MadaboutKitcars

Good News!
Spoke to Matt at NoDiz and he has managed to replace the blown coil driver so no charge!

Bad New!
Spoke to Matt at NoDiz who told me my fixed ECU left on Thursday, it hasn't arrived ....:-(

Good News!
Actually bloody great news my gauges have finally arrived!

Bad News!
Have to work the weekend so wont get up to the workshop now until Tuesday.grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Those gauges do look great.

great work this car going to be great ...just can not wait to see it running top job ....

Mac - As you might see on my build thread, I finally understand how the headlight rim works.

I found the two lugs/edges on the outer edge of the headlight bowl that Michiel & Mr T mentioned.

But I still couldn't see anywhere for a retaining screw to fit.

This is because my headlight bowls are missing the silver self tapping fixing in this photo from Rimmer Bros.



So with a bit more work I should be able to sort my headlights out properly.

Cheers, Paul.

Those gauges are things of great beauty
Keep up the good work
Slarti

They are even prettier up close slarti :-)

Quick update, very busy with work at the moment and have been stuck in Newham for the last few days and will be there up until Thursday night when I am off to Sri Lanka again to do house purchase legal stuff. This combined with the 15 hours it took me to get to my hotel in Essex on Tuesday thanks to the gridlock on the M6 Jct 4 to 3 has meant little time for the Ribble.
Went up for a couple of hours yesterday as my repaired Nodiz turned up from MTech and I really wanted to get the engine running so I could go away with a landmark passed. Twas not to be.
On MTechs advice I have wired the 12v live to the coil with a 2amp fuse so that if I encounter any trigger wheel pulse issues it will blow the fuse rather than fry the coil drivers on the Nodiz again. Only one small problem the fuse blows within seconds of cranking the motor every time!
Eventually I decided to isolate the Nodiz so ended up powering the Nodiz from one battery isolated from the car loom with the starter running direct from a second battery again isolated from the loom. Result was exactly the same and after blowing through 5 3 amp fuses (you try getting 2amp blade fuses from a motor factors) that I ended up paying over £5 for as I had to buy 5 blister packs of mixed fuses just to get the single 3 amp in every pack I slammed the unit doors and made an early exit to go home and watch my lot narrowly win their FA cup semi final.

Haven't decided exactly how to proceed but will speak to MTech again in the morning as far as I can see my only real options are:
1. Stick it on a trailer and take it to them for a morning and let them sort it whilst I wait.
2. Bin the Nodiz and go back to Megajolt of which I have built and installed about 10 now and never had this much trouble.

Either option wont be cheap but with me sticking to my guns about not fitting the body until the wiring is sorted its holding me up massively.

TTFN

Mac

Bad luck Mac. I'm always loathe to admit defeat myself, but I think I'd be trailering it up to the NoDiz people to test all the circuits and components at this stage. There must be a relatively simple problem- a short to earth or faulty component - causing this problem. Good luck with it and don't lose heart, Diz or NoDiz you'll get there in the end.

Towed, thanks for the support, The frustrating thing is I made and installed looms for several of my race cars that use injection, sequential injection, data logging etc etc. The latest DTA install on the Tiger GTA had over 60 connections just to the ECU and Digital Dash / Data Logger so its not like I haven't done this sort of thing before. grrrrrrrrrrrr
TTFN
Mac

Kernel of an idea is slowly forming in my head that I might like to build a lightweight road racer with a modern motor myself.

It'd 100% be another small chassis Triumph based Spyder, and I'm on the lookout for a pre '63 donor at the right price (v. cheap!) at the moment. That's to give me a non-dating reg for free.

I liked the idea of using a Puma 1.7 engine as it's very light for its output and is a really revvy, characterful engine. I'm now veering more towards the idea of buying an MOT failed MGF VVC though. That would donate its engine; wheels (I like the square six spoke 15's - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331171444742?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649 ) ECU; and front and rear brakes (I'll have to fabricate adaptors).

The big worry for me would be getting the ECU to work. There's very little information on the web about how you wire one of those beasties up, save for the Westfield site saying you can use the original ecu http://westfield-world.com/enginespecs_car.html , and I hate the thought of paying someone else to work on my car.

The other thing I can't find much info on is whether you can use hydraulic clutch actuation with the type 9 gearbox adaptor. I suppose I'd have to start calling round the experts closer to the time.

Now, small matter of raising some funds to start buying in the bits I'll need. So if you'll excuse me I'll be scrabbling around down the back of the sofa looking for change for the next half hour...

