Extra job, wiring conduit

 I'm going to blame the MK IVA videos for this one! So far my wiring has been bound and clipped as required, but many of the IVA videos and other guidance have had the wiring in conduit. I've often thought it was overkill and I didn't bother. For the engine wiring it's in conduit as it gets from the chassis to the engine, mainly because that's where the most movement occurs. Where there's movement, there's possibly wear and breakage. 

All the way down the side of the car for the front and rear lights it's just bound wires because the wiring doesn't get any abuse as it travels. Now I'm in my 'overthinking everything' phase I am thinking for the sake of a tenner and a couple of hours effort it's worth just putting in some split conduit. All I would be doing is cutting each clip zip tie in turn, putting the wires in the conduit and strapping it back up again. The most challenging step would be the wiring in the side of the car where it's really awkward to reach. 

So yeah, I'm going to add that job to my list, as soon as I can find a decent length of 10mm conduit. I can't turn to Aliexpress, even if it's the cheapest it would take far too long to arrive. If I get it from Amazon I can have it tomorrow and get it fitted by the weekend. 

And of course, while I was just looking at the car, I found this;

The unsecured throttle cable that I needed to sort but have managed to completely forget about! That'll just need a 3D printed clip or similar to keep it away from anything metal. 

Right, Amazon shopping time...

Exterior projections / mirrors

 I have surprisingly few 'exterior projections' to deal with, a lot less than an average Locost or Haynes Roadster. With the suspension entirely enclosed that removes a whole load of work. Overall the only things that are considered projections are;

• Lights
• Roll bar
• Centre mirror
• Wing mirrors
• Fuel Cap
• Boot hinges and lock
• Bonnet bolts

The lights were sorted a while back. They all comply as they are, except for the reverse and fog that needed rehousing. That's all done.

Roll bar needed a bit more work, the 3D printed covers do the trick though. 

Given the touch points of the sphere they're probably a bit overkill, but it was just easier to do them as one unit either side. The seat belt mounts are similar, and that's all that can be contacted.

The centre mirror was all over the place, it needed a full back cover to protect it. However that same cover also prevents the sphere from touching the lower fixing so no more needed there.

The wing mirrors were mentioned in my last blog post and also needed a decent amount of work to comply. 

The outer edge of the glass was less than 2.5mm so it needed something. The clamping bracket might have been ok but I didn't want to risk it. 

I'm happy with how they both came out. The ring around the outside is a press fit and will not budge, and the centre bolt bracket tightens up with the bolts. Ironically the 'pointy' bit at the front is compliant, and (just) meets the 2.5mm radius requirement

The fuel cap was bought as an OEM mini cap so nothing to be done there. Similar with the boot hinges, while they are contactable on all surfaces by the sphere there are no sharp edges to deal with.

The boot lock was a potential one, while the outer edge was rounded the underside and the bolting plate 'could' have been an issue. A quick sphere test shows the only part contactable is the outer edge so I'm happy that will pass.

And lastly the bonnet bolts, which I have covered before, literally and figuratively. 

I also did the floor line test today, as expected the rear and sides are of no concern but the bottom lip on the front constitutes the floor line. Having a quick feel along the front edge shows no particularly sharp points but I'll get the gauge on there and see if I need to give anything a sanding. That's all it will be though, I don't think there's enough exposed edge to warrant the push on trim. 

Another job completed today was the correct attachment of the interior trim, using silicon sealant instead of tape. I need to let it go off before removing the excess but I'm 99% sure it'll be secure enough to pass the test. 

I also need to let it go off to finish a job I remembered a while back, trimming the handbrake cable. I left it with a long tail so it's good to trim it to length now. I'll also take a few photos with the panels removed, I suspect Mr IVA will want to see inside the tunnel anyway but I'll take some photos as well. 

Christmas IVA tasks

 We're post Xmas-madness, but thankfully I'm still on leave until after New Year (and my birthday!). And yes, it's more IVA work. 

So first job was figuring out whether my regular car was suitable for towing. It had a Westfalia towbar when I bought it, and it's a Skoda Superb so it should be very capable. Unfortunately I've never used it since I bought it so I didn't want to turn up to the trailer rental place and have it not working. 

