Ian.G's Track/Drift Levin.

[Ian.G]

Bit more progress on the car.

I spent 8hours removing all the sound deadening from the car this weekend. It was a bad job but fortunately the fact it was cold helped a lot.

I basically took a dead blow hammer and 3 different sized gasket scrapers and attacked. It generally came off in chunks but some bits were a pain.

I have to waxoil down the holes into the chassis rails that were under all the sound padding, clean down with petrol to remove the final bits and then spray away - hopefully I wont make a mess of things.

Engine is being spec'd up as we speak - just have to decide if I take the plunge or 'the plunge'.

[Mux213]

Looks good Ian, get that baby back on the road!

[Ian.G]

Bit of boring work last night - I find it hard to do a lot on weeknights because of being drained from work (I am a wimp!)

Just the cleaning up stage now - hope to paint in the next few days as I'm not happy about leaving raw hachi metal exposed.

I want my car back running again soon - but in the meantime I may as well spend a while making sure things are nice - i dont want to have to touch the interior of my car for a long time once this work is done

One of the things I am also considering is replacing the hachi heater/blower with a unit from another car. I imagine the technology on these things has moved on a fair bit since 1983. I wonder If I can find a smaller blower unit that operates with electric switches instead of the cable pulls ? If so I could free up a bit of dashboard space by not having to put the heater control panel back in - I could just have a few switches instead.

[Ian.G]

Just in the process of taking the dashboard out - but I have a problem.

There is some weird little sensor that comes out of the top of the dashboard just above the instrument cluster - 2 wires join up to another part of the loom that disappears off behind the blower - I cant seem to get this out of the dash - any ideas ?

(I broke my clock surround too) - oh well - its not going back in anyway LOL

[Ivan141]

Sounds like it's not supposed to be there in the first place...just cut the wires if you're also sure that it's not standard.

[Ian.G]

Ivan,

I think this is a temp sensor that is something to do with the air-con system. I wonder if its used to read temp when the aircon is in auto climate mode ?

As I'm not putting the aircon back in I guess its not a problem to cut the wires - but I was kind of hoping to keep the aircon loom in good shape in case anyone fancied using it.

Will try and get a photograph for you at some point.

[Matt Skinner]

Ian.G Wrote:One of the things I am also considering is replacing the hachi heater/blower with a unit from another car. I imagine the technology on these things has moved on a fair bit since 1983. I wonder If I can find a smaller blower unit that operates with electric switches instead of the cable pulls ?

I can recommend 1980's VW Polo heatercores. VERY easy to get at. VERY dense fin design. Just need to fit it somehow. Could use the entire heater unit out of one, but ive never really given that much thought as I used to use em for cooling computers. As to removing the cable pull operation of the valve, could use a solenoid valve instead!

[Ivan141]

Just stick to the cable mechanism...the last thing you want is more electronics in your car, especially pointless electronics like heater adjustment solenoids. You'd still need a cable machanism for the selection of the heaters direction anyway.

[Ian.G]

I'm going to have the heater only pointing up at the screen for de-misting. I reckon I can reproduce the on/off/speed selection switch pretty easy - thats all I'll have to control the heater.

This is the part I have not been able to get out of the dashboard.

any ideas how to remove it ?

[Ivan141]

Looks like some run of the mill old connector...wonder what goes through all those pins..
The below pic is a bit fuzzy but it looks like there's a nut under there that you can undo... Or at least something similar...take something off at the back and pull it out from the top.