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.
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