Well, quite a lot done but not so much achieved.
First I distracted myself and spent about 3 hours cleaning the garage. It’s not clean by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a lot better than it was.
I am still waiting for some Trizact 3000 grit discs to arrive, so decided to play with the electrics some more. Started by thinking about my intended heated front windscreen and how to pick up from the HRW switch. I’d rewired it as per my dismantling but it didn’t look right. Tracing the wires from the wiring diagram, I realised that the only wire from the switch was for the heated mirrors, so a quick hunt was needed to locate the wires to the rear - I found them lurking under the other looms. Strange that my notes of the wiring on the switch didn’t include the actual HRW wires. I tried the rear screen and even though I could hear the relay clicking, I couldn’t get any power to the final connectors, so out with the wiring diagrams again. To cut a long investigation short, the power to the demister relay (via the rear fusebox) comes from the alternator, which is in the loft. Also wired to the alternator is a line to the starter, which in turn has the main power line to the battery. While I’m playing testing, I’ve also not got the main battery lead connected (and the earth is a small gauge wire with a small rating fuse). Anyway, connecting the rear 14-way connector and putting power to the alternator connection had everything working as it should. It was a useful exercise, as I found the main alternator to 14-way connector wire (red) was only connected by a single strand or so. So, cut the last strand, drill out the remains from the female connector, add wire, solder in place and refit.
Further work on wiring the front heated screen was stopped by waiting for relays & fuses to arrive (as is alarm fitment), so I tightened up the light switch and promptly blew my safety fuse (earth lead to the battery). As per a quick request for info thread I posted, the main body of the light switch became live as soon as the switch was turned on. Also, sometimes the switch didn’t want to press off very smoothly, so clearly something was amiss with the switch. At north of £500 for a new one and around £200 for a used one (if you can find one), that was not good news. So, with brave pants on, I drilled out the rivets holding the light switch together.
The switch is actually very simple in design, although less simple in what it needs to do.
A detent operates on the end (inside) of the main stem of the switch. The detent is a small ball bearing, pressed by a spring and held in place by a small brass plate that is riveted in place. Or rather if it had been rivetted in place, the plate would have held the detent. What I found was the rivet remains, a slightly bent plate and 2 halves of the spring floating around. I assume that the rivet failed, the spring came out and got broken by the switch being pulled and pushed.
Bodging being the mother of invention, or something like that, I broke a biro and liberated the spring. Smart eh - well not smart enough really, as although I could shorten it, it was a smidgen too wide.
I stretched the long part of the spring and it seems to be doing just fine. Unfortunately the hollow rivet was damaged, so I thought that I would fit the remains from the inside and use an Ali rivet to grab it from the outside. Strike 2, as my smallest rivet was too big. Simples, just file down the diameter and Bob’s your mother’s live in lover. Well Strike 3, by the time it was small enough to fit, the rivet has so little material left, it would never have worked. I couldn’t rivet from the inside, as there’s not enough room to get the rivet gun in there.
The only place I can find hollow rivets was China, with 6 weeks delivery, so bodge 2 will be to use a 2.5mm brass machine screw & nut. That should be here next week, so work stopped there as well. Also ordered some 3mm brass machine screws for the two rivets that hold the switch together.
Manning up, I headed out to the garage to do some more colour sanding today. I’m still waiting for the trizact, but there’s nothing to stop me from getting all the panels flatted with 2500 grit. Well, not if you exclude procrastination anyway. I was soon distracted into tidying the garage, but eventually I could put it off no more, so out came sanding implements. When I say out, I mean out – I set my stand up outside of the garage, as I don’t want to have to clean the flying mess off everything again.
I did the froot, and was then faced with the strip around the edges where I had put 9mm fine line tape to ensure I didn’t burn through the edges. More brave pants' time, and I broke out the blocks and paper. I’d run out of 2500 grit so laid into the edges with some 2000. Whereas I had big issues with the 2500, the 2000 was great, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.
Well I was, until I did ‘just one more bit’ and failed to watch both ends of the block
Hey ho, one panel to repaint.
In better news, I successfully flatted both doors and front wings, including removing the runs from the wheel arch of one wing. Just need to give the rear wings a seeing to now, then trizact and cutting compound all over.
. Just a day with other instructors this time, deciding & agreeing how we can all be CV-19 safe, ahead of my first post lockdown paid gig this weekend. Due to restrictions on how many households, etc, I’ve only got 2 students on board, neither of whom has been sailing before, so I guess that I’ll be busy.
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