What did you do today?

[spegru]

Hello Blackpool. I dream of getting to this stage. However I am interested in your rear lights and rollover cage. What lights are those an is the cage an off the shelf item?

Thanks
Steve

[Blackpool Plastic]

Hi Steve

Here are some photos of the rear lights. I fitted them several years ago. I think they were off a caravan ? Lots of styles are available on the internet. I wanted them to fit within the recessed section which was, I think, designed to take Ford transit units ( others may know better ). I did not like the original Mark 2 Invader lights. Initially, the new ones were surface mounted, then I semi recessed them. I like the appearance but others may not !

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipP ... 5SStLczXJC

I built the roll cage myself. It is welded in. There is more info and photos in my post of 24 May 2011. You should be able to search for it. My rear seat is not usable anymore !

Regards

Mike

[R_D_Olivaw]

The improving weather has enabled me to spend more time working on the car, and by spending just a few hours every weekend I'm making progress.

Some of the work I've done isn't final, but it's helping me see how the car goes back together and work out where I need to spend more time. Don't be surprised to see the joins in the door rubbers in odd places.

So here's the update.
1. The car now has two doors that will shut and handles that will reopen them. The locks are not operational because I haven't installed the screw that goes from the lock to the latch. I'll do it at some point, but because it's the locks Achilles heal I will probably never use it to lock the door. Instead I've bought some remote control actuators that I'll connect to a deadbolt that will slide into the B-Pillar. I just need my local metal fabricator to make something up for me, but that's a long way off at the moment.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v8u7uhkq47k9k9d/IMG_6431.JPG?dl=0

The door is shinier than the panels on either side because I haven't polished those panels yet.

2. One door has it's window frame securely fitted and closes nicely. The other door has the frame in place but I need to secure it. I've just been busy doing more interesting things on the car.
3. The petrol tank has been removed (Dr. Phil) made me a new one a few years back, hence it only has one. I removed it to fix the fuel sender, but for some reason the petrol gauge has stopped working so I can't tell if my fix (I bent the bar that goes to the float as it always read too high) has worked.
4. I'm currently in the process of removing all the soundproofing from the boot so I can replace it with something a little more modern.
5. The re-upholstering of the door caps was a bit of a pain but practice seems to make perfect. In the picture below the grey bar below the door cap will either be painted black or I will remove the plastic sheet so you'll see the stainless steel below. I must apologise for the messy interior and I promise I will clean it up.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ga1g25opyx5fbsl/IMG_6432.JPG?dl=0

6. Using a normal petrol can I managed to start the car. It's still incredibly loud and it still stinks. My wife was not impressed and told me so.

Moving forward I will:
1. Finish removing the sound proofing in the boot.
2. Secure the window frame on the driver's door.
3. Look for my wiring diagram so I can work out how the petrol gauge is supposed to work.

Not much point planning further ahead as I know I'll get distracted and end up doing something else. It always happens.

[Gavin McArdle]

Hi, looking better in every pic! Not sure what you mean about a cabin full of rubbish? Aren't they supposed to look like that?
Two points--
1, I have been concerned when people have mentioned electric door locking unless some how it could be made fail safe. If ( heaven forbid) you were involved in an accident would the operating switch be protected from accidental touching during the upheaval which could lock the doors, preventing exit, especially with the battery mounted in a vulnerable position?
2, Have you got the sender unit mounted the correct way up. The club supplied one needs the float arm bending what first off, seems the wrong way. Remove it, connect the live and make an earth then you can watch the gauge the the rear window as you move the float arm. When you have it the right way, then hold it alongside the tank to determine how much bending it needs. The float arm is not long enough to reach both the top and bottom of the tank without extending.

[R_D_Olivaw]

Hi Gavin,

Thanks for the feedback. I have been thinking about adding an extra emergency cable to the deadlock just in case something went wrong. In "theory" there shouldn't be an issue as I'd only ever lock the doors when I am outside the car, but I guess something could go wrong if the car was involved in an accident.

