• Bensamittari/Fuel meter
• Nopeusmittari/Speedo meter
• Muosiosien kiillotus/Polishing plastics
• Keinonahkan puhdistus
  Cleaning rexine
• Sähkötöiden aloitus
  Start of electricity wring !
• Sähköt 'testattu'
  Wirings finished
• Osat valmiina/All parts ready
• Kaiverrettuhen tekstien maalaus
  Painting engraved texts
• Linssien kiillotus
  Lens polishing
• Vaihtoehto kromaukselle
  Alternative to chroming
• Alumiinin kiillotus
  Polishing aluminium
   

Bensamittari/Fuel Meter

Projektin alkuvaiheessa mittaripaneli tuli jo kertaalleen kunnostettua, mutta johdotuksen yhteydessä polttoainemittarista näkyvät hapettumat alkoivat häiritsemään.  Pakkohan mittari oli purkaa aivan totaalisesti osiin.  Näyttötaulujen kunnostus onkin hieman hankalampi juttu ellei ole silkkipainettuna uusia tekstejä ja merkintöjä.  Onneksi mittarista oli hapettunut ainoastaan päällimmäinen osa, jos on vain 'Smiths' ja 'Fuel' teksti.  Maalarimme Jani peitti tekstit teipillä ja maalasi naamataulun mustaksi kynäruiskulla.

Vasemmassa kuvassa puretut osat.  Oikeassa kuvassa runko-osa kunnostettuna ja itse keltapassivoituna.  Äärimmäisen hyvät ohjeet löytyvät Timo Happosen kotisivuilta...    Itse luin nämä jälkikäteen ja nähtävästi tein työn kutakuinkin oikeaoppisesti.

The instrument panel was already reconditioned in the beginning of the project.  But while rewiring it fuel meter's corroded face plates were distubingly visible.  Well, I dimantled it into parts and took the panel to my painter.  He told that he would protect the printed texts with thin masking tape and then paint the rest to matt black with a brush paint gun.

In the left image is the fuel meter in parts.  On the right the body has been cleaned and yellow passivated by myself. The part having text 'Smiths' and 'FUEL' is not repainted yet.

Functionality of the instrument should be tested at this stage.  For me it was easy as I had an adjustable power supply.  Adjusting voltage you could see that the needle was moving logically.  Adjust the voltage slowly as the needle respond is delayed.

Mittarien kehykset tuli jo kertaalleen maalattua sprayllä, mutta päätin maalata ne kunnon 2K-maalilla (Sikkens Rally Black = matta/puolikiiltävä).  Teelusikallisen maalia sekoittaminen tuntui hieman yliampuvalta.  Kynäruiskulla (15€) sai todella tasaisen jäljen ruiskuttamalla maalia hyvin ohuena sumuna. Seos on 3:1:3 normaalin 3:1:2 asemasta.

Intrument frames were already painted with aerosol but I decided to paint them properly with 2K-paint (Sikkens Rally Black Matt/Semi-Gloss).  In order to make a spoonful of paint this way was quite frustrating.  Pen painting gun is good in painting parts like this as you can paint very thin layers, Mix is 3:1:3 instead on 3:1:2.

Nopeusmittari/Speedo meter

At this stage at had the guts to dismantle the speedo meter totally.  A good decision as the internal mechanism was covered with dirty grease.  The needle never dropped to zero because of this.  You could sink the meter in washing water as there are no electrical components in it. Note: Do not touch the panel face with anything as it will scratch very easily and is almost impossible to repair.

20.10.2009 as I started my MG Midget 1962 project I had to restore all the gauges also mechanically.  I tried to restore them to the smallest detail.  During this I learned that painting the gauge facia with matt laquer hides the small schrathes and restores the semi-gloss finish.  I zeroed the distance meter while fixing it.

Muoviosien kiillotus/Plastics polishing

In the start of the project I polished plastic parts with liquid polishing waxes but this is not good stuff for plastic parts.  Wiser guys told to use solid waxes: couse and fine.  At the moment I have polished to switches and they look now like new.  The coarse was removed even deep scratches.

Keinonahan elvytys/Restoring rexine

Intrumenttipaneli alkoi näyttämään törkyiseltä mittareiden ja kytkimien kunnostuksen jälkeen.  Paneli on päällystetty keinonahan tyyppisellä materiaalilla ja sitä ei löydy enää vastaavalla kuvioinnilla.  Aikani mietittyäni sen puhdistusta tuli 17-v tyttäreni ja antoi nahan puhdistusaineita hevostarvikelaatikostaan.  Sanoi että koetas iskä näitä.  Hieman epäilytti, koska olivat tarkoitettuja nahalle. Niinpä ...

The instrumenct panel rexine showed dirty and worn after restoring all the gauges and switches.  The black rexine is not available anymore with exactly same pattern.  While I was thinking howto clean and polish the rexine came my 17 yrs old daughter and gave leather cleaners from her horse equipment care box.  She told that try these dad. I was a little skeptic as they were for leather. Well ...

Here is the rexine clued in places where is has disintegrated from the frame. Actually the whole rexine is covered with thick layer of nicotine.

