but find myself keenly doing everything else first.

Eric
 

[peteracs]

I can well understand that, I put it off for a while as well. Best of luck and take your time.

Peter

[peteracs]

Work on the car has been patchy this last month due partly to elderly parents needing to spend time with them, however I have been tackling the rats nest called the wiring loom behind the dash and mods for the lights, more of this in a future post when I have finished it.

The main reason for this post is a small thing, namely the door sill cover plastic ends (photo below). I was short of one pair which Eric kindly sent to me with another pair which are going spare should you need any. As with all of these it appears the plastic shrinks over time and hence they no longer fit the end of the covers by quite a bit. A solution I found which appears to work (time will tell) is to dip them into boiling water to make the plastic soft and stretch them over the sill covers and hold until they are cool again.

[peteracs]

Almost finished sorting the wiring, apart from changing all the connectors to try to achieve reliable connections (I have soldered each terminal as well as crimping the), I wanted to modify the wiring, again to improve what came as standard.

First up I noticed in the wiring there was a relay for the dipped beam, but not one for the full beam or side lights, which means reasonable current goes through the column switch and is most likely a cause of failure which I think is not uncommon. So I added two relays to the circuits and mounted them on the strut for the steering wheel. This keeps them out the way, but in the main cabin and near the column switches.

Next I decided to run earth wires from the battery to the rear lights, via the earth point on the steering column support strut, to both the earth points just below the front light assemblies. I am hoping this will again improve reliability.

One item which I have been working on and off of for quite a while are the main lights. A simple enough job you may think, but I did make it harder. I had only one set of original lights from this car and they were not original to the car being a set of Hella ones. These are original for to cars like mk3 Capri and BMW 3 series apparently. They are well made and have a metal cap arrangement at the rear which acts as a water tight cover for the bulb. The problem is that this cap has terminals which stick out and mean the whole light assembly protrudes well beyond the plastic cover on the Carello base plated I have. I could have just bought a new set of lights which have simple rubber caps, but decided to try to use the Hella ones as they are well made and sort of period for the car. Below are photos of the original cap arrangement and a modded version. basically I drilled out the rivets holding the terminals and removed the terminals, wires and outer plastic insulator. Then using the inner plastic insulator and some polyeurathane, sealed the holes at the rear. Then I drilled a hole in the side and installed grommet and two wires. I was bit concerned about heat buildup in the cap when the light is on, so went for Silicon coated wire which has much higher temp tolerance than PVC. The end result is that the plastic caps just fit over this a Hella cap, so pretty happy with the result as shown below. The supplier of the wire did not have grey, so went for blue and marked it with grey tape as grey is the colour for the dipped beam.

I still have to finish the main battery cables and fit the battery tray. The bodywork guys ended up welding it in place, rather than bolting it, so I removed it and found a replacement, but the support brackets are damaged and need some TLC to allow the tray to fit and be bolted down.

[peteracs]

Sorry this is a long missive over a few posts, but I wanted to document what I have done....

The one item on the car that has taken most of my time over the last 10 years has been the wiring. Initially I renewed nearly all of the connectors, both crimping and soldering them just to make sure. This alone took many days, it always amazes me just how many connectors there are and just when you think you have finished you find some you missed the last time round. I even found some recently which is years since I thought I had renewed them all. The only ones not renewed are the special ones which connect the instrument binnacle, so far testing has proven them to be ok, so will be left alone!

I also wanted to replace all the old style bulbs with led versions. I have always been a great fan of leds since I first started using them as a young electronics engineer in the late 70s. In general they just work and keep on working. Some research left me in to thinking that replacing the halogen headlights with led versions is not so simple, so apart from them, all the rest were fairly straight forward swaps with the odd detail change required. So with new connectors and leds I recently started testing the wiring and the following were the comments/issues found -

1) As mentioned previously, I noticed on this pre f/l version, the full current for the side lights and the full beam go through the stalk switch which I understand can lead to it burning out. So two relays were installed on the steering column support, near to the main earth point, see first couple of photos.

2) The main dipped beam has a relay which is situated next to the fuse box, together with two other identical relays, one for the cigarette lighter and one for the horn. Only one proved to work and they are really awkward to access the retaining nuts with the original style relays. I therefore replaced all three with new ones, similar in style to the two mentioned above. All of them are 40A rated, so should be well overspecced for the job. They can be seen in photo 3.

3) There is also a relay situated on the left inner wing for the radiator fan which I replaced with the same as used in 2) above.

[peteracs]

Part 2.....