I bought a 'test device' off Ebay that should have checked all the connectors. Unfortunately it failed miserably, no sign of anything which got me very worried. Going at it with a multimeter didn't improve the situation. Fortunately my brother in law tows on a regular basis so he had a tow board I could borrow. Plugged in, lights on, job done. As far as I can tell the tow bar electrics 'detect' when something is plugged into them, so testing without a proper board or some other device was doomed to fail. But at least now I know that the car is ready to tow. The ball itself was much easier, apart from a few hours to find the key that went on with no issue.

Back to the car itself. The telltale lights had blurred slightly during their first fit. The issue was that I'd printed the symbols on the filter as well as the lens to make the symbol as sharp and as black as possible. Unfortunately as I was fitting them one of them slipped, so instead of a really sharp image I had a permanently 'blurred' option. No biggie, I just open them up, rearrange them and put them back together. 

Then I found an issue. The handbrake telltale had melted the housing. While I knew the bulbs would get warm I didn't expect them to get hot enough to melt the housing. 

It still did the job but I was worried that eventually it would damage the bulb. Once again my brother in law came up with an answer. He had a light unit on his GTE that was very similar design, but with a few differences. First was that the bulbs weren't right up against the glass, they were about half an inch behind the glass. Secondly they weren't totally enclosed, each hole had a slot top and bottom for airflow. After comparing my solution with an OEM design I could see that butting the bulb up against the glass and completely enclosing the bulb was just a recipe for disaster.

So I copied both ideas, here's the CAD version of the new holder;

I also reprinted the images to get a tighter fit and prevent the 'blur' that kicked off this whole process. Now I'm hoping that with a bit of free air all round the bulb it won't get hot enough to melt the holder. A quick test run suggests much more sensible temperatures, well below the glass transition point of PETG.

Of course none of that was strictly an IVA issue, but better to be safe than sorry. What was an IVA issue was that the glass and dash surrounds weren't fixed and could 'potentially' fall out (despite being incredibly tight fitting) so they have now been glued into the dashboard rather than just pressed. 

What was potentially an IVA issue was the wiring brackets. I mentioned last time that I wasn't happy with the brackets, they were prone to bending and weren't a proper clamp. A quick design later and I had thicker brackets and a proper clamp at each point;

I'm much happier with these, they're a proper clamp for electrics and plumbing, with decent separation and routing. I had to put a pad inside them to get them properly tight but that was just a tolerance issue. I just need a dab of thread lock on the nuts as I don't have nylocs that small (the nut is on the back side, not in the photos). 

On to the mirrors next. I have already covered the back of the centre mirror as that was a guaranteed IVA fail. But the side mirrors were worrying me. I think they should be find but I don't want to be doing a trip to Bristol twice if I can help it. So I printed another back cover for the side mirrors.

While it looked 'ok' they didn't stay put. To get the tolerances tight enough to do the job and improve the radius's, it stopped the movement from working. And as per IVA, the mirrors need to be adjustable.

So instead of a full cover, I'm going for an edge trim and a nut cover, it might look a bit odd but at least the important parts will be sorted. Of course I was trying to design and print them last night, and after the third prototype failed to clip properly I gave up! I have a nut cover but the edge trim needs a bit more work today.

Talking of edge trim, up until now I had been pretty happy with the edge trim in the interior. It seemed secure and definitely did the trick. Problem is when I was reviewing the IVA manual for the 40th time to sort out the mirrors, I found an excerpt;

that are held in place by being stretched on or attached by double sided tape or other inadequate means

And guess what I'd used for the interior trim! Yep, double sided tape. To be fair it's actually carpet tape and ridiculously sticky, but doing my best impression of an IVA tester showed that it wasn't good enough. Certain parts of it felt loose, and while it seemed secure overall I'm guessing a decent tug would show otherwise. So I'm going to remove the current solution and replace the tape with silicon sealant. That will be an easier bond and will be 100% the length of the trim. It's still 'stuck on'  but then I can't avoid using adhesives completely (some of the other bits of trim are stuck on rather than screwed on so I'd fail there as well)

The other job I want to do is the 'floor line'. To define a vehicles lower edge, they use a 30 degree cone all round the vehicle and see where it touches the car. This theoretical boundary is then used to check exterior projections. However the floor line itself is part of the project test, so it must have a 2.5mm radius on it. 