With regards the fuel gauge I tried exactly what you said, but connecting the sender unit outside of the tank hasn't helped me to move the needle on the petrol gauge. I even earthed the unit just in case, but without success. The trouble is I don't know what any of the wires do and I can't remember where my wiring diagram is. I'll find it, but it might take me a little while.

Update

I've found the wiring diagram which looks to be written in sand script so it might take me a while to decipher it.

Black appears to be positive
Green/Black appears to be positive
Green appears to be negative
Red/White appears to be negative

If that is correct the sender unit has a positive feed going through it i.e. positive line going in, through the resistor and out the other side. Does that make sense?

[Gavin McArdle]

Hi Ian, we are talking about Gilberns here!!! Designed by the Welsh to get their own back on the English!!! Our wiring diagrams were all drawn by members some of whom were better at it than others. However from my time as New Spares I am pretty certain that the MK3 loom was taken from a Mk3 Cortina, it is certainly in 3 parts as is a Cortina loom. So a Cortina handbook maybe handy! We used to sell them.
Normally the feed goes from ignition switch through gauge to sender unit, only 1 wire, with the sender unit earthed via the tank and the sender unit body, there maybe a separate earth on the unit, if so it would pay to use this and make a good chassis earth, or even take an earth from one of the fixing screws.
Red/white wires are normally dash light feeds, are you looking at the gauge not the sender unit?
Black is always earth except on vehicles that use black for everything( Scanias & Volvos) these wires are numbered.

[R_D_Olivaw]

I can see this is going to be fun.

Maybe I’ll just put it back together and hope it works. LOL

Just remembered my car came with some Haines manuals.

[R_D_Olivaw]

The fuel gauge issue looks to have been easier to resolve than I had anticipated. Having reviewed the Cortina Haynes manual I realised it wasn’t any easier to interpret than the Gilbern one.

I took another look in the boot and realised that when I removed the petrol tank I accidentally removed the earth that the sender unit earth was relying on. Once re-instated the gauge started to work. Once the tank is back in I will fine tune it.

[Gavin McArdle]

Hi Ian
Always read the instructions first!
Poor earths have nearly always been the cause of electrical problems on Gilberns, not because they were not good enough at the construction but because of rust and grime after many years use. Doesn't hurt to put some extra earths in, eg, earth each side of head lights and rear lights separately so that you may have at least one working if there is a failure.

[R_D_Olivaw]

Hi Gavin,

My battery is in the boot, so doing it for the rear lights, sender unit, etc. will be extremely easy.

[R_D_Olivaw]

If I was going to restore a car again I would not make the mistake of trying to rush anything, because if there's one thing I've learnt it's pacing jobs gets them done a lot faster.

Over the past couple of days I've been trial fitting the new kick plates (the ones that cover the sills). I knew they fitted because I'd tried them before I started painting the car, but I first needed to complete the repair to my sills. I must admit I'd done this job once before and whilst it looked good it was not a strong repair so I repeated the process. I know you can't see the sills once the plates are in place but I wanted them to look good, so having fiberglassed over the hole which ran for most of the length of the door I put a few layers of filler on to smooth out the bumps and flatten off the whole area. I then trial fitted the plates and in the case of the driver's side put the door back on to make sure it still closed. I still have a small hole to fill, but I've left that to give me easy access to the seat belt mounting point as the seatbelts were removed.

Whilst I waited for fibre glass and filler to harden I crawled under the back of the car and started scrapping old paint off the chassis members that run under the boot. I was a little surprised to find surface rust under the paint, but nothing more than that. I put on a coat of rust remedy and then painted that over with hammarite. It will do until I get the car up on jack stands and I can take a good look at what's under there, though everything looks in good shape from what I could see.

I also trial fitted the new bumper mounts which involved me cutting slightly larger hole in the boot than the ones I needed to remove the old rusty ones. The new ones fit nicely, but have been removed until I'm ready to refit the rear bumper.

