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[MrBounce]

I am steadily working my way through Tink's list of jobs that need to be sorted. The next on the list was something he'd noticed when playing about under the dash with wiring: the throttle cable was at a funny angle. This was completely down to me. I was certain I'd done it right but I was obviously tired and rushing at the time. The plan was simple - pull out the inner cable and re-insert it through the hole that made more sense - i.e. opposite the top on the throttle pedal, as opposed to a couple of centimetres off. At least it would have been simple. The reason it wasn't? Some idiot who shall remain nameless but bears a striking resemblance to me had put a brake limiter valve in the way of the correct hole. Now, this sounded as though it was not too bad a scenario, but the thing to remember about the Midas is that, like the Mini it is based on, it is rather small. This means that once everything is in place, it's really rather difficult to move it much more than a couple of millimetres. I took the brake limiter valve off.

 

So here's how I managed to fix it. Firstly, the throttle cable was held in place by a proper "Heath Robinson" bracket with a brazed-on guide for the cable. This had been created by a previous owner. I didn't understand why they hadn't simply drilled a hole into the fibreglass to hold the end of the outer cable's ferrule. So I did this, and put the homemade bracket "to one side". Of course, I couldn't get the drill in there without taking off the coil and the breather, so I used one of my favourite tools - the right-angled drill chuck! This is a brilliant bit of kit and worked so well. I had bought a new limiter valve some time ago which I was going to fit anyway - the one on there was secondhand, and as EVERYTHING else in the braking system is new, it was a no-brainer to fit this as well. The issue was how. The new path the cable took was exactly in the middle of the valve's body - drilling through it would be an expensive way to ruin the brakes. It had to move!

 

I looked at the design of the valve, and on the top I noticed an indentation, which looked almost perfect for the outer plastic sheath of a throttle cable to run over. I decided that this was going to be the way to do it. This meant I needed to effectively move the valve about an inch diagonally down towards the centre of the car. Only I couldn't. The bracket which held the clutch hose was in the way, and no amount of persuasion was going to work. Instead, I got creative. Out came the oscillating multi-tool, and I cut a 1/4" silver off the side of said bracket. The new valve fitted, the throttle cable went nicely over the top and I only needed to do some minor bending to the master cylinder brake pipes to ensure that everything connected together properly. Excellent. I even managed to get the spring back on to the clutch arm without swearing! I now just have the fun task of filling in the numerous holes from previous owners (and me) so it all looks a bit tidier. 

 

Talking of tidy, I also needed to sort a fuse box. I don't like fuse boxes in the engine -  I simply don't understand why they need to be subjected to heat and/or damp, when they can be inside, where it is also easier to check to see if a fuse needs to be replaced. I have never been a fan of the Mini fuse box, so we're going to have a look at using a newer blade fuse design. Both Tink and I came up with the idea of having the lid for the fuses under the bottom of the dashboard. I marked up where it needed to sit before cutting an appropriate hole using the oscillating tool. A quick bit of filing saw the fuse box fit in nicely before the holes were drilled to bolt it into place. A quick check saw the fuse box poking out nicely under the dash. Nice.

 

Cable used to go through the top hole and was at a funny angle. It needed to be passed through the hole about an inch below it. This was unhelpful... 

 

 

Brazed homemade bracket needed to go, so I put it "elsewhere"...

 

 

Brake Valve needed to move, but there wasn't room. 

 

 

There are too many holes in this bulkhead. Which one should we use?

 

 

It's this one!

 

 

However, it needed a hole enlarging to hold the ferrule, so out came this awesome bit of kit.

 

 

Much better than that silly bracket!

 

 

New valve to be fitted - but where exactly?

 

 

Goes in here quite nicely, after taking a bit of the bracket off with power tool violence and bending some pipes a bit.

 

 

A hole was cut into the dashboard shelf to accommodate the fuse box.

 

 

Fits in there really well!

 

 

Fuses are easily accessed from below.

