Spare Front Springs Cleaned and Painted

I took a little bit of time over the weekend (Laurel says a lot of time), to wire brush, clean and paint the spare set of front springs for the Vogue.

Wire brushing them wasn't much fun. Here they have been wire brushed already.
Next was a coat of rust converter.

  I also cleaned, rust converted, primed and painted the un-bent spare front anti-sway bar.

Then a coat of etch primer and a top coat or two.

Now I know that no-one likes to leave comments but is this colour too "loud". I still have time to paint them black.

They are a bit darker then it looks here. The Flash lit them up.

It's the same paint I used on the rear brake drums.




I read on some 4x4 and street car forums that it's a complete waste of time painting coil springs - oh well - they'll look better for a little while.

Front End work Delayed

I went to drop the Vogue in at around 5PM and the mechanics place was crowded with dead cars. They had an unexpected influx of problem vehicles. I really didn't want to leave the Vogue there with guys squeezing past it doing other work so I was quite happy just to leave it to sometime next week when the place had cleared a little.

This will give me a chance to clean and paint the spare sway bar and springs this weekend (yes I found two spare Vogue springs under the house). That way I might be able to clean and paint the wishbones on a weeknight - minimizing the time that the Vogue is dry-docked. There is always the option of not bothering the clean up the wishbones at all but Laurel (better half) says I wouldn't be happy if I did that. She's probably right.

It would be really nice to have this front end - maybe one day I'll pull it out.....
(Not mine but off a similar Rootes vehicle!)

Picture from Bill Ashby's Sunbeam Alpine

I'm getting Back on the Bus tonight

No it's not a failure. The Vogue goes "over the road" tonight so that the front end can be partially dis-assembled on Friday. I'll take the Bus home tonight and bring the Super Snipe to work tomorrow so that I can pick up the parts that have been removed and spend some time on them on the weekend.

Meanwhile here is a picture of my array of SuperPro bushings.
(The bushings are missing from the lower shocker mounts packet as they are already installed in the shockers - see previous post):

Lower front shocker bush kit - SPF0718-80K
Control arm upper bush kit - SPF0730K
Control arm lower bush kit - SPF1059K
Sway bar to control arm kit - SPF1060-19K (19 is the sway bar diameter in mm)

(Control arm = wishbone)

About time for some Front End work

The Vogue's 49 year old control arm upper and lower bushes are on their last legs so I'm currently collecting parts to replace all the front end bushes - and shock absorbers.

I haven't been very happy with the knocks and squeaks that the Vogue front end has been emitting for a while, so last week, having got a ball-park price from elsewhere and not been happy with it, I visited Knox Tyrepower (over the road from work) to ask for some advice. These are the folk I spoke of here that gave the Vogue it's Silicone tyres and who mentioned in no uncertain terms at the time (point 5 in this post) that the front end was "on the way out".

As soon as I indicated why I was there, Ross took me by the arm and led me next door to the mechanics (unrelated business). They all appeared to know about the "Electric Vogue" and were keen to help out. They had a good look under the car (up on a hoist) and confirmed we needed the upper and lower wishbone (control arm) bushes renewed. This is a job I do not want to do as by the time I get someone else to press the old bushes out etc. it will become a major pain - I know I'll want to re-paint the whole front end! Spring compressors scare me too.

So this may look a bit different in a week or two.
(Knox Tyrepower has put tyres on, and aligned, all the cars in our family for a past 12 years and I have never been disappointed in their advice or workmanship - no they're not family!)

Dashboard, Glovebox and Front Seats In!

On Saturday I figured out the wiring for the dash, added a new 4 way connector for the Forward/Reverse wires and installed the dashboard.

Of course, like everything with the Vogue, it wasn't that simple. First I had to mount the two side trims that hide the dashpad vinyl edge at the sides. The left hand side didn't fit so it took about half an hour of fiddling to come up with a reasonable comprimise. Then another half an hour to locate the fasteners that hold the dash in and I was ready.

Other than the fact that the Vogue wiring loom appears to have shrunk (why, why are looms always just too short?), it went in fairly easily. The glovebox door was next - about a two hour job but finally - it opens and shuts and matches the dash mounts pretty well. I may attack the bottom of the dashpad with a heat gun to see if I can stop the glovebox door scraping on it when it is opened - later.

