Dashboard Mk2 Complete

Dash Mk2 fitted! First things I noted was - its slightly bigger and very tight to fit. Also what I hadn't planned on was that the wood is thicker so it stands out more and gets in the way of the column shroud. A new slightly narrower one will be required as currently its all bunched up so it doesn't rub on the back of the steering wheel hub. Annoyingly, the hidden fixings are countersunk a little too much and a small depression in the vinyl can be seen where each fixing is. Other than that it seems to be fine and this vinyl is far less shiny-plasticky than the dashboard mk1.

I plugged everything in and turned the car on (switch pos 1 only) and the only wiring error (or so I thought at this stage) was the wipers came on immediately. Sorted that so then procrastinated a bit more by tidying up the garage to put off trying to start the car.

Now it's been stood for over 3 weeks so I expected it to take a bit to get it going but it wasn't having it. It turned over ok but not a sniff on actually firing up. Suspecting something electrical I got the multimeter out and started buzzing out the obvious stuff - dizzy +ve feed ok. Tacho output ok. By chance I happened to have one multimeter probe in the tacho wire and the other probe brushed onto the engine block - BEEEP! I had used shielded wire and where I had crimped onto the outer shielding to tie it to earth I had inadvertently crimped through to the signal wire so the coil was shorting directly to ground, hence no spark.

Fixed that and it fired up ok, immediately idling with no throttle but the tacho wasn't working. I was paying close attention to the speedo though, watching for the dreaded needle flicker but nothing to be seen, needle was happy. I was itching to go for a drive so ignored the dead tacho and went for a 15 min drive and used as many electrical things as possible to make sure it all worked. Still lean on part throttle but the idle was very high so I can probably close the throttle blades on idle a tiny bit more and hopefully get more transition circuit working. 

Got home and had a look at the tacho, it was simply a case of the rev limiter wired incorrectly when I changed to shielded wire. All working happily now although I'm certain the rev counter is somehow lazy when I use the rev limiter output, responding slowly to fast blips.

Driving!

Courtesy of a work colleagues GoPro. Apologies for poor video sizing but the camera was on its side so the video had to be rotated 90°

Dashboard Mk2

Sunny Saturday afternoon, got some beer, got my power tools and got a nice bit of 6mm thick marine ply to make a new dashboard. First job - old dash off and remove all the dials and switches. Amazingly I managed to keep the loom intact although this will receive some attention to tidy up and rationalise. Here's everything removed from the old dashboard:

I used the old dash as a template and got to work with the jigsaw. Barely 10 minutes later an here's the new bit of wood just to check it fits. Spent a bit of time smoothing out the curve on the top of the dashboard as the old dash wasn't a smooth curve and was quite noticeable. This one is a lot better.

Marked out the gauge positions - note now only 3 gauges over the speedo. I'm ditching the ammeter as it wasn't even connected before, just there for show. The main reason for a new dash is for a better tacho position so I will temporarily fit the dash and the steering wheel then get the old bits of paper and strips of tape out to position it (hopefully better than on dash mk1).

Update Monday 14th:

Adhesive left to dry overnight then pop the gauges back in. Bit of re-wiring left to do now that I've removed a gauge. Even though the ammeter wasn't connected to the main power feed it still had a backlight which needs removing. Due to the tacho moving some wires now don't reach so a bit of wire chopping is required.

Gopro action

More to follow!