Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[petelang]

I upgraded trafficators to led flashing bulbs which I think is much safer, especially as they're not where other road users expect to see indicators and flashing alerts attention. Its a straightforward swap and not an expensive option for that peace of mind.
I have also used led headlamp replacements and they are a big improvement.
With regards the instrument illumination, these will likely be bare bulbs housed adjacent to the instrument and probably covered in dust. A good clean will make a world of difference.
Peter

[alanb]

With regard to the trafficators when I purchased my Morris 8 series 1 two seater it only had the trafficators and the chap I bought it from in Norfolk said he’d never had a problem with them and other road users. So I decided to stay with just the trafficators, living in a more densely populated area with much more traffic I had during the first few month’s several people hoot their horns at me, then one day I pulled into my local garage to fuel up and forgot to cancel the indicator, when paying at the till the chap pointed to my car and said “what’s that thing sticking out the side of your car” I told him it was the indicator he said “I’ve never seen them before”. I thought if he didn’t know what they were how many other young drivers would know. So Shortly after I fitted flashing indicators.
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old tourer


Morris 8 two seater

[Vulgalour]

One wiring loom ordered. Selected the power outlet option, and the indicators-with-semaphores option since those are the items we know we want. If we do want to fit a radio or anything else further down the line, we will have a nice blank slate to work from. We do want to keep the semaphores operational, and we also accept most drivers won't know what they are so we're going to discretely add some more conventional looking indicators too. The provision for a power outlet is because we're not sure just how far we'll be driving the car, so we want to future proof a little and the option to plug in a sat nav or charge a phone if we find we're driving far enough to need such tools. Anything else we might want to add in the future will be easier since we'll have a safe, clean loom to work with

The new loom was just over £420 from Autosparks, delivered. There was so much positive information out there about them and it's so convenient that it seemed like a very sensible option. Covid means there's a bit of a delay on actually getting the loom out, but that's okay, we're not in an enormous rush. We had considered making a loom from scratch and while this would save us some money, for the time and hassle involved it just didn't seem worth it on balance when there's a reputable readymade option available.

At least now we'll know the car will have safe wiring. Later we'll get all the bulbs and such that we need. I had expected it to take us a bit longer to get the funds together for the loom, but I had some orders come through today that had been on hold for a little while that had been holding things up.

[Bitumen Boy]

[Penman]

Hi
I think these are what petelang was referring to.
https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/products/12v-self-flashing-36mm-semaphore-trafficator-amber-led-slimline-256

because they are out at the side of the car they should be as visible if not more so than those moderns with the indicators in the middle of the H/lamp cluster.
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Bristols should always come in pairs.

Any 2 from:-
Straight 6
V8 V10

[Vulgalour]

Isn't it nice when there's such an easy off-the-shelf upgrade like that? That company are already on the bookmark list since they have so many useful items.

One of the other upgrades we're going to be doing is replacing the front sidelight bulbs with some clever LED ones that are sidelights normally, and then indicators when needed, switching off the sidelight function when the indicator is in use like some modern cars do. The front of the car will look unaltered and the indicators will be in just about the most visible location they can be.

Normally I'm not keen on LED lights, the look of a light on a car is important to me and LED lights often look out of place. However, on older cars they do seem to work well, particularly when you've got restrictions on space for fitting newer bulbs. Now that the market has more options with warm white bulbs, they're not so jarring a thing to see in an older car, and in the case of the semaphore upgrade they're actually very sensible.

I'm not sure that we'll refit all the bulbs on the Lanchester with LEDs but we'll certainly be doing some of them. For indicators at the front, a reader on another forum demonstrated some clever dual function LEDs that allow the sidelights to also be the indicators. This is an ideal solution because the light output is a warmer white from the new bulbs, and the location of the sidelights is such that they're very visible as indicators. Best of all, when the lights are off, there's no visible modification, no little orange blobs peeking up above or below the front bumper, and since the indicator function in the bulbs is amber they're much more visible to the modern driver.

The Lanchester is old enough that the indicators can be white at the front and red at the rear which allows us to add no extra lights at all if we really want to. The only issue really is trusting other drivers to understand what the lights actually mean and most in the UK don't understand a flashing red rear light is an indicator and won't look for, or understand, the semaphore signal even with a flashing light in it.

Our best solution so far at the rear is a simple LED bar in the rear window housing a high level brake light and a pair of indicators. Something slim and subtle that catches the eye while still being discrete.

Were the car in more pristine condition, the decision to upgrade the lighting would be a more difficult one. As it is, we regard it as our part of the car's history, our little mark on its long life.

[alastairq]

LEDs, being clever little sods...can be had indifferent colours as well.....so one LED array can show one colour normally, but another colour when demanded.
So a 'red' light unit can have a 'yellow' indicator array included...which might resolve concerns about drivers identifying indicators?
My '67 Mustang [as below] has a clever LED conversion to the rear lights.
Fresh from the US of A, a Mustang's rear lights, brake lights and indicators don't meet UK rules.

MIne has a 'conversion' sold by Brightlights, which overcomes that issue [along with some rewiring of the brake and indicator circuits]...
So now, each rear light panel [3 strips...which oddly, only had one bulb each side]....now has an LED array..with separate side, brake, and amber indicator circuits.
So, when indicating, each of the 3 vertical red panels has an amber flashing strip across the centre.....