That's all fine for the sides and the rear, as the bodywork curves underneath the car. Even if the 30 degree cone touches the extreme corner on the side, it's still an appropriately radiused edge. My concern is the front edge. It's essentially a fibreglass' end and wasn't particularly well finished from the factory. Indeed, to even get it looking the same either side I had to do some work on it already. 

So the plan is to make a 30 degree cone (well, a wooden triangle at least!) and see what the floor line actually is. I'll check all round the car but I suspect the remedial work will be limited to the front. 

I've also printed a 100mm ball to double check a few things. I was going to print a 165mm ball for interior projections, but to be honest I'll just check it all with the 100mm sphere. 

Next week will be the first week back to work so I'll get the trailer booked. It's a little over five weeks to the test, and while I can't imagine much more work going on with the car, I'm still expecting my brain to be working overtime and checking every little detail. 

Headlight alignment, wiring and O2 sensor testing

 OK, now my IVA date is set, my brain is working overtime. I'm hoping that making a list of small jobs I want to do will let me sleep at night, two months of insomnia is not going to be healthy!

The first two jobs were headlight alignment and emissions. They're the two 'unknowns' left that are part of the test. The headlight alignment turned out to be relatively simple, a bit of tape on the fence and lots of tweaks with the screwdriver;

The only slight mess up I did was the centre line, I'd lined everything up then realised the car wasn't pointing in the same direction anymore! So out came the laser, I have a centre line of the car and just needed to line it up with the centre line on the fence (the top bit of tape). 

From then it was a case of getting the horizontal section to be the same height as the tape, and the 'kick up' to the left to be at the correct horizontal distance. Given it was mid afternoon it was dark enough to clearly see the beam pattern and adjust to suit. At the distance measured (25 feet), I had 15 CM to play with so getting it aligned with a 2.5cm tape was pretty easy. Of course, there could still be a measurement issue at the test but I've got it as close as possible. At least the adjustment did cover the range of motion, given the bodywork position had a lot to do with it there could have been a lot more issues.

Next up was the emissions. Technically I did the emissions first, but this is just a blog. There were two parts to this, confirming the testable limits and checking the O2 sensor was behaving. If I saw a good signal from the O2 sensor, then there was a fair chance the ECU was controlling fuelling correctly. 

I have a small oscilloscope that I bought as a kit, it does the job but I've never really had a purpose for it before. This time it worked perfectly. Attaching it to the O2 wire and to ground when the engine was cold gave me a 0v output which was expected. With the engine running and everything getting up to temperature, I saw the voltage rise, then after a while it started to oscillate. If I understand the process this is the ECU switching from open loop to closed loop (again, a good sign things were running well). Here is the output signal from the scope. 

Given each square is 1 volts, this puts the oscillation between 0.3v and 0.9v. This could be a little high, from what I was reading it should be 0.1v to 0.9v. However it's the oscillation that is the key part, and that showed up plain as day. 

Of course, it appears to be ok but then I still have my doubts. The frequency seems to slow, it should be between 1hz and 5hz. Given each square is 1 second that means I have a 0.5hz oscillation which seems too slow. It's also not clean, the other graphs I've seen are more of a square wave than a sine wave like this. Finally this is me checking at the connector, It's still possible the signal isn't getting to the ECU (although it's the closed loop feedback that causes the oscillations so I think I'm ok there).

So that's all I can check on the engine side. The flip side is what emissions I am testing for. As I have mentioned before the date of the engine and on the documentation confirms a manufacture date of 21st August 1992. This puts it firmly in the BET test, which is a fast idle test of CO <=0.2% and HC <=200ppm, with a lambda of between 0.97 and 1.03. 

