296: Monday 2nd April 2018

I have been delinquent with my posts recently. I notice the last post was October and have made a few change since then. After destroying the DC-DC converter, I bought a new and improved one. This has a 1kW output at 14.0v, so just like a car alternator. Now when I power on, I get my battery gauge reading half way and it just stays there. I ran power steering, fan, lights and the air ride compressor all at the same time and it didn't vary. Cost was about £230 by the time I had it shipped from Hong Kong. I am really pleased with the way it performs. I had many Iota DLS55s and they all broke eventually.

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I mounted the remote for the air ride system onto the left side of the dash. It is well illuminated and along with the 2DIN Android head unit, JLD404 Intelligent Ah meter and the bespoke Probatron battery monitoring touchscreen display it is starting to look like KITT. 

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I have been trying to get the air ride system to work better as I get a horrible loud donk noise like someone hitting an anvil with a hammer from the rear when the ride is set high or low as the struts reach their end of travel. With a 300kg  battery in the trunk it does this quite easily. Getting the car to ride half way for normal driving depends of a lot of factors like how stiff the struts are, ambient temperature, how many people in the car etc. When it was set half way, no donk noise (except for huge bumps). I took the plunge and bought the height sensor kit for the system. This will get past all the factors and will sit the car half way and keep it there when I set it up. The air suspension has 5 preset buttons on the remote. The top and bottom are fully up and down respectively, The three in between are so the user can program 3 different ride heights for different driving situations. I have set these for cruising (low), normal driving (medium) and speed bumps (high). The picture below shows the left rear height sensor fitted and connected. I have run the cables and tied them up so they are in the front with the air ride controller. I borrowed my friend Luke's workshop with 2 post lift so I could get right under the car. I started to get too many back, and shoulder pains. So I didn't get to fit the front ones. I have ordered a pop up tent to put on my driveway so I can work on my car without having to wait for good weather. That should come by the weekend so I can make some brackets and mount the front height sensors. The tent I have ordered is 4.5 x 3m (15 x 10 feet), so it will completely cover my car, and has 4 sides so I can easily get it in and out and make space all around. I am looking forward to this now. I have also fixed the rear bumper structure to the skins by drilling and screwing through. I covered the screw heads with filler, sanded them smooth and sprayed some primer. I was getting some rust bubbles appearing on both rea wheel arches, so I ground it back, ran a wire brush tool through it, treated with Jenolite, filled, sanded and sprayed this with some primer. I have ordered some red paint in a rattle can so I can go over these repairs. I shall get a proper painter to tidy up my work. Bodywork is my least favourite part of working on cars. I can never get it right...