4) Earth points. I mentioned before that I had added some additional wiring for earthing to supplement the chassis providing a routing for it, for completeness these are the additions

- below the headlights are studs which I think originally had a spider arrangement for spade clips. I decided to use simple ring connectors which go directly over the studs. On the left hand side there were too many to fit on one stud, so I used one of the headlight fixing studs and joined the two with a link wire. An earth wire from each headlamp was then routed back to the main earth stud just below the battery which is then connected directly to the -VE battery terminal. See photo 1.
- The rear lights have a separate earth linking the two clusters and the number plate lights. Within each cluster there is a series of metal strips riveted together to give an earth to each light socket, connection to the outside world is via a spade clip. On one of the clusters there was corrosion between the rivets and hence no connection between the reversing light/side light/braking light and the indicator light earth. Conveniently the light sockets have a spade terminal for both the +VE and the earth, so a simple daisy chain cable to the indicator socket sorted that problem, photo 2. To route this earth from the lights to the front of the car, there is 6 way connector on the light cable, near to the right hand side rear light cluster, with only 5 positions used, photo 3, so I linked the existing earth to this spare slot and ran a wire to the stud above the steering column, and then through the bulkhead and to the stud below the battery.
- There are many earth wires which terminate above the steering column. There are two earth studs and this is sufficient for the ring connectors needing to the secured. See photos 1 & 2 in the above post. The two are linked via a link wire.
- The steering rack should have an earth connected to a tab on the damper, not sure there was one when I removed the rack, but I have installed one and connected it to one of the studs which originally retained the relays next to the fuse box.
- The final extra earthing required was for the under bonnet light. I added an extra wire from the middle solenoid black earth wire near to the fuse box and ran this across the bulkhead to the light, terminating in a spade clip. See next post for the reason this was needed and photo.

[WestonE]

Great work Peter
For earthing the rear Lights I have gone for local self tapping screws and earth wires direct from the individual bulb connections, not trusting the multiple connection and single wire to the front design. At the front I am using the star spade connectors plated and with contact grease. Both will have wires directly back to the main battery earth stud. I have created 2 Self Tapping screw Earth points above the steering column 1 for the OE Loom 1 for the modern additions that do not like common connections with electrically dirty OE wiring.

I have all new wire and have built in waterproof connectors for the Wipers, side lights, radiator fans and indicators as these seem to get the worst of the weather.

For owners of later cars I found Junior Timer connector boots make nice replacements for the boots on the main fuse box electrical connector on each side of the S2 FL fusebox.
Battery terminal contact grease is your friend in stopping all those nice new tabs corroding.

Eric

[peteracs]

Hi Eric

That is well beyond what I was prepared to do, must have spent many happy hours doing it...!

A couple of questions/points.

1) I read that battery contact grease is not necessarily conductive hence why I have been reticent to use it so far, do you know if this is the case?

2) I plumbed for simple replacement relays without reverse bias diodes. If you have modern electronics would you or have you use the ones with the diodes or just rely on the inbuilt protection of the units?

Peter

[WestonE]

Hi Peter

I have used contact grease on multiple connections on the Montecarlo over many years now and everything electrical has continued to work well. Problems previously were always earthing, corroded connectors, switches carrying full load for want of a relay and some wires not able to carry the amp load. The wire from the alternator to fuse box being a classic.

I have very deliberately kept the ECU wiring clean with fuse boxes built for the purpose fed with distinct Battery fused +Ve Earth and Switched Live. ECU Sensors have a different Earth point to the main ECU Earth. I have not needed Diodes although I did at one point install a diode on the Monte to diagnose an issue which was poor circuit design on my part not allowing a main power relay to unlatch when the ignition was turned off. I have learnt the lesson!

On my first ECU Fuse box I managed to install change over relays in error. To put it mildly the effect was erratic, but thankfully quickly spotted.

With no relay Montecarlo headlight switches burn out and it goes dark when you need it most requiring a change of underwear!

The hardest to work out are the double change over relays for Electric windows on a Monte, but they make a huge difference. Credit to my father on that one he was an R&D engineer for Ford electrical systems. For Beta S2 FL the OE Loom actually has relays for the electric windows.   

I hope that helps

Eric
PS I recommend replacing all the earth wires in the engine bay loom with brand new thin wall cable. You can go up on the Amp capacity with cable that is physically the same size. I have now seen so many engine bay earth wires rotten along their length.

[peteracs]

Hi Eric

On the corroded wires in the engine bay, I have not found any corroded as such, which I associate with corroded wires and broken insulation such as you get when it is very old or subject to heat over time. All the wires appear to have good flexible insulation, the issue I did have was it being difficult to tin the wires due to either a layer of insulation material (presumably PVC) ‘sticking’ to the wires and hence forming a barrier to the copper wires underneath which meant tinning was impossible. Where this happened, then I had to scape the strands to reveal the copper and then I managed to tin the wire and hence crimp/solder the connector. If you were simply to crimp on these wires without scraping then the result would be very poor and probably end up with bad/erratic circuits, which was the main reason for replacing the connectors in the first place as many looked in a poor state.

On the main wire from the alternator to the fusebox, it looks ok for my requirements, but would want to beef it up if I had increased the loading due to new additions.

My view on the existing fusebox/relay arrangement for the pre f/l is that if I retired the car I would consign it all to the bin as way too clunky and the f/l solution looks a much better solution, though would probably shop around to look at modern solutions.