The next step is where it gets interesting. Those limits are extremely low, basically only achievable with a full closed loop system and a cat. But the car is very early on in the date range, and it's not a UK car.

As it turns out, that's the key. It's a Eunos, not a Mazda. The letter confirms it. So if it doesn't meet that particular standard, the flow chart goes to the 'CAT 1' section. In this case, the date is still relevant, but then it says 'can you find an EXACT match in the analyser database'. As it happens, no you can't, because it's not a UK car. In which case the secondary test should be a non cat test, CO <=3.5% and HC <=1200ppm. This was the same as cars from between August 1986 and July 1992, and to be honest not far off cars manufactured before 1986, which had no emissions rules applied at all. 

All this means that while the car may not have perfect emissions, it also doesn't need it. It has also been suggested that the higher emissions might work in my favour for future MOT's as well as any potential engine swap I might be considering. So I'm tempted to cross my fingers and hope for the non cat emissions. 

Last job for the weekend, or so I thought... wiring. There's a few bits of wire near to the fuse box that were making me uncomfortable. Essentially unsupported wires that could move, flex and potentially chafe.

The rear plug in particular was just suspended in mid air, and while the manual says that wiring should be supported every x mm, I didn't like the extra weight and vulnerability of a free air connector.

What I've done (and unfortunately forgotten to take a picture) is undo the wiring harness on the first clip of the body, and move the connector to rest on the chassis itself. I have also added a corrugated tube to the wiring as it crosses to the body, and cable tied both ends. This means that the connector is now no longer unsupported, and the unsupported wiring is running in a fixed tube. For me I'm a lot more comfortable with it, and hopefully Mr IVA man will be as well. 

The top loop of wiring in the above image is also now fixed to a clip so it's not just dangling, so that was that. Of course, on the way I did see a few other things I want to sort. First is a simple one, the front wiring passes the fixing for the horns;

In practice this is probably fine, but for the sake of a bolt cover it should be pretty simple to resolve. 

The next thing I want to sort is the engine fixings for the loom and radiator hose. The original fixings were planned for the loom only, but then the radiator overflow hose went the same direction so I doubled up. Problem is I doubled up by attaching the hose to the loom! 

These pictures show a comparison, the first is a separated loom and radiator bracket, the second is the loom and radiator fixed by the same clamp and a single cable tie. I'm not sure why I thought this might be acceptable. However it also gives me an opportunity to resolve another issue. These mounting plates were made with thin metal, and they bend. I don't think it would need much driving for them to snap, and the very hot exhaust manifold is where the wiring and pipe would land. That wouldn't be a positive outcome. So I've 3D printed some proper clamps that provide the separation required, and I'm going to remake each of the 3 brackets out of some thicker steel. It also gives me the opportunity to move them a bit further away from the breather filter, again it would probably be 'alright' but it's not something I want to have come back and bite me.

Oh yeah, and alongside all this, the rear lights stopped working again. This was on me though. The one printed light fitting hadn't got the correct tolerances, so the bulb had basically fallen out of it's holder. As far as I can tell it had caused a short between pins, so I was getting all sorts of funky lights going on. Reprinting the holder resolved the issue. I also increased the size of the screw fixings for the lens itself, and I'm tempted to retrofit the same on the other side. As I tightened one of the screws I heard the plastic crack, the fixings just aren't big enough to cope with the self tapping screws. Ideally I'd heat up the screw before screwing it in but that can be tricky. 

IVA application and booking

 Here goes, time to get stuck into the paperwork. I'm doing it online and I don't know whether I'll come to regret that decision! First off then, design weights. From the earlier post I have;

Front left: 144.2 KGs

Front right: 144.9 KGs

Back left: 152.8 KGs

Back right: 146.8 KGs

Plus 20KG's of fuel to add on.

For a 2 seater car I then have 75kg per seat. That gives me a gross weight of 770KG's (rounding up the corner weights to 150). 

