Great SC rebuild.......

[Jack]

Well, one of my deep and insightful posts was lost in the recent backup problem, but never fear dear readers, we are still here and still posting.

Tonight was a fairly short session, but was productive in fixing some minor measurement problems.

Number one problem was getting the lines right for my long-developed battery box lid. This will be extremely visible on the back shelf, and if it doesn't fit right will bother me every time we use the car. So it has to be right.

Finally after a great deal of thinking, looking, measuring, looking, thinking, measuring, thinking, a few pints, more measuring, and then some more thinking, I worked out how to get it 100% accurate. All I had to do was take off a simple support and refit it to the shelf when off the car, but it took me a looooooong time to work that out. Way too tired for the last few weeks, but now the measuring is pretty much sorted.

We have designed the battery box to be as big as we can possibly make it. Unfortunately that means that the lid will be larger than original, however the advantage of being able to fit larger tools and gain storage space is a definite plus. It did throw up some other issues however, clearance from the seat back when opening was a concern, as well as making the lid as strong as the rest of the shelf just in case someone puts a heavy bag or leans on the back shelf. The design will now be strong enough to withstand this, and will allow the lid to be lockable and the opening will be hidden to a casual thief who may look in through the window or walk past the car with the top down. Sad that we live in times where you have to consider that, but we may well be using the car in urban environments on our travels, and you need to make your valuables an unattractive proposition.

I am also creating an opening flap to the side which allows access down the side of the battery box, this in time could easily be fitted with another box for storage of narrow objects like a jack or similar, for the moment I will give us the option in future and if not used will be almost invisible anyway.

I will try and get some photos tomorrow once we have made the major cuts and all will become clear. The lid of the box being cut does mean that we can get to the battery much more easily for boosting, until the charging regulator issue is sorted this will be necessary.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

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From left to right.
Keith Clements, Bill Lock, Amy Clements , Ray Milton , Wes Meneely.

You can work out from the first post on this thread when it was.

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The after and before with the rear inner wing.

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Jack, this is what it looked like.

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Where the dropped boot had cut through the tube and rusted it.

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The door still needs attention.

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body-off.png

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[Jack]

Some impressive beards there Keith

More progress this evening from the team, Chris was hard at work on the Javelin wings sanding and filling, Keith was mixing paint, me and Amy were busy with the rear shelf to try and get the battery box lid sorted.

The time had come. It had been measured, checked, measured again, checked by Amy, measured again. We had to cut it. It had to happen sometime.

A few minutes later and the sides of the hole were cut, some test fitting, checking, measuring, checking, thinking, and checking, and we were ready to cut the back edge.

I don't think I've been as nervous with a jigsaw ever. Knowing that a minor deviation, going over the line, going under the line, snapping a blade, would have meant remaking, priming and painting a panel that has taken a lot of work to get to fit, has all the holes in the right places, and which needs to look good as it will probably be fairly visible if it is wrong.

After the sides were cut, I had to drill a few small holes and filed them to be able to get a sharp corner on the lid and the hole. Luckily all went to plan, and a bit of filing later and the hole is almost there.

I will be fitting the hinge to the back of the lid before Sunday, and then we just need to sort out a bit of tweaking and fitting a lock to the lid and it should be a useful addition to the car.

Battery onto charge tonight in preparation for the run to Boxmoor this weekend with a few Joweteers and friends, all welcome leaving Kings Langley at noon for a short run to the funfair and a late lunch at the pub I think. Photos to follow on Jowett talk.

Jack.

[Jack]

Another industrious afternoon, and significant progress for me. Finally The battery box lid has now been cut from the shelf panel, the supports for the inside of the box to support the lid fabricated from a spare piece of steel (I think it is cover for the Javelin sill, but we seem to have dozens of the things, so it has been sacrificed for the project) and the hinge riveted to the lid and the shelf. We now have a battery box that we can get into, and a lid which is attached to the shelf. Photos to follow tomorrow, bit late to do that at 10pm tonight but we are out in the cars tomorrow so I will get some shots then to share with you all.

I am really pleased with the battery box - it is significantly bigger than it was originally, has taken weeks of fabrication in between other things to get right, and has plenty of room for various bottles of water, oil, and other fluids, at least a couple of bottles of wine, as well as a full set of tools. It is also very well hidden, and once we have sorted the carpet for the parcel shelf, will be a great place to put the various essentials to free up boot space for cases, rhubarb, and other things.