The front 'side' lights..low down on each side, are really too low for sidelights rules...so they become [amber] indicators..although the 'lens' is white.
The sidelights are an in-headlight LED bulb...a bit too blueish for my tastes....and they go 'off' when the headlights are lit...but I find them very useful for foul weather lighting...they are quite bright, and IMHO, more effective at alerting oncoming drivers to my presence, than headlights alone....[which are not LED]

One LED fad I really dislike, is the fitment of a semi circle of LEDs around an old car's headlight units....horrible!
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Dellow Mk2, 1951 built, reg 1952.
Fiat 126 BIS
Cannon special [1996 registered. Built in 1950's]
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Ford Pop chassis, Ashley 1172 bodyshell, in pieces.

[Rick]

Thanks for the updates, on the subject of pre-selectors this page on OCC may be of use:

https://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/library/wilsonpreselector.htm

RJ
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[petelang]

One other significant benefit, particularly if you elect for LED headlamps is the tremendous power saving which means the dynamo has more to put back in the battery. As we all tend to only do short runs, low annual mileages and not out often its a desirable benefit and whereas I used to have to top up charge every few weeks I no longer have to bother. The dynamo seems happy and brush wear is minimal.
Peter

[alastairq]

[Peter_L]

New wiring loom: A word to the wise when fitting a new wiring loom.
Install a temporary inline fuse or a 21W filament light bulb between the battery and what will be the main feed cable/s.

An installation fault, or maybe a connection to some component that had been previously isolated because of a fault, or even a fault in the new loom, will prevent damage and maybe even fire. I favour the 21W bulb.

[peter scott]

Better still, use a current limited power supply rather than a car battery whilst testing the installation.

Peter
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http://www.nostalgiatech.co.uk
1939 SS Jaguar 2 1/2 litre saloon

[Ray White]

[Vulgalour]

Oh, I'm sure we'll have questions when it comes to installing this loom, we're on the really easy stuff at the moment. I'm not even sure what I'd use for a current limited power supply.

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Had a little time during my lunch break today to crack on fitting the new rocker cover gasket. We'd ordered one since it was only a tenner and the gasket on the car was leaking quite badly. The rocker cover itself is, surprisingly (though perhaps this is more normal for cars of this era, so only surprising to us since we're new to them) cast aluminium. It's a bit of a fiddle to get it out past the heater pipes and the rocker assembly, there's a knack to it, and the radiator stay bars get in the way a bit too. Not the friendliest engine bay and also not the worst. With the rocker cover off it was a lot easier to see why the old seal was leaking, a couple of pieces of the old gasket were missing and the gasket itself had gone hard with old age. One curious thing is the electrical tape tabs on the corners, the only thing we could think those are for is to pull the corners out when aligning the gasket. The gasket had also been held on with some white sealant of some sort, though not massive amounts and it looks like the rocker cover may have been repainted at least once. Much of the paint on the top is flaking off, the temptation to polish the cover is quite high, it would probably come up beautifully.





The cover itself is bolted down with two bolts that have lovely knurled heads on them, that's the two larger holes in the middle. The other hole with the gasket hanging off goes to the air cleaner, we're missing one of the bolts (there's quite a few fixing bolts missing here and there), The large disc is the oil filler cap, it looks like the whole thing might have been chromed originally, now it's just the knob on the top and a bit underneath it, while the rest of the disc is tarnished brass. After cleaning the inside and outside of the cover as much as was necessary, I cleaned the gasket mating face off with some fine wet and dry paper before using the gel superglue provided to tack the cork gasket in place. There's no groove for the gasket to go in, it just sits against two flat faces (one on the cover, one on the engine) and without the superglue, the long sides of the gasket try and pull in and can be a bit of a nuisance to align. For the engine side, just a clean was required, the oil leak had washed away any sort of sealing material that might have been there and it was clean enough to not warrant the wet and dry the cover required.


Once I was sure that was set, it was a case of finegling the cover back onto the engine. It was now much more pleasant to handle since it didn't have oily deposits on the lower inch or so. You have to hook the rear passenger side of the cover over the rocker assembly first, easing it past the heater pipe, and then the whole rocker cover just plops neatly into place. Fixing it down is simple a case of dropping the knurled head bolts into their holes and doing them up until it feels snug. I'll recheck these bolts again since the gasket is likely to settle a little and they'll probably need another half turn or so.


A very pleasant, easy job. You can also spy our new unfinished plug leads in that last shot, we're just waiting on the spark plug and coil end covers for the leads to arrive, which they should be in a few days' time, and that should address the idling issue since the leads will actually connect properly. More on why those weren't working properly when the new leads are finished and installed. The spark leads are red because they just are (well, actually the other half wanted red ones and it was as good an excuse as any). As it happens, the spark plug covers we ordered in black were out of stock when they went to pick them and they asked if we'd like red ones instead for the same price, so perhaps the red wires were a good choice after all.

[Ray White]

No doubt you will be changing the oil. I would have to think long and hard about which type of oil to use. In an old engine with a less than efficient oil filter it is important to keep detergents to a minimum. You will probably find your service manual recommends Daimler's own "solvent process engine oil" which I doubt is available now. The nearest equivalent would be a straight SAE 30 mineral oil.

It is quite possible, however, that the engine has been running on SAE 20/50 in which case you might wish to continue with it. Again, I must emphasise that a low detergent oil is preferable because the last thing you want is to loosen silt that has built up over the years.

Interestingly, the gearbox oil and also that in the fluid flywheel would originally have been Daimler's own but as previously stated a straight SAE 30 oil should be used.

Incidentally, should you decide to remove the sump for cleaning - or to inspect the bearings - it will entail dismantling the front brakes. I would suggest combining a brake overhaul to co inside simply so you don't have to do things twice.