Here are some cheap leather washing liquid and leather oil.  Most efficiently cleaning happens using a smooth and slightly rough sponge. The dirt is really stuck to the rexine and thus the sponge is a must.

After wahing and several rinses and drying you wipe out the leather oil in a thick layer.  The dry rexine will absorb it pretty well.

After 15-20 mins you wipe the eccess oil off with a clean cloth.  After this the surface should be semi-shining.

Sähkökaapelointia/Electricity wiring ...

Jossain vaiheessa sähköhommielle tehdään erilliset sivustot.  Likinäköiselle värisokealle tämä vaihe on todella mielenkiintoinen ...
At some stage there will be own pages for all electricy jobs.  For a short sighted and color blind this is a truly interesting stage ...
 

Most 'frightening' job in the project has been the electricity wirings.  During stripping down the car I ripped of all old wirings.  I then ordere a ready made harness kit from UK.  I have been horrified by the number of leads and specially the thickness of the harnesses.  Worst place is the instrument panel as most wires go through it and there is not too much space for them.

Ennen töiden aloitusta olin hankkinut eBays:tä laminoidun kytkentäkaavion, jossa on isoilla symboleilla merkitty kaikki vempaimet ja johdot esitetty todellisilla väreillä.  Ilman tätä olisin pulassa, sillä huoltomanuaalin kytkentäkaaviosta esim. värit on todella hankala todeta.   Rinnalla oli varmuuden vuoksi 2.4 LHD:n Haynes:n versio.

Before starting the job I bought a laminated wiring diagram from eBay.  It has big colored symbols for all the accessories and most importantly all the wirings in correct color scheme!  Just in case I had the Haynes 2.4 LHD version also available.
 

A small detail in the instrument panel harness kit was annoying me.  The pulp holders for the instrurment lights were of plastic and thus needed a separate earth cable.  The original one is of metal and thus doesn't need it.  Luckily I had the original holders left and could replace them easily. Warning: Do not cut the read lead.  Insted brake the holder so that you get the wire's length remain the same.
 

There is a separate harness kit for the internal connections inside the instrument panel.  It is quite easy to install as there is plenty of space at this stage.  Route all the cables as close to the panel face as possible.  This will leave space for the additional harnesses.  Here you can see how the connections are tested before proceeding.  Panel lights are working here except the center one.  It turned out that the pulp was broken.  Good to find it out at this stage!

Reitityksen on oltava juuri oikea.  Kaapelinippua joutuu taivuttelemaan voimalla, jotta johdot eivät tule liian kireälle ja toisaalta taipuu kahden ohjauskiinnikkeen lävitse.  Kytkentäohjeessa oli pari virhettä mikä aiheutti hieman lisävaivaa.

Nightmare #1: mains wiring loom.  My set had the loom wrong way bent (LHD) and it took a while to realize this.  The second trial was successful and all leads could be connected. Leads don't have any extra lenght and thus correct routing is critical.  The harness must be bent very tighly so it would go through the two supporting clips.  There were few mistakes in the laminated diagram and also in the harness but after a while you could figure out these minor mistakes.

Valokatkaisin on erilainen kuin kytentäkaavioissa eikä siinä ole samoja numeroita kuin kaaviossa. 3-asentoinen kytkin on Lucas joten sen olettaisi olevan alkuperäinen.

Here is the complete instrument panel wired.  The wiring loom had some extra wires for equipment not used in a 2.4 std manual gearbox version without overdrive.  This loom had be installed several times before I got it routed and bent right.

The light switch is dirrefent from the wiring diagrams.  It has not the same connector numbers as in the diagram.  This is a Lucas one, so one would think it's original.  Well, trial and error is one way to connect them.

No on niitä kaapeleita vielä vedevänä ...  Savun hälvettyähän kytkentöjen oikeellisuuden näkee.  Johtosarja muodostuu yli kymmenestä erillissarjasta eikä niitä tietenkään ollut merkitty mihin ne kuuluvat.  Testikasauksessa suurin osa kyllä löysi paikkansa.  Ylimääräisten lisälaitteiden johtojen selvittäminen kesti ja kestää edelleenkin aikansa.

Well, there are some wires still to be installed ...  Hopefully the connections are right.  The wiring harness consist of several separate smaller harnesses and naturally they were not marked in anyway.  Some guess work and I could spot which goes to whére. There are still some 'extra' wires and I hope that they really are extra ones.

Johdotukset testattu/Wirings tested

Inhoan kaikkea ylimääräistä joten katkoin kylmästi poikki ylimääräiset johdot niin instrumenttipanelista (valokytkimen kaksi ylimääräistä) kuin nopeus-mittarin kaapelin päästäkin.  Itseasiassa mukana oli yksi ylimääräinen johtosarja käyttämättömille lisälaitteille.

After done the above described instrument panel wirings was it time to do the same to the speedometer panel.  It looked very simple as there are only few electrical instruments and switches.  In the wiring harness, however, there are plenty of wires for it.  Most of them are extra wires not used in my basic MK2 version (automatic transmission, overdrive etc).

I hate extra wires and did cut them off brutally.  In this way I got rid of two extra wires at the instrument panel and a small loom set.  During the final installation they will not bother me anymore.

