As usual, when I get involved with electricity, there are plenty of them. Fireworks, that is, both from me and the things I touch! I don't like electrical stuff, and it certainly doesn't like me.
Four weeks of fun and games have resulted from my "successful" attempt to install a rear wash 'n wipe system. I say "successful" because the outcome of the work was As Intended in one sense, that is we can now see out of the back window without resorting to a sponge and bucket. In another way, I just caused myself a lot more problems.
You see, as I'd had to take the centre "MUD Stuff" console off to fit the W/Wipe switch, I thought I might as well sort out the already-installed-but-non-functioning switches so that they actually controlled something, tidy up the wiring so that the radio would actually fit into the space designed for it and add some more gauges. As I said in the previous post the latter "upgrade" is to provide a bit more information on what's going on in the engine department - coolant and oil temperatures and pressures - and an EGT gauge.
That was the plan. While assembling all the necessary parts and waiting for the postman to arrive, I set about the headlamp flasher. Given the state of the switches and stalks on the steering column I planned to replace both the horn/flasher/indicator stalk and the wiper stalk on the other side since I'd had trouble with both systems recently.
Having got the necessary bits I got the plastic trim off and set about removing the steering wheel. Or not, as it happened. Despite a lot of pulling and thumping with both fists and a mallet, the bloody thing wouldn't budge. Some types of Defender have a steering wheel that can be removed using a puller, but not me....after several hours over 3 days, lots of penetrating fluid and very little movement, I gave up before frustration led me to break something. Another reason to give up was that I worked out how the flasher switch worked and fixed it....perhaps I should've done that in the first place.
The focus isn't great, but the two bits of brass that make the connection had been stressed to a point that they didn't touch when the stalk was pulled. It took 2 seconds to sort it. It doesn't address the fact that both stalks and the switches on them are going to fail soon and that wheel is going to have to come off eventually.
With that job out of the way I set about butchering parts of our previous designs for dashboard upgrades. I dug out the DIN facia that'd originally come from the sale bin at Halfords and has already been through two iterations of interior redesign, the last as the mount for the CB radio prior to the Alu-Cab roof fit.
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| The old CB carrier with the bottom cut off. The gauge mount clips in, and offsets the dials towards the driver. |
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| The wiring can be fed into the ashtray hole via the plastic grill underneath. |
The shape was built up using card to make sure it would fit and to plan how the bends need to be made.
A bit of cutting and forming of some scrap aluminium sheet produced a pretty neat 3-gauge pod ....
....with a flat front face for the coolant warning light and test button and a nice flat top for use later on, perhaps. It might be a better place for the tripmeter, for instance.
Bending ally can result in the metal cracking if it's too brittle. Annealing it can be a bit hit-and-miss but if you rub the bend point with soap and then heat it, when the soap turns brown, it's cooked...and nice and soft to bend.
Turning to the wiring, I wish now that I'd left well alone! The intention was to simplify the spaghetti and get things to work a little better. One example of this is the power to the reversing camera. Quite often the screen reverts to a "blue screen of nothing" when I deselect reverse gear. This stays on until the next time I reverse, when it might work normally, or stay an annoying bright blue postcard-sized distraction. I've been resolving this by disconnecting the jack plug power feed, but I thought that using one of the otherwise redundant dash panel switches would be better. I also needed to wire in the front work light, coolant alarm and lighting power for the new gauges.
To cut a long story short, I've gone through about 4 variations on the theme of "some things work but others now don't". I fix one problem and another appears. I would assume that this was as a result of what I'd just done so go back and reverse the action, only for it to have no result. Lots of head scratching, cursing and coffee later and I'd notice, for example, that a tag had become detached from a connector as I'd moved things around. The clock stopped working for this reason and had me mystified when the fuse was OK when I thought I'd heard a "crack" from Down There. It later turned out that I'd operated the wiper stalk while removing the dash binnacle (as well as disturbing the earth tag on the clock). Coincidentally the wipers were frozen to the screen and the almost inevitable movement of the stalk caused the fuse to blow but I made the wrong assumption... Further discussion and analysis isn't going to amuse anyone, certainly not me, so suffice to say that I've called a halt to any more fiddling with wiring before I set something alight. Some things now work better, others not at all, but the latter I can live with for the moment....
