Is That a Humber?

I had to drop William (son) off at and end-of-year dinner at a bistro connected to a pub last night.
I drove all the way up to the bistro entrance, passed a balcony about 1 meter off the ground were 3 or 4 guys were sitting having an ale or two (or three).

As William got out of the Vogue one of them called out to him "Is that a Humber". William just looked back over his shoulder and said "yes". As he walked away I rolled down my window and gave the standard speil "It's a 1965 Humber Vogue but it's a bit different". They just nodded - then I said "It's a battery powered car - electric". They nodded again. "See" I said and accelerated forward a couple of meters, "no noise - no petrol engine". They collectively dropped their jaws and I could see that that was the end of the discussion - so I drove off. I didn't see their faces but William told me later that they just looked - didn't talk - just looked as I drove away.

That's my fix for another week.

Driver's seat diaphragm replaced

NOTE: THE NEW DIAPHRAGM FAILED A FEW MONTHS LATER - SEE LATER POST.

My new seat diaphragm arrived during the week so on Saturday (yesterday) I removed the drivers seat and checked out the old seat diaphragm.

 As suspected (from feeling under the seat) the diaphragm had given way on the side closer to the centre of the car.

Due to the fact that it was torn, I had little trouble removing it and proceeded to install the new one.
Oh oh! The new one was too big. Not excessive but enough that it didn't support the foam. It appeared to be about 20mm larger.

Old diaphragm front-to-back hole-hole measurement.

 New diaphragm front-to-back hole-hole measurement.

 Old diaphragm side-to-sidehole-hole measurement. Followed by the new one.

 

So about 20mm.

I kind of spat the dummy at this point and considered giving up on the diaphragms and using the webbing I had ordered in case the diaphragm didn't work out.

Then I noticed that the clips that were supplied last time were larger than the standard Vogue ones. I had to use the Vogue ones to hold the aluminium pieces to the seat frame (that allowed me to use the smaller TR6 diaphragms).

The clips used last time were about 28mm to the inside of the hole. the Vogue ones were 20mm.
The new diaphragm didn't come with clips.

So I got inventive and disappeared into the garage, emerging with a bag of 2.8mm nails.
They were VERY difficult to bend so I think they'll stay bent.

I made 11 - only needed 10.
Then I measured the hole-hole dimensions in the seat again and used suitably size clips. I hadn't bent them perfectly - they ranged from 19 to 22mm so I arranged them largest to smallest and selected appropriately.

The diaphragm took some getting in as I worked from the underside without removing any foam or fabric but once in, it fit nicely. About 10mm stretch in each direction. The previous one had 19 and 12mm stretch - maybe too much - the 19 was side to side where it tore.
The seat is back in the car . I forgot to take the "after" picture but it looks pretty much like when I originally did it except that the diaphragm covers slightly more of the foam - which is good.

Last Charger Inline Fuseholder Replaced

I was about 1km into my trip to work this morning when the battery alarm went off.
Pack #3 in the boot (trunk) had it's indicator LED out so I bypassed the pack and continued to work - I wasn't even late.
At work I bypassed the VERY LAST of the inline fuseholders. Pack #3 was the last one and it visually had been looking OK (easy to see in the boot behind the polycarbonate partition) - but is wasn't - the fuse had melted it's way out through the end of the fuseholder. (For the full story click "fuse" in the Labels area on the right hand side of the blog pages - or click here.)

I was a little suspicious this morning when I saw (on the smartmeter web interface) that the chargers hadn't peaked at 2.7kW at 1AM. House load is about 250-300W so I normally see a minimum of 3.1kW.

(The mouse was hovering over the first bar for 1AM.)

New Seat Diaphragm Ordered

I ordered a new seat diaphragm from the UK yesterday. I'll fit that and see how it goes before trying the webbing. Meanwhile it appears OK to drive with the seat supported by packing material in the torn section.

View from the back of the seat.

A few minor Niggles

The Vogue has been going well except that a few minor problems have emerged - most have been dealt with.

Charger failure
The charger for pack #8 failed about 2 weeks ago and I used a spare for a few days. It was a real pain opening the bonnet each night to plug the spare in - I swapped it out permanently for one of my two spares last week. Unusually for me, I managed to repair the faulty charger. One of the two main switch transistors had failed - completely short circuited. I replaced it with one from an old not-working PC power supply. Slightly higher voltage rating but otherwise same specs. It's now my second spare charger.

Seat diaphragm failed
The front driver seat diaphragm has torn. I used TR6 seat diaphragms and made up some aluminium pieces to get the tension correct. It has torn on the side where there are two clips. I am deliberating whether to get another diaphragm from the UK (none in Australia any more), or use webbing similar to how I did the seat backs.
At the moment I have some foam packaging material rammed under the torn section to support the seat so that the foam and/or upholstery don't get damaged. I did plan to pull the seat out yesterday but it was too wet and cold outside and I had other stuff in the house that needed attention. I'll try to get to it on Saturday. At the moment we are travelling to central Victoria every Sunday to visit my Aunt who is in hospital.

I'm still hanging out for some spare time over the Christmas break so that I can catch up on some of the outstanding Vogue issues - suspension squeaks and thumps etc - oh and the driveline vibration.