Assembly Summer 2008

In our last episode we left our hero tied to a railway track with a train hurtling towards him, and a meteor on a collision course with Earth..... Ooops, no that's a different story!

Ok, so on with the continuing saga of my Pembleton Grasshopper build.

The next jobs were to get the air filters on the carb's and install the control cables. Then get enough wiring in place in order to start the engine.

For the air filters I bought a pair of Piper X filter socks and fitted them onto the carb's. These turned out to be nothing more than tubes of foam with foam end caps, which fit over the carb air in-takes and attach with cable ties. These bits of foam cost £22 for a pair! From their technical blurb they filter out x micron particles, yadda yadda, and can be washed out, yadda yadda...... but ultimately they're bits of foam! Next time I think I'll try to make something out of an old brillo / scotch pad or some such, or adapt a pair of motorcycle cone filters which, I think, will look much better.

The carbs.

The control cables were fabricated using bicycle brake cables for the throttle cable and bicycle gear cables for the choke cables. I had to make a throttle cable adjustment unit / bracket to allow for correct adjustment of the cables. This adjuster bracket is fixed to the chassis number plate braket which is in just the right place for the task. The adjuster bracket was made from a piece of steel angle iron and some cable adjuster bolts which I just happened find in my 'odds and sods box of nuts and bolts and other treasures'.

The cable adjuster unit.

The throttle cable end barrel nipples (where they attach to the throttle pedal) were made from some 6mm Aliminium bar which I cut, drilled and brazed onto the cable. Easy peezy! The ends of the cables at the carbs were run through cable guides made from bent sections of copper fuel line, as can be seen in the above photo.

I discovered that I'd thrown out the choke pull lever from my donor cars. Looking in the Europa catalogue these can be bought for £7 or so. Needing 2 of these, or buying one and then having to make a dual cable connector, I decided to make one instead! 

I used an old barrel bolt lock and a brass coloured allen key headed nut from an old piece of garden furniture, all found in my trusty 'odds and sods box of nuts and bolts and other treasures'. It's strange how this magic box of bits and bobs always seems to contain just waht I need! I cut a thread at both ends of the bolt from the lock, drilled a hole at one end to secure the choke cables with a locking nut. The other end took the brass allen headed nut to form the 'pull end' of the choke lever. This choke pull lever is simple and I think looks much better than anything I could have bought. Its these little handmade bits and pieces which I feel really make the Pembletons come to life and endear them to their owners.

Homemade choke lever.

Now that the control cables were in place I needed to put the wiring in place for the ignition system in order to get Josephine started. I consulted my trusty Haines manual and found the requisite wiring diagram. The ignition wiring bit was really simple so I set about stripping the wiring elements I needed from the loom. This seems really daunting with the loom laid out on the lawn trying to decipher it, but its not that bad once you get stuck in. Honest!

Anyway after a couple of hours or so the wiring was in. The moment of truth had come. I turned the ignition key and ..... the starter motor turned over. A glowing feeling entered my heart and spread slowly through my quivering body ..... We'll have enough of that thank you very much, we are British after all! Now that the electrics seemed to be in correctly, in theory now I just had to get petrol to the carbs in order to start her up.

The wiring part-complete.

I borrowed some petrol from Tony's lawn mower supply and primed the fuel pump by disconnecting the fuel line from the pump and connecting a funnel to it, into which I poured petrol. I turned the key, the starter turned and ..... nothing. I primed the pump again, turned the key and .... nothing. Okay, I primed the carb's instead. Turned the key and .... bugger, the battery was now flat. I took the battery from my van, connected it up, turned the key and ... nothing. Turned the key and applied choke and .... cough, cough, a little throttle and bark, cough, bark, cough, bark, vroom - bloody - vroom. She's alive! I got that warm feeling all over again.

Ok, so I just needed to get the fuel through from the petrol tank now. I needed more petrol as I'd used up Tony's small supply. After a quick trip to the petrol station and another go at priming the fuel pump - fill the funnel connected to the outlet from the pump, which the wife is holding (the funnel, not the pump :o), start the engine and wait for the funnel to start filling up rather than drain, at which point the wife panics and pours petrol all over the driveway! - I reconnect all the fuel pipework and hey presto, Josephine now starts and keeps running. I get that warm feelin.... okay you get the picture :o)

The date was June 30th 2008 and for all intents and purposes I now had a car. The finishing line was now galloping into view. I just have to wire all ancillary electrics, put outter bodywork on, fix mud-guards, attach lights.... The finishing line receeded back into the distance.

Anyway on with the build. Next is to design, make and wire my dashboard.

The dashboard.

I'd decided early on that I didn't want to use any of the steering column mounted switches for indicators and lights. I'd ordered rotary switches for these functions from Europa. All switches and lights therefore were to be dash mounted. I came to the decision (after reading the SVA manual and consulting the Pembleton foeum) that I'd need the following lights and switches on the dash:

switches - indicators, lights, main beam, hazards and horn; 

lights - hazards, oil, brake fluid level, main beam, low fuel.

The only other thing incorporated into the dash would be the speedometer.

I don't think I'll need an indicator light on the dash because I should be able to see them from the cockpit, as I intend to mount the front indicators on the top of the mud-guards.

It turns out that Fog lights are optional for 3 wheelers, so I'm leaving them off for now, I might add them at a later date. A reversing light is again optional for 3 wheelers, so I won't bother with one. It also turns out that the brake fluid level warning light is also not required for 3 wheelers, as long as visual check can be easily made. However, in this case I decided it'd be a good idea to include the warning light. Brakes are I feel very important on any vehicle, especially one that I'm travelling in.

Because I'm electing to have a low fuel warning light on the dash instead of using the fuel gauge from the donor, it means that I'm having to make a small electronic unit to take the sender output and turn on the warning light. This is because the sender turns the light on when it's full and off when its empty (actually the sender is actually just a varibale resistor, so it's not actually sending anything, its resisticting / altering current / voltage through its particular circuit). Anyway, without going into too much detail, I found that I can use a 741 op-amp to do a voltage comparison and so get the voltage I need to turn a light on when the sender float is low. I've created a circuit which turns on an LED, I just need to get it to turn on a light bulb by using a relay (I could just use the circuit 'as-is' and have an LED on the dash, but I'm being anal and want to use the donor vehicle's warning lights). Once this is done I'll start soldering up the module, which hopefully won't have the dual function of being a detonator for my petrol tank :o)

My low fuel electronics unit.