23 May 2022
Had a response from Dave at CANEMS and the ECU triggers the charge light once the voltage drops below 12.5v, checked my battery and it is at 12.82v. Turning on the headlights was enough to drop the voltage and trigger the charge light. Dave said the trigger voltage is programmable so I have asked him for details about how to change the setting. While the dash was out for the testing I drilled a hole to mount the push button for the speedo programming. Reinstalled the dash panel plugged it back in and tested the charge light again (with the headlights on) all working. I then made a start on the driving light covers. I made a paper template from the moulds I made the other week and cut out a piece of polycarbonate about 1cm larger all round with my jigsaw. Making it a bit bigger makes it easier when trying to align the flat polycarbonate on the vurved mould. I balanced the mould on top of a bit of exhaust pipe and then the polycarbonate on top of that, then I placed it carefully in my oven. I set it at about 150C it took about 10-15 minutes to droop on to my mould, then I turned it off and opened the door to allow it to cool down. I trimmed it using my jigsaw and then used a flap wheel to smooth it down to the right size. I used a hand held sanding block to finally smooth the edge. Things I learned doing this. The sole of the jigsaw will scratch the polycarbonate so mask it up with tape. Leaving the polycarbonate in the oven too long will cause distortion so turn it off and open the door to cool it down quicker. 25 May 2022 CANEMS got back to me with a new firmware load for the ECU. Need to load that up sometime. The Seal-It grommet arrived but it's simply too small and isn't going to work. So I took the MX5 grommet out and ran some edge trim around the hole to make it slightly smaller and refitted the grommet, now it is held much tighter in the firewall. Then I put tie wrap on the thin end of the grommet to help hold the bundle together. 27 May 2022 Tried to improve the fit of the aluminium mould for the nearside driving light. Didn't seem to make much of an improvement but on reflection I don't think it wil matter too much once the hole is cut out. Did some trial drilling on a polycarbonate offcut to see how easy or hard it was going to be and how close to the edge I need it to be. It drill verya easily with a sharp drill. I'm going to use M4 dome headed bolts to secure the covers to the body. I decided that spacing the holes about 6mm from the edge would work. That led me to set 12mm as the width at the edge of the hole I need to cut in the body. 28 May 2022 Came up with a plan to mark the 12mm cut line on the bodywork. I printed a simple 24mm diameter disc with a hole in the middle (12mm from the edge) on my 3d printer. I put a pencil in the centre hole and pressed the edge of the disc against the edge of the cutout on the body, and rolled it round the aperture. This worked well and gave me my cut line on the masking tape. 2 June 2022 Got my drill out and started drilling holes so I could open the apertures for my driving lights. First I chain drilled well inside the line I had marked, the fibreglass is surprisingly thick but the 10mm drill made short work of it. Then a hacksaw blade was inserted and I cut through to join the holes together. Then I used a flap wheel in my die grinder tto smooth out and remove the excess fibreglass. I test fitted the lamp housing I made. The housing turned out to be slightly smaller than the 12mm line but as I did test fitting I was able to stop before the aperture was too big. With the thickness of the fibreglass I have changed my thoughts about how to fix the housing. I was going to bond it to directly to the inside surface but now the pipe can fit inside the aperture and I can bond along the edge. It will need additional bonding inside which I will probably do with some fibreglass. In hindsight it would probably have been easier to cut the apertures first then push the pipe in and then trim it to the aperture edge. I might do that anyway as the housings are just a bit shorted than I want. I also need to find some end caps to seal the inside and hopefully I can mount the lights on to that, which would be easier than what I had planned before. I plan to spray the pipe and edge in the body colour and there will be a painted edge on the polycarbonate cover to hide the edge too.
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AuthorThis is my first kit car although I've messed about with cars all my life. Archives
November 2023
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