The nice thing about jumping from one small job to another is it gives me time to think about what I'm going to do next. I plan to put panels in the boot to hide the petrol tank that sits at the back and the battery and fuel pump that sit on the left. I'll probably put another panel on the right so I can store the jack and anything else I want kept out of sight. It should make the boot look a lot tidier.

[Gilbern74]

Just finished fitting a QI phone charger into the console of my Mk3 ready for the full trim resto later this month.
I like hiding gadgety things like this around the car.

Bought the QI off eBay for about £5.
Cut a matching hole in the console base and poured a thin layer of resin over the top with one piece of thin finishing GRP mat. Will sand it back further once properly set so that the fibreglass covering it is as thin as possible to allow better charge through to my phone.
Extended the wiring from the QI base to the circuit board which will be fixed underneath the heater in a boxed enclosure and will be powered by a USB connection that I already wired into the loom.

[R_D_Olivaw]

I'd like to report Gilbern74's above post for being way too cool!

Other than removing all the dust (from sanding) from the interior of my car, plus a load of junk that had appeared from nowhere, I didn't make a huge amount of progress over the weekend. What I did do was to start looking into the new door-cards I need to make, and whilst making a template so I could see where the door would meet the rubbers I realised that there is quite a large gap (perhaps 1cm) between the rear of the driver's door (bottom section) and the door rubbers. The door closes flush against the 'B' pillar.

I have concluded that the car must have been involved in an accident at some point and not fixed correctly, because I'm sure this type of gap would never have got past Gilbern's pre-delivery check.

I haven't worked out how I'm going to tackle this problem yet, but since I want the car to be as quiet as possible it will be something that needs to be addressed. I suspect I may have to build up the bottom of the door to make it thicker, but only for about the rear foot of it.

[Gilbern74]

Hi Ian,
I made new door cards a couple of weeks ago. I've setup a new Flickr account so hopefully they will show bigger than the images on this site allows!
Used 3mm marine ply rather than the original flimsy harboard.
Routed the top edge to allow fitting in the plastic channel when covered with the new trim.
Made holes for the door clips to fit (preferred to having visible screws on the door card trim).
Cut and routed the speaker hole.
Covered the inside with a coating of resin for protection from the elements.

[Gilbern74]

I've just ordered my new sills in brushed stainless steel
A few years ago I started a thread on here about getting some fancy new sills designed and built but the company I approached took over a year 'designing' with my sills and eventually I gave up with them.
So since I need some pronto due to the car going into the trimmers in a couple of weeks I took it upon myself to design them.
I found a website for a company called Fractory where you upload your CAD design of any component and they will find an engineering firm to produce it. Only problem was I have never used CAD before and didn't know where to start!
Then I found a program called FreeCAD which is...free, obvs!...and with a bit of help from the very helpful forum of experienced users who helped me get through bits where I got stuck, I managed to measure and design the new sills to exactly match my old pair.
(Due to the nature of Gilberns they were made using aluminium and cut by hand with tin-snips, so far from uniform in measurements! I don't doubt that every car will have different sizes. My near-side sill is in fact about 8mm wider in the middle than the off-side sill and has more of a curve to it - very random!)

So I have today sent my 3D designs off to Fractory to be made in 1.5 mm brushed stainless steel. Should be here in a couple of weeks!



The next step will be to add the graphics. I was looking into companies that do laser etching onto stainless steel, but then I happened upon a guy who makes chrome steel stickers for car door plates and his work looked great (saw a selection he'd done for Range Rover & BMW). I sent him off an email and he got back to me real quick and offered to help.
I sent him some designs I had in mind and he mocked up a design for me which I think looks fantastic!
Turns out he's based in Turkey! I will order the stickers from him once I have the sills and confirm they fit and look good.
The chrome stickers will be put onto the stainless steel sills and then clear-coated. Once done you should not see them as stickers as the clear coat should level-off the top of the plates, resulting in a nice uniform and great-looking door sill....watch this space for updates!

Logo design


Mock-up drawing in situ