The revised dashboard now looks like this:
While I had the main dashboard binnacle out, I noticed the tracks in the dust where water had been getting in. A bit more dismantling of trim panels revealed a worrying sight....
After a bit of probing around I think there are three possible sources of the problem. One is the seal around the ventilation flap and the others are either the rubber seal under the windscreen and/or the new windscreen seal itself, which would be a bit annoying. The seal under the windscreen I reinforced with mastic sealant a while ago so other than putting a little more of this under the more difficult-to-reach spots, I think that's all I can do. The windscreen seal is certainly suspect but it's been so cold while I've been working it's difficult to know whether the moisture on the inside of the seal is coming from outside or is condensation from the inside. It needs to get a bit warmer to be sure, so while we're waiting for Spring, I had a look at the vent flap.
I got the new seals for these some time ago and had added yet another job to the "to do" list for warmer weather. To get this off and repair the seal requires the removal of 2 hinge pins and 2 screws from the operating mechanism on the back of the flap.
The first is easy, the second is a right b*stard of a job, particularly if you have to do it while kneeling on the bonnet in 2 inches of slushy ice and only remotely possible if you can get the flap to open completely.....
Now, you might think that the mechanism for doing this would be engineered in the usual Landrover fashion - solid and a bit overdone - so I was surprised to find that the reason I haven't been able to get the flap to open fully was down to the operating arm being made of tinfoil. Or something equally flimsy. Once the swivel pin on the mounting bracket had begun to corrode it made it more difficult to get this little arm to do its job and eventually it bent. With even less movement now available, things corroded even more, producing even less movement, then yet more corrosion on parts that weren't moving...yawn...I guess you get the picture. If not, here's one I took earlier:
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| The state of the seal is pretty clear, as is the siezed pivot point on the hinge. I've already straightened the actuator arm but it still has a bit of a kink in it. |
Once I'd got it off, cleaning off the old and sodden seal wasn't difficult with a bit of elbow grease and thinners, and the new one is self-adhesive so went on equally easily. More difficult was straightening the bits of bent tin that make up the operating thing, but a good soak in penetrant helped. Unfortunately by straightening them up, the two parts of the arm's hinge now didn't line up with the screw holes in the back of the flap. An hour's fiddling frustration followed as I bent everything out of proper shape to get the screws in, then bent it back again to get it to work. Now, though, when I "open" the flap, something akin to ventilation might actually occur. It got a fresh coat of paint and some grease on the hinge pins too.
Then I had a poke around, literally, to see what damage this water leak has done. The metal behind the top of the bulkhead was weeping brown droplets through pinholes in a couple of places, and a probe opened up several larger holes. This is Bad News. Defender bulkheads are notorious for rotting at this point and the only real fix if not caught in time is a new one - the whole bulkhead, that is, not the cosmetic cover-up panel that many go for. I used a boroscope to look inside and it wasn't promising, so took a 20mm hole cutter and opened it up a bit....
After using a magnet and air gun to clean out the cavity, things aren't quite as bad as I'd thought. Small areas of the internal skin are weak but the external skin - the bit that really matters - is solid, if a bit flaky. I used the air gun to blow-dry everything, squirted a liberal dose of Kurust converter in and left it to dry again. The next step was to spray as much as I could get at with cold galvaniser and I followed this with a liberal dose of Waxoyl. I'll leave the hole open for ventilation , closed by a rubber blanking plug with a few holes in it. Can't think of anything more I can do now except to try to stop the water getting in and provide some ventilation in case it does. This might mean trying to add some sealant to the bottom of the windscreen, either under the rubber or over it, but I'd prefer it all to be dry before I do that, but the sub-zero temperature and lying snow isn't helping me achieve that happy situation....
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