I have come up with a plan for the fiddle brake leavers arrangement.
Fiddle brake leavers design
Seat mods
Today I tested out putting some 2″ timber under the seat to see what it’s like. I’ve felt that the seat was a touch low for some time (Months) now. Then decided that if I was going to raise the base that the back will have to change. I want to make the seat back mow shallow to fit tighter against the rear bulkhead, giving me more leg room.
Spare wheel retainer
I decided that since I have a spare wheel, I should probably carry it. Due to my using Weller 8 spoke type rims the nice fittings that Land Rover supply for the standard 600 R15 rims don’t work. So found some aluminium that I had laying about and put a 90ยบ bend in it. Having ruined that piece of bar I thought I should finish off folding it. Having measured the wheel in place on the bonnet to find the positions of the remaining bends in the bar, I bent it without checking the hole locations or even considering how it was going to bolt down to the existing holes. Turns out it wouldn’t, the holes are too far apart and the heads of the bolts would interfere with the up rights. So now I have wound up with the other thicker bit of aluminium bolted onto to the folded bit to take the bolts and not clash with anything. having done all that I have to round all of the corners off because I’d consider that it going through a circular hole. Bit of a disaster all in all, but it works. What else did you want?
Bleeding brakes
It wasn’t as bad a job as the title makes out! I purchased a brake bleeding “kit” from my local motor part factors:
the black rubber end that I’m holding in the above picture is a one way valve, so by simply sticking this on the bleed nipple it becomes a one person job. And it seemed to work very well. My brake peddle isn’t as positive as it could be, but then it wasn’t that positive before this exercise, so I’ve giving myself and the little hose the benefit of the doubt.
I am also fitting new dash LED illumination lights, as the previous LED’s were pretty dim even in very low light levels, so there was no hope of reading the dash when a car was coming towards me. I designed the black 3D printed part in the photo above, a friend kindly printed it for me in ABS. It fitted both the LED and the back of the dash perfectly, more by luck then judgement. It went in with the ease that I would expect genuine Land Rover branded parts to fit. Amazed, I was.
Changed wheel cylinder
I managed to do the following in about 50 minutes;
- move Volvo from in front of the garage
- move Land Rover out of Garage
- jack the land rover up and put on axle stand
- remove wheel
- disassemble brake drum etc
- remove cylinder
- loose some brake fluid on floor
- find grease and rags
- fit new cylinder
- brake drum etc back on
- wheel back on
- move Land rover back in garage without pressing brake peddle
- move Volvo back in front of garage
Job done! Well not quite, don’t have any Dot 4 so can’t bleed the brakes yet.
Pulling to the left
The Land Rover has been pulling to the left under braking recently, last Thursday it become bad enough that I thought I’d take a look, as it could no longer be written off as being dirt in the drum or something. Sure enough I have leaking wheel cylinder on the right front drum.
I also painted some of the more white parts and bare aluminium.
Volvo bottom ball joint
I replaced the bottom ball joint on the Volvo at the weekend, should have bought a ball joint splitter, it was hard getting the taper to come apart. I wound up beating a could of sockets in on top of the nut and then undoing the nut against them and then beating the joint with a hammer. It came apart in the end.
Dash must now be at about 90% complete
I reckon the aluminium dash is almost done, it’s not perfect, but who cares. Not me. I’ve installed two USB power ports, they’ll put out up to 10 amps from the PSU, so that’s future proofed for a few years yet. Still need to install a few more switches to do other stuff and make the bit for the right of the dash similar to the bit on the left of the dash.
Next is to fit better LED illumination for the dash. Shouldn’t be too hard.
IOW Trip
We went to the Isle of Wight last weekend. Went up in my uncles micro light for a very short trip, some minor engine trouble brought us back more rapidly than we had planned. I’m looking forward to going up again.
We had stunning weather considering the forecast, it was a lovely trip.
Blown Fuse
I blew a fuse in the Land Rover, entirely my fault. A terminal broke off the back of the voltage regulator, so I replaced the feed to the instrument cluster by running a cable from my 12V stabilised power supply to the instruments instead. Unfortunately, this was all I did. I lift the existing supply cable behind the dash, still with broken terminal protruding from the insulated crimp. I imagine that this had touched something that was grounded/earthed and shorted out, blowing the fuse. At least I hope this is why the fuse blew.
Interesting how the wire has melted back where I guess it arced across the gap as the gap formed. Also interesting how it burned a line into the paper.