Timex and friends

[Dollywobbler]

To be fair, Scotland can be one of the most stunning places on earth. The scenery is entirely different to anything else I've found in the UK. Frankly at times, it doesn't feel much like Earth, let alone Britain! (landscape gets a bit lunar in places).

We're really looking forward to the Scottish trip. A weekend jaunt in Wales is still on the cards too...

[citsncycles]

Right, back to the car!

Had a frustrating morning trying to make more instruments light up - don't think I got very far

Then I turned my attention to the heater controls:



I'd been told they were back lit, while I thought they had overhead lights - turns out it seems to have both, but non of it works:



I only had 2 spare bulbs to hand, so I put them here:



In the pic above, you can see another bulb just above the top slider, while the one below shows the cutouts in the top of the surround which seem to have lenses in.



I'll have to pull this apart further once I get some more bulbs, and will try to sort out the blower controls at the same time. I'll even try not to forget the diffuser round the central slider on reassembly this time

[Dollywobbler]

If it makes you feel better, my new BX has one working bulb in the instrument binnacle and that's it! No illumination for half the speedo, the rev counter or the heater controls. I discovered this in the dark last night...

[citsncycles]

Managed to check the dash in the dark tonight - I can see the fuel gauge (just!)



Heater controls are looking better too

[citsncycles]

Managed to fit more bulbs to Timex today



Just 2 more to go - the downlighter for the ashtray is missing the bulb holder, and I ran out of daylight for reassembling the fag lighter.

These also arrived today

[Xemes]

Just a draw when Timex still was at Heuliez's : Some little differences can be seen



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[citsncycles]

Must be a concept drawing of some kind I suppose - looks almost like wrap round rear windows, which I guess were too costly.

Interesting they picked that colour - it seems most of the surviving Mk1's are blue.

[citsncycles]

Bit of a frustrating day today, although some headway was made. I decided that I needed to try to get the rear wiper and demister working, so started by removing the trim from the tailgate. With it removed, a couple of interesting details were found - A Heuliez badge and a 1985 date stamp on the trim - I assume Ian swapped he trim when changing the tailgate, which is dated 1987:




This enabled me to work out the wiring route - this is the wiring for the demister:





The demister panel itself checks out, and apart from a couple of switched earths, the wiring looks good, but there doesn't seem to be any power at the rear of the roof. The switch works and the relay clicks so I'll try to find another relay to swap in, then start checking contacts.

I then tried looking at the wiper mechanism. There are 4 wires at the back of the roof, 1 earth, 1 ignition controlled supply and 2 that seemed to be operated by the switch on the dash.

The connections on the motor didn't make much sense either - I had an earth, a motor supply, but nothing on any sort of parking circuit, and I don't know why I have 4 wires, so I started to strip the motor:



Under the big blue gear is a circular track with 3 contacts, which was covered in grease:



After cleaning the grease off the continuity checked out, so I reassembled and replaced the motor. I then had a look at the wiring diagrams in Haynes, and realised that the 4 wires were because the motor also operated with the washer .That still didn't explain the behavior of the wiring, so I located the relay (which wasn't where Haynes said it would be ) and pulled it. It rattled when I moved it, so I removed the cover to find it was knackered:




I tried cleaning it up but a couple of tracks on the board were totally shot and when I tried cleaning the contacts one fell off!



That's another item for the shopping list then! I did briefly swap in the relay for the front wiper, as this seems the same, so I'm tempted to try the relay mod mentioned elsewhere on the forum and use my old relay for the back.

Finally, and the only real progress of the day, will have the purists cringing:



The spray bar was split in 2 and most of the jets kept blocking. I tried joining the 2 bits together with as little success as I had getting another one, so until I find one I've fitted this jet from a Merc. Sprinter, which was a few quid on Ebay. It doesn't have the coverage of a good spray bar, but it's better than what I had.

[Dollywobbler]

Just remembered. I did experiment with wiring up the rear wiper. I got it to move 1mm and nothing more, so gave up.

Pretty sure I did swap the trim over on the tailgate. In fact, I think the newer tailgate came bare.

[citsncycles]

There was 1 wire connected, but I wasn't sure if it was right, so I started from scratch.

I managed to get the motor to run connecting the ignition controlled feed to the blue connector on the motor (to the brushes) and the earth connection to the wire that had been connected by you. Wouldn't work off the switch though, and I think I had the motor wired back to front!

The track on the blue gear is obviously part of the parking mechanism, but it's connected to the body of the motor. Unless I've got my thinking wrong, this means the ignition contolled feed is connected to the stepped part of the track that controls the parking, the switched feed goes to the continuous section, the washer feed to what I thought was earth, and earth goes to the brushes.

Just got a programmable relay for the front, so will hopefully be able to check it out in the week.

[citsncycles]

This arrived in the post today:



I swapped it with the original wiper relay and can now alter the wiper delay.

The original relay then replaced the rusted out one for the rear, before I had another go at the wiring at the back. I'd forgotten to take a pic of the date stamp on the tailgate so did this time:




After a bit of checking with the multimeter, plus a bit of guesswork, I tried the wiper, and got a response as follows (click on the pic):



It's not perfect - for some reason the park isn't at the bottom of the stroke (possibly because I have a couple of wires crossed), and I had it in my mind that the rear wipe on the estates were intermittent.

[Tim Leech]

Well done Mike!

[mds141]

Any chance of a pic of where the relay lives Mike?

[Xemes]

Well done Mike!

Yes : Well done Mike : in a 14 seconds video being able to explain ,to show the button on the board , then to press it to make ear the noise of the liquid getting out AND arriving at the back of an old looooong Timex BEFORE the end of the movement of the intermittent windscreen , that can be considered not only as an achievement but as an exploit !!!!
Mike
OK I

[citsncycles]

Any chance of a pic of where the relay lives Mike?

Will do tomorrow, but in the meantime the front one is on the fuse panel to the right of the flasher relay, and the rear one is by the drivers A post behind the lower edge of the dash. It may be because of it being a Mk1, but according to the relay location chart in the Haynes supplement the flasher and front relay locations are switched, and the rear relay is buried in the middle of the dash somewhere!