Amy and Keith spent the afternoon playing under the bonnet. Not entirely sure what was going on there, but the charging issues were being addressed with multiple different dynamos and other things being tried out, breaking multimeters (I didn't think that was possible!) and playing with fanbelts. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I'm sure all the swearing and exhausted laughter were all part of the fun. I offered a lot of constructive and helpful commentary, but this was largely ignored. It's probably for the best, as I don't really know anything about dynamos or alternators, other than that is where electricity comes from

Tomorrow is the big day out for the young Joweteers, and the first opportunity my parents have had to see the car. Leaving from The Eagle Pub in Kings Langley at 12 noon, and off to Boxmoor for the funfair and a decent pub lunch. Any members who are in the area or fancy a last minute trip to join in the fun please get in touch - our numbers are in the members list and a notice in this month's Jowetteer. Currently a few Jupiters and a couple of other cars are joining us, the more the merrier.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

Further to Amy's post on the Steam Fair outing, I am afraid the dynamo problem strained my brain twice.

1. We tried checking the output of the dynamo armature which should between 1.5 and 3v at 1500rpm with the lead from dynamo to D terminal disconnected. This is because of the residual magnetism when no field current is flowing.

The Field coil was then checked by disconnecting F wire also, having a voltmeter (20v full scale) between Dynamo lead and earth, and an ammeter (10A fullscale) between Dynamo lead and Field wire to dynamo. What should happen is that the volts should rise to 12 as speed rises and when this happens there should be 2 to 2.5 A. But on our dynamo we only ever got up to 2.6v with the Field wire open circuit and when we closed it with the Ammeter it went down to 0v and 0 Amps. So the Field coil was not open circuit (about 6 ohms) but it did not do what it should do which is increase voltage when the volts from the armature are applied. Clearly the armature could not supply any amps to drive the field coil or the amps it did give killed the field and hence the volts dropped to zero. Ohms law should come into play here 12v across 6 ohms is 2 A; but then the resistance of the armature also plays a part......

So Amy and I both repeatedly flashed the field coil on the battery to make sure polarity was correct. The wire should be held for 2 seconds onto the A terminal or a 12v battery.

2. Then I retrieved my stock of dynamos. Three Jupiter ones were available so I tested resistance of armature and field and all were 6 ohms except one field coil that was open circuit. Then I tried a volt check by spinning by hand in direction of fan belt motion (clockwise). This produced between 5 and 50 mv; but, the surprising thing was, of opposite polarity than I expected. I also expected the polarity to change after flashing. Two gave negative volts and one positive (the one with the broken field coil).
Then onto a Javelin dynamo which gave a 50mv output (positive) which I thought is what was required, since we are running negative earth.

That was fitted; but although it will just put the ignition/charging light out at 3000rpm it only just manages it. So back to the test lab tomorrow.

[Amy]

but although it will just put the ignition/charging light out at 3000rpm it only just manages it.

Nearer 4000rpm actually I think. It was still glowly bright at 2500-3000rpm.

[Jack]

All, this car has now been shortlisted for the Classic Car of the Year.

You can vote to register your support for Jowetts and all our hard work here: http://www.ccoty.co.uk/classic_car_voting.php?cat=2

Please note anyone with an e-mail address can vote. Please ask your friends, families, work colleagues, you can even ask your butler to get online and vote.

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

I even got my social secretary to vote !

[Alastair Gregg]

Job done

[Drummond Black]

Which one do we vote for ??

[Alastair Gregg]

The Porsche once used by the Austian Police force!!!! Of course

[p.p.]

job done ;=) !!!! god luck

[Leo Bolter]

There should be a noticeable surge of votes coming from New Zealand . . . .

Good luck . . .

[Jack]

Thanks for all the votes folks.

I have got 100 votes in 24 hours from some internet friends through scuba diving, let's see if the car club can match that and perhaps go beyond.

Remember that nobody is too young or too old to vote, ask your children which car they like the most, and get them online to vote - please note that the site registers your IP address, so if they want to vote from the same computer you've voted from already this won't be possible, however any library or school should allow them to vote using free internet access, or any McDonalds restaurant for example has free internet if you take your phone or laptop.

We should not forget that this is an exercise in avoiding apathy - anyone can sit and think about how they are going to do it next week when they've got more time, the deadline is only a few weeks away, and it takes literally seconds.

Please ask work colleagues to vote when they get home, ask friends and neighbours to vote, what better way to get a chat going with neighbours about the cars in your garages across the globe, they may not know anything about the cars, and this might just be the spark that gets a few local volunteers to drop into the garage occasionally to help with jobs on the car...

Jack.

[Amy]

There is now a Facebook Group to promote the Jupiter in the Classic Car of the Year competition

See here - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=149905561703287 - please join up and encourage everyone you know to do so too (after they have voted, naturally...).

Amy.