Sorry about the poor quality of photos - I took them this morning with no electricity in the garage due to some switchboard work we are having done.

On Sunday I fired up the dashboard for the first time and was met with the first problem. When I turned the ignition on, but not started yet, the dash powered up OK but the peizo warning buzzer under the dash started to sound - quietly. The piezo is supposed to sound under two conditions. A warning from the controller - usually that a battery pack is under or over voltage - and a warning that you are trying to start the car while Forward or Reverse is selected. It took me a while to cotton on the the fact that the ignition switch was "leaky". It obviously has some resistance between Ignition contact and the Start contact - just enough to be a problem for my relatively high impedance circuit (peizo sounds with 10K in series from 12VDC).
A dashboard bulb to ground fixed it and so did a 1 watt 270 Ohm resistor - now added. This isn't the orginal Vogue ignition switch - the one that the key falls out of. This is one I had "under the house" and that I thought I'd cleaned out pretty well - obviously not. There is no current drawn (less than 70uA) from the 12V battery when the ignition is off so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll come back to it later anyway - next time I'll really flush it out and do some measurements while at it.

Sunday afternoon I finished off some minor trim hiccups that arose when installing the dash and installed the two front seats. We finished off the leather cover on the steering wheel and dropped that on to get it out of the house (the steering wheel, not the car) - it's not secured yet. Then I installed the washer/wiper switch and encountered my next Lucas electrical problem - no high speed wipers. My backup switch had no low speed either. These ones are totally sealed - I tried drilling though the side so I could flush it out but I didn't make it through the bakelite. I'll try to find a new one - with an electric switch for the pump instead of a manual pump. For now, single speed wipers are fine

Another view of the dash, seats and carpet.

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There was a plan to drive the car Sunday afternoon but with everything taking longer than expected I didn't install the indicator arm, rear view mirror, driveshaft, or put the final configuration in the controller so it wasn't going to happen. Just as well because it rained from about 2PM onwards and I don't want water on it just yet. (I have to seal the windscreen corners before it gets wet or dirty).

Steering Wheel #2

Filler sanded and steering wheel primed.

I had a lot of trouble finding a pause in the misty rain on Saturday to paint the wheel. At the moment I have nowhere inside or in the garage that I can spray anything. Sunday was an other-activity day so Saturday was all I had.
I put the first coat of black on the rim this morning just before posting this. We are going to use a Satin Black - not gloss. We'll see how that goes. I have to scout around under the house for a different steering column cowl. I know I have one for a manual Vogue without the hole on top for the gear indicator. I will have to prepare that and paint it as well. I had originally planned to use the gear indicator window for some visual indicator purpose but that will have to wait until the car is on the road. (See the "old steering wheel cover" picture in the previous post for the gear indicator.)

Steering Wheel Restoration

Last weekend I temporarily installed the dash/speedo and tried it out. The good news is that nothing bad happened and I even had the current sensing the right way around.
The bad news is that I was dismayed with the battery current indication. It varied from -1.5 to +0.9 Amps erratically. I added smoothing to the Hall effect device output in the engine bay and it totally settled down UNTIL I started the controller. Then it was erratic again. The DC Bus readout was also all over the place (actually the controller is outputting a signal representing accelerator torque demand at the moment so I'm not sure where that problem really is).

That started me fiddling with the speedo cluster. I added RC integration to both analog inputs and also did some averaging in software for both of them. They both now average over about one second. I'll try it again soon but there is not much more I can do. I also refined the low-trip-value range estimation - in fact I supressed the range display for the first km travelled on the trip meter.

Meantime, I took a small hacksaw to the narrow cracks in the steering wheel and filled them with epoxy putty. I'll file them out and sand the whole wheel this weekend and try to find a warm enough place to prime it. We have already purchased a custom made leather steering wheel cover from the UK.

Note how bad the rim was under the previous cover - I haven't sanded it yet, just cleaned it up with water and a light rub with a scotch-bright.

The old steering wheel cover.

Steering Box and Heater Blower Installed

The renovated Steering box and Heater blower are back in the car.
Not a huge step, but significant for me.