Yesterday was an amazingly productive day. Out for a run in the morning – 7 miles – as is the ‘requirement’ – before sitting down to watch Spiderman 2(.1) – which was as entertainingly excellent as I recalled. This was in preparation for the newly obtained spiderman 3 disk (DVDs have really fallen in price, this is a brand new, sealed disk and cost a couple of quid including shipping from amazon*).
Spiderman 3, incidentally, was watched this morning and wasn’t as good as 2, but was still good. And I did enjoy it muchly.
Anyhow, after my Spiderman viewing I bathed and poked at the shower – ending with a replacement of the failed silicone seal around one end, and slathering where I think the water’s escaping from at the edge of the frame with sealant – a thin bead inside and a waving my silicone’d finger around in the dark where I can’t see on the outside. Tomorrow I shall allow showering to occur, and we’ll see if it’s worked.
Then I attacked the DAF. There was a faint smell of petrol which I’d noticed, the MOT bloke had remarked on and then it’d disappeared – and I’d put down to the occasional weep from the carb/manifold seal when the choke’s out. I was wrong. Driving back from JLH I found the smell was quite strong at times, and decided to have a *good* look around the engine bay. I’m glad I did – I’d’ve shared a picture of what I found – the hoses between the pump and filter, and the filter and carb were original – I’d intended to replace them but bought the wrong size hose last time – yeah. The braiding on the outside looked fine. The fact they were both soaked in petrol, that didn’t look so good. They’d both chosen to perish completely – and were riddled with little cracks allowing petrol to seep out. I’ve replaced them with the silicone vacuum/fuel hose I bought which I continue to debate fitting. I’m not sure if it’s too flexible (despite being rated as vacuum hose) – it seems very flexible compared to the existing hose – but then that rubber is old…
Meh.
Anyhow, I then whipped the radio out… well, actually, I went hunting for filler with the intention of finishing off the front panel and bonnet (well, wire-brushing, filling, priming, and hopefully getting a coat of top-coat on) with the rest of the day. It became apparent that wasn’t going to happen – the filler has chosen it’s moment to disappear, so I in’t touching the rust-killer paint that’s on there.
So I whipped out the dead Radiomobil 80. It came with the DAF and worked for a few days after we got it, then died completely. I debated attempting a repair of some sort, but frankly, it’s a MW/LW radio of limited use, and it wasn’t really great when it did work. So I decided that I would subject it to surgery.
My ‘kinter’ branded cheap-and-nasty auto amplifier was stripped down and a variety of components removed…
and returned to function (we hope) on fly-leads. The hideous colour changing LED replaced the bulb behind the tuner, the tuner knob was pressed into service controlling the volume. I was going to make it control treble/bass, but I decided I didn’t really want to buy any components for this project.
With much care and attention the front panel of the Radiomobil was cut up, the casing re-drilled with new mountings and a handy take-away food box chopped up to provide insulation (microwave safe insulation too!).
The circuit board was mounted on the base of the radio (I think the original designers could be heard weeping), and the high-quality audiophile mono-conversion performed (because the original was mono and I’m not fitting more speakers, I don’t *have* any more!).
With some effort I mounted a 3.5mm jack on a piece of plastic which is mounted slightly less well than I’d like in the front panel – lots of impact adhesive… and the whole thing’s back together. The question is, now, obviously – does it go ‘bang’ or does it work. I’m obviously hoping for the latter. But it’s a long time since I’ve done anything like this – at the end of the day it’s just replacing components with components on fly-leads, but hey.
You can see the beautiful, careful mounting of components in this overhead shot:
Of course, the only problem is that Kathryn’s got my CD-Player in her car *and* I don’t actually have an appropriate lead. Nor, it turns out, do I have 3.5mm jacks in the house.
Poot.
* I note that the studios still haven’t worked out the bleeding obvious, that if I’ve bought the disk I don’t need to be subjected to an anti-piracy message. In all honesty, it makes me more inclined to dabble in the field of piracy, because pirate disks (I have a couple of very dodgy disks) don’t seem to feel the need to subject me to this. *WAVES TO ATTRACT THE STUPID PEOPLE* If I’ve *bought* it, I’m not *pirating it* you Dumbass. Geeze. Still, I had coffee to make, so it was fine.