Given the rear takes the 20kg's of fuel and the 14kg of luggage, plus half the person weight, that gives the rear maximum as;

300 + 20 + 14 + 75 = 409kg

Then the front is 770 - 409 = 361

(Later that day)

Well, the application is in, arranged for Kidderminster. The website is awful, with no back button it has to be absolutely perfect. My third application was enough to go through complete. The first time I'd put the wrong class, which I didn't notice until it asked me for a payment of £199. It should have been more than double that!

The second time was a simple user error, I didn't attach the right documentation and couldn't go back. So the third one took longer but got submitted correctly. Time to wait for the test date and possibly reschedule to next year if required. 

In the meantime, I've done a couple more jobs. First was changing the coolant. It was only water while I checked for leaks, but with the cold weather I thought it would be a good idea to replace some water with antifreeze. I did flush things out though, the water wasn't exactly clean so hopefully now it'll keep things a bit healthier.

I also took the car for a drive, and it's actually feeling a bit more comfortable and smooth. There's a squeak coming from one of the interior panels that I'll sort at some point, but the main issue was the spongy brake pedal. 

So I need to sort that over the winter. It's going to be one of two things, either there is still air in the brake lines, or the master cylinder is leaking internally. Air in the brake lines is probably the easiest/cheapest to sort, the master cylinder a bit more of a challenge. A new master cylinder is about £300 so I won't be doing that! But there is a rebuild kit available, part number BW0A-43-61Z. I found one on Autodoc;

https://www.autodoc.co.uk/abs/7799158

And also lists part numbers BW0A4361Z, GJ214361Z, NM02298.  FT-3055. SK21311-2.

I'll try bleeding first, but I need to buy some more fluid if that's the case. 

(December update)

I forgot I left this hanging! So it's now the 8th of December, and it's been just over a week since I submitted my IVA application. As above it wasn't a pleasant experience, but I got there in the end. 

A few days later I got a follow up email. They wanted the following;

    Copies of build invoices for major parts purchased EG kit receipts

Well, that was going to be interesting, mainly because it wasn't a kit! In the end I sent them some receipts for raw materials (steel and aluminium stock), as well as the receipt for the bodywork. They seemed to accept that, and as of today they're waiting for me to call them and arrange a date. I'll probably do it today, it was a manic week at work.

Last update for this post, the brakes. Thankfully I didn't have to do anything with the master cylinder, after asking what my symptoms meant everyone just said 'they need bleeding'. So I spent several more hours bleeding the brakes, and it seems to be ok now. I did find one hose connection that seemed to be leaking, so I replaced the copper washers on that one. For some reason it was the rear left (expected) and the front right (unexpected) that were the worst. The rear left coughed up so much air and bubbles that I'm amazed I had any brakes at all!

I am planning this week to do the headlight alignment, unfortunately it's an outside activity that requires movement of all three cars and at night so I'm not looking forward to it. I am hoping the process isn't too painful though, the main issue will be finding a level surface that is 7 metres long with a fence at the end of it. My drive is that long but whether it's level is an entirely different question!

Well, I've just come off the phone with the DVSA, and it's disappointing news. I have three test centres within driving distance, Kidderminster, Derby and Nottingham. The first two have no bookings available, and Nottingham is closed. Looks like I'm going to have to go a bit further afield, so time to check Google maps and see what is realistic. 

(last update). I'm booked in at Bristol on the xxx of February. 8am slot with a 2 hour drive so it's going to be up at very-early-o'clock for the drive. That gives me about 2 months to go over the car with a fine tooth comb to make sure it's all perfect.

Oh, and the new fuel filler hose arrived from Car builder solutions, with the correct certificate, so I'll get that fitted. Then I can get the tank filled up to see if I have any leaks. It's going to take multiple trips unfortunately, I've got a 5 litre can and a 27 litre tank!

IVA (brake fluid sticker, front grill and centre tunnel cover, bulkhead and handbrake bolts)

 Start with an easy one, the brake fluid sticker;

And the front grille is now compliant (and in my opinion looks really ugly now);

Staying with edge trim, the centre tunnel is now compliant;

As well as the last few bulkhead bolts;

And lastly the handbrake bolts;

That picture shows that I've got two more covers to do. First is the handbrake adjuster, that's an obvious one. The other is the steering column support. Given the exclusion zone around the wheel it's really touch and go whether it's within range, so to avoid doubt I'll just do a clip on rounded cover. 