Peter

[peteracs]

Next part of the epistle -

4) Led bulbs. A number of issues arose with converting to Leds. In general led bulbs require the +ve and -ve supply to be in a specific way, unlike normal traditional bulbs. I used 6 types of led bulbs on the car as follows, see photo 1

- Bulb 1 - Rear light/braking, ie dual filament large baynet socket type, casing -ve, centre pins +ve
- Bulb 2 - Indicator/side light/reversing light, ie single filament large baynet socket type, casing -ve, centre pin +ve
- Bulb 3 - Number plate/wing indicator/switch illumination, ie single filament small baynet socket type, casing -ve, centre pin +ve
- Bulb 4 - Instrument cluster illumination, ie T10 plug in style bulb
- Bulb 5 - Individual warning light in Instrument cluster, ie T5 plug in style bulb
- Bulb 6 - Internal lights, ie festoon bulb

In general most of the replacements were plug and play so long as you take into account the polarity orientation. There were however the following problems found.

- The original indicator flasher module (not the hazard flasher oddly) relies on a certain current being taken which the leds do not come near, so a more modern module which works with low current bulbs replaced the original.

- The under bonnet light has the centre pin connected to the chassis and the outer casing is connected to the +ve supply, so the led did not work in this configuration. My solution was to run an earth wire from a solenoid earth as mentioned above and to insulate the earth chassis connection using tape and insulating washers. Then using a ring connector connect the original earth point to the +ve and connect the new earth wire to the original spade terminal on the light. See photo 2.

- The original instrument cluster should have a adjustment for the brightness of the cluster and the same button (left hand button on the cluster) also provides a bulb test for the brake fault light by pressing it. Mine had neither, just a simple link wire. I did however have a spare instrument cluster with an original potentiometer which was not in great condition, but did give me the mounting brackets to work with, a good starting point.

My solution was to reinstate a potentiometer suitable for the led lights. The original has a much lower resistance value to suit the original bulbs (approx 10 Ohms), the one I chose has a value of 500 Ohms, it does dim the leds, but not completely, hopefully the range will be sufficient in real world conditions. Photo 3 shows the parts of the new potentiometer using the mounting bracket and spindle from the old potentiometer suitably modified. The potentiometer had a small piece of aluminium tubing glued to it to allow connection of the spindle. I used a washer to act as mount for the potentiometer onto the existing mounting bracket of the old potentiometer. Photo 4 shows the assembly in position with wires attached. Not necessarily pretty, but functional and a nice £2.50 fix...

The press switch  function was not possible to implement as per the original push button as a special potentiometer is used. I therefore decided to make use of the spare switch found on the top right of the switch cluster panel above the heater. This entailed routing one wire from the switch through the bulkhead and connecting into the connector next to the brake master cylinder header tank. This wire is common to the master cylinder low fluid sensors and the brake pad wear sensors, simply earthing it causes the light to come on. The other wire on the switch is an earth which goes to the stud on the bulkhead near the steering column.

I am hoping this is an end for the time being of my wiring saga until I get to test the sensors etc on the engine.

[WestonE]

Hi Peter

I have found the earths wires have degraded/corroded along their length under the insulation. Often this is a core with black corrosion that continues even when dramatically cut back. I avoid soldering unless absolutely necessary due to the risk of wires fracturing. I also avoid pre-insulated terminals because they need better tools and skill to do well and frequently fall off. I use excellent compound crimp tools including the specific ones for Junior Timer, Super Seal and DT pin connectors alongside wire size specific strippers. I even have hex crimps for battery and large earth wires although the punches you hit with a hammer work fairly well IMHO.

I always give a crimped terminal a test tug preferring to know immediately if I failed to crimp it properly!

Back to making custom Screen Wash Jet holders for me.

Cheers

Eric    

[HFStuart]

Impressive stuff Peter. Once a sparky always a sparky I guess!

[peteracs]

Hi Stuart

Never considered myself a sparky as such, most of my working life was as a computer engineer. I did have a few dabbles back into electronic design over the time, but very much an amateur at it.

As well as documenting what I have done, I also hope it may be of use to others who maybe have less experience, but think it may be a way to go. On the led subject, given how many bulbs there are in the car and the way the wiring is routed, the power saving is significant and will reduce the current needs of the wiring of that circuit and earth, which to my mind is a good thing. I could have gone further in using led headlights and solid state relays, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the extra benefit to my mind was not worth the expense. I am not sure I will be doing that much night driving......

[HFStuart]

Peter,

I suspect it's going to be of great use to those of use planning to put a Spider back together at some undefined point in the future! It's also quite cathartic to be able to document what you've achieved.

My understanding is that, as you suggested earlier, LEDs are a bit dubious in anything other that projector headlights. Although the beam pattern is awful (single piece lights on mine) I find the lights surprisingly OK when fitted with high quality bulbs. Better than the standard fitting in my GTV or (ex) 406 Coupe in fact.