Asennusten jälkeen tein pistokokeita mittaamalla muutamia kulutuskohteita kuten töötti ja valot.  Pääsääntöisesti näyttivät menevän oikein.   Piuhoitus täytyy tehdä uudestaan auton kasausvaiheessa ja savun hälvettyä tarkistamme kytkennät ...

Here is the full dash board wired.  Note the steering wheel which has also all wirings preassemled.  After this I tried to check that all the wires truly go where they should (horn, main beam, rear light ...).  Most seem to do so.  The rest will be checked when installed to the car when the smoke has disappeared ...

Nämä löytyivät Frost:lta UK:sta enkä edes yrittänyt etsiä Suomesta.  Ovat 'halpoja' eikä tarvitse leikkiä Apico-liitinpihdeillä.

One thing that made the wirings difficult was that I couldn't believe that those thick wires inteed goto some small light pulp or clock.  Well, maybe the clock needs 35A.

Näyttää jääneen sumuvalot päälle.  No, näitä ei oltu esitetty edes kytkentä-kaaviossa.

Job done and all is waiting for the car body to be ready.  I'm going to do installation of the wiring harnessed slightly improvised.  I will fist install the instrument panel (pre-wired) and then route the harnesses throught various holes to the engine bay.  At least this should work in theory?

Seems that I have accidentally left the fog lights on.  No problem as the they are not presented in the wiring diagrams anyway.

Kaikki kasausta vailla valmista/All ready for assembling

Alkoi hommat mennä näpertelyksi ja päätin pakata kaikki osat odottamaan kasausta.  Kori valmistuu näillä näkymin joulukuun aikana jonka jälkeen alkaa kokoonpano-urakka.  Toivon mukaan auto on kutakuinkin kasassa maalis-huhtikuun korvilla.

I had already restored all the parts and decided that this is enough.  The bodywork should be ready by December.  After this starts the most interesting thing: assembling.  Hopefully this will be done by March/May.

Upotettujen tekstien kunnostus/Restoring imprinted texts

I  found it very difficult restoring the instrument panel knobs engraved markings.  Everytime I tried to remove the extra paint, also the paint in the engraving was damgeg.  In my other project (MG Midget) I found a solution even for this.

Here is the screen washes push button restored.  First I cleaned it carefulluy with a de-greaser (nothing else).  Then I dipped the whole know into matt white paint so the paint layer was really thick.  I assume you could use spray paint also?

Kuivumisen jälkeen sitten pelkkä kiillotus laikalla.  Kangaslaikka syö pikkuhiljaa nupin pinnassa olevan maalin pois, mutta ei syvennyksissä olevaa. Ohjeet kiillotuksessa ylempänä ...

After the paint dries you polish the know as described above...
The buffet will remove slowly the extra paint but removes the paint in the engravings.  See plastic polishing above ...

Periaatetta voi soveltaa myös moniväristen kaiverrusten maalaukseen.
The same princible can be applied for multicolored texts too.

Linssien kiillotus/Lens polishing

These lenses are from my MG which I polished with the same stuff as the other plastic parts.  Two grades of waxes were used and it takes some 10 mins to achieve this shiny lenses.  You can see that the MG is a USA version as the indicator lense is red - not yellow as in UK.  Also you could spot the manufacturing year (1961) at the bottom of the lense.

Vaihtoehto kromaukselle/Alternative method to chroming

Chroming is almost a mission impossible in Finland due to different RoHS regulations.  There are only a few big companies left and they are not so interested in chroming car parts.  In my MG project I had decided to everything myself and this chroming issue seemed to be impossible to do yourself.  I decided to test a different approach to hand brake lever.

The clue is that the parts are bright nickel plated as done in the 1950's.  I had previously purchased the equipment for this from Frost UK.  I let the parts be in the nickel solution for 24 hours so that a relative thich layer of nickel was built.  After this I removed the extra nickel by sanding it with 60-120 grid sand papers, steel wool and finally polished with waxes.  You can't see the difference to chrome even looking very it closely.

Alumiinin kiillotus/Polishing aluminium

Varoitus: Käytä aina hyvää hengityssuojainta alumiinia työstäessäsi ja huolehti hiontapölyn poistamisesta.
Warning: Always use a good quality respitory protection when working with aluminium. 
 

MG:n etumaski on lähes kokonaan alumiinia ja siten sen hymy oli melko huonossa hapessa.  Tiesin että edessä on kova savotta, mutta tällä kertaa päätin hieman oikaista ja käyttää brutaaleja keinoja.
The front grill of a MG is mostly of aluminium and as such in bad condition.  I knew that restoring them would be a major job and decided to use 'brutal' methods this time.

At the rear you can see the original parts, at the left heavily sand blasted part and at the right the final part.  After sand blasting you can straighten all dents with hammer and also the mostly corroded spots so that the spot is slightly recessed.  Then it is just heavy sanding - you can really sand away as much material as you want.  Watch out that you maintain the original curves and shapes when sanding.  After sanding you use steel wool and the final touches by polishing waxes.  The final part looks like chromed!