T, the Puma engine is well catered for to convert from FWD to inline but the bits aren't cheap, check out Shawspeed.
Converting a type9 to hydraulic clutch is a well trodden path, all parts off the shelf from the likes of Burton Power.
Personally I just cant be arsed with trying to get oem ECU's working, I know some people see it as a challenge but I just see it as a faff. Plus if you want to mod the engine most OEM ecu' probably aren't up to the job anyway. Our current GTA uses a DTA S60 and in its last guise it used an S40. the S40 was really easy to install and even making the loom was very straight forward with full wiring diagrams included. I fancied having a go at the now defunct Haynes single seater myself.

Thanks for the tips Mac, some useful links there. I'll have to google a few of the terms you've used though as in the words of Midge Ure...

Mac - Sorry to hear you are still having some electrical issues & hope they get fixed one way, or the other.

Good luck, Paul.

Well spoke to Matt at NoDiz yesterday and as I suspected the 2 amp rating they gave me was a bit conservative and apparently I could have gone as high as 7.5amp once I had proven that the coil drivers weren't locking on....urgghhhhhh.
The good news is I am pretty confident now that there is probably no issue other than needing to use a bigger fuse.
Sighhhhh

TTFN
Mac

Hmm, my trusty Triumph ignition system doesn't need modern fripperies like blade fuses. In fact the whole car's only got two fuses in the loom and they look like Brunel built them out of bits of leftover bridge. If you switch all the electrics on at once they do provide supplementary heating in the passenger footwell though...

Just had breakfast, fresh papaya, mango, banana, pineapple and water melon followed by a spicy Sri Lankan omelette all washed down with a pot of coffee and accompanied by Roadkill Episode 27 on YouTube, best day at work ever! Except it's not really work :-)
Here for a week to try and tye up the loose ends on the purchase of chateau Mac.
Somehow the fact that I didn't get the Navigator running before I left seems less important than it did a week or so ago.........
TTFN
Mac

So finally got some time back in the workshop and made some progress. Bad news is that I stuck a 7.5 Amp fuse in for the coil supply and carried out a cranking test that showed a lost sync count of no more than 2 or 3 on the Nodiz when cranking so all good, hooked everything up and promptly blew the coil driver again, $££$%$££$%^&^%£

Very frustrating !!!! Am con sidering my options:
A. Go megajolt
B. Stick it on the trailer and take it to MTech and let them sort it.

Did decide not to set fire to the workshop and walk away so I did get the gauges all wired up and working

The gauges are actually very very easy to wire and setup and even come with pre terminated leads for the sensors so I removed the redundant wires that are now not required from the loom. Just 4 wires left to connect, 1 for each of the indicator lamps, 1 for the high beam lamp and a hot start 12 volt which I think just trickles a very low current to the GPS so you don't have to wait for it to lock on every time you start the car.
Oil pressure sender screwed straight in as its a 1/8 NPT thread anyway, the water temperature sender is also 1/8NPT and couldn't find anywhere to put it so have ordered one of these:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131174368994?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 which should match up nicely with the blue silicone hoses I have.
Link below is to a video of the gauges in action:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/-Ek7YaPt6lH36-8OiB4WF9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

Mac - I know it must be really frustrating to be so near, yet so far.

Good luck getting it fixed, Paul.

Well never to do things by halves I today loaded up the Ribble on the trailer and drove it to MTech in Wiltshire to see if they could figure out why my ECU wasn't playing. Long story short the original repair they carried out either failed under load or the postie had played football with it. First thing Matt did was to fit a brand new unit and tell me to start the car, to say I was sceptical would be an understatement! I was fully prepared for the smell of burning electronics and the pop of the coil supply fuse going again. Imagine my delight then when it fired up first time and ticked over with not a care in the world! Tick over was a bit high but we started it five times and it started on the button every time. Bear in mind that this was with a standard 4 cylinder base map and without the TPS even connected or calibrated! Very relieved as I was starting to doubt my sanity! Have to say that Matt at MTech has been very patient and was as keen as me to get the issue sorted. And relax.....
Video to follow in a minute once its finished uploading.

TTFN
Mac

hopefully this should show a video of the car back from MTech, probably turned the tick over down a bit too much but still starts and sounds rather rorty!

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/tGT_It1EUFIQ9bD-28Qf4tMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

And in case that link doesn't work try this one:

http://youtu.be/SlTTEkdMPI8

The engine breaths into life, good news Viatron and it sound veeery nice rather throaty, reminds me of the days when i had a mk1 escort with a twin choke Weber and K&N filter, ohh happy days.