IVA work (interior corner trim, rear suspension and handbrake)

I have a plan. I want to get the IVA done before the Malvern kit car show, but November/December are typically busy times for me and the family. So I'm going to put my application in at the end of the year, and hopefully get a January/February test. On the (hopeful) assumption that it passes, that gives me time to get it registered for it's first long trip. 

On that note, more IVA stuff. The interior edges are going well;

I've got the two outside edges on there. The tape certainly seems to hold them on securely, I just hope it's enough for IVA. I do need to test the seat movement with all edges in place though, just in case they get caught and torn off or something weird. That ended up with a 7mm diameter so 3.5mm radius, well in spec. I just need to do the tunnel edges next.

The suspension bolts now protrude from the nut an appropriate length, and I also got a washer in there for good measure;

There's still the stack of washers in between the suspension bars, I think it's ok as they're in compression but there's a possibility the IVA man won't like the design and I'll have to replace them with a solid piece. Of course that is the long term plan but only after I get the camber set correctly. 

The handbrake cables are now secure;

To be honest I think I've gone a bit overboard with them but as with everything IVA I'd rather go overboard than 'underboard'. 

The steering got sorted too. The background to this was that at full droop and full lock the steering arms were hitting the suspension arm. This isn't necessarily a fail as the test is done at static load rather than full compression, and they don't touch at that point. But again (most of) the IVA rules are there to cover issues, and this was an issue. It's a simple solution, I'm back to steering limiters. So now rather than nearly three turns lock to lock, it's only two turns. If you remember I'd put the limiters on a while back but they limited the steering to about 1.5 turns which is unusable on any road. It didn't take much tweaking to get them to where I want them. 

Away from IVA, I thought some stickers might be good;

And because I've now finished everything suspension related the hubcaps were added. I have to admit I think they could benefit from some paint, the matt black looks like a failed photoshop edit!

What's left now?

• Covers for the front grille. The one edge is too sharp so it needs a cover. A quick session with a ruler shows that I have 8mm clearance on the face before it gets to the rivet. It's only about 2mm deep before it gets to mesh, and it's about 25cm long (so two prints again. I'll modify the existing one, it'll have to be quite bulbous to meet the curve requirements but avoid the mesh and the rivets. 

• Handbrake covers
• Wiring final touches.

Hmm, that is an impressively small list! I think there might be one more job... complete the IVA paperwork. I might as well crack on with that. 

IVA work part five (lock nuts, brake pipe clamps, steering wheel face, boot lock, rear light shells)

 The front castle nuts now have pins;

And the wheel axle nuts have been 'staked';

Brake clamps worked really well and keep everything apart/together;

(I also turned the fuel pump connectors round here as I could see there was a potential chafing issue)

The handbrake cables still route against the chassis so I need a bracket or clamp to secure them;

I doubt a car could ever wear through a handbrake cable in this position as they're basically a steel tube, but having it fixed in place is a pretty simple task.

Steering wheel got de-radiused with a printed face;

I quite like it to be honest, the plastic just needed a bit of warmth to get the curves on either side and the bottom. It could probably do with a tiny bit of refinement on the top edge but it's IVA first, decorative second.

The boot lock got a split pin at the same time as the front axles;

That's not going to slide open anytime soon. 

One small but time-consuming job was reprinting the shells for the fog and reverse light to make sure the radii are ok;

So that's a few jobs ticked off, but of course I couldn't end the day without adding an extra job! The rear suspension adjustable bracket doesn't have enough exposed thread through the Nyloc nut. 

This is because these are still in 'adjustable' mode, hence the number of washers. It's the same inside the head of the suspension;

So really all I need to do is remove some of the washers so the bolt gets a proper distance through the nyloc. I'm thinking two or three washers will correspond to two or three exposed threads on the bolt. Only problem is that it's on the back of the car which doesn't have much space in the garage, I'd need to get it outside to fix it. Saturday is looking bright enough (albeit very cold!).