 

[MrBounce]

Two things that I took from the last time I chatted to Tink were the following: Test the wiper motor on all settings, and to sort the wiring for the screen wash pump. As my knowledge of electrics is utterly dreadful, Tink kindly leant me his probe and advised me on step-by-step basis what I needed to do. I decided to check the switch first, as this was the only thing that hadn't been looked at. With the probe connected up to the battery, I did as Tink told me and touched the probe to the appropriate wire at the stalk. I checked the normal speed - no problem. However, when I repeated the test on the fast wipe, I got nothing, pointing to a switch issue. There's precious little that I can do at present other than maybe give the whole thing a clean, but Tink has some spares kicking about, so he'll go through what he's got first, before I order a new one.

 

Then it was time to check the washer pump. I love the way this fits - it's from a Mitsubishi, but I don't know which one - it was doubtless popular in the 70s & 80s but the chance of finding one now are pretty slim. It fits so nicely into the bulkhead. I'd already tested the motor itself, and knew it fired. I needed to figure which wire went from the stalk to the pump. I was able to establish through a process of elimination that the Light Green and Black did this job. I did check that the stalk worked using the probe. Then it was a simple matter of extending the wires. Oh yeah, that. Of course the wire in question was a bit greenish. Not black like the horn wire was, but on its way out. I trimmed a few inches off the end and got decent looking wire. I used some red wire to extend and soldered it then used heatshrink to insulate the join. I repeated this process with the Earth wire, before joining everything together. 

 

The question was, would it work? I connected the battery, turned the key to position 2 and pushed the wash button on the stalk. Nothing. Before letting out an almighty barrage of splendid swear words, I remembered that the fuse box we'd used for testing was a bit "flaky". I gave said fuse a wiggle and everything fired into life. Thankfully there's no screenwash in it, so I managed to avoid getting wet. Succes!

 

The high speed switch part of the wiper stalk doesn't do its job. Which is a pain... 

 

 

Grim wire. Not completely oxidised, but not far off.

 

 

A few inches off the end gave us much nicer copper-coloured strands.

 

 

Everything soldered, heatshrink used and chucked through the bulkhead grommet.

 

 

Washer bottle looking awesome - the test proved everything works!

 

[MrBounce]

As they are not desperately expensive, I grabbed a new wiper switch from the interwebs and fitted it, which was all straightforward - 3 bolts. The only difficult bit was getting the two plugs to line up. It took significant time due to the pins in the male part of the plug not quite lining up. Eventually, it played ball. I then decided that I would replace the temporary big fuse.

 

Tink had put in a spare from his stock (which he wanted back), and as it was only in there as a bit of borrowed equipment, he'd used a chocolate block to chuck it in. Horrible things. On removing it from the wiring loom, there was a problem. It was black. Not green and slightly flaky, but black. I hoped that it would just be a couple of inches' worth, but stripping back the wiring loom showed that it was likely that I would need to replace the whole lot. Joy.

 

I don't have any wire that thick in stock so I've ordered a couple of metres of new stuff. I've shut the garage door and walked away. I don't like wiring at the best of times, but this loom is trying my patience. Grrr.

 

New wiper switch, in a proper Prince of Darkness box...

 

 

The problematic plug that took some time line up. Pins kept moving! 

 

 

Ah. This should not be that colour....

 

 

Further investigation revealed more of the same. Garage door was shut after this.

 

[MrBounce]

Went out to the garage to deal with the not very fun job of removing the bad wire, in order to replace it with something that will actually conduct. This was fiddly - why? I had to extract it from the wiring loom which was all taped up. This ran only for a short part in the engine bay - the rest of this was under the driver's side wheelarch. After several minutes of slightly bad language and struggling, this then escalated to seriously bad language. I jacked up the car, and took the wheel off which did help a little bit. After what seemed to be about 5 hours* of it fighting me, the tape was off, and I was able to remove the offending wire. 

 

It was about a metre long, and there was a soldered join about halfway down. I decided that I would remove the insulation to see how bad it was. The other half past the joint toward the fuse box was ok. Past the join? Oh dear. I shall let the pictures do the talking. I am now waiting to see if Tink has any spare the same size, or if not, what size I should be using to replace it. Like I have said on many occasions - I am not an electrics kind of guy. Don't know if this wire is correct or what size it should be. It's at times like this I feel a bit helpless - bolting stuff together? No problem. Putting a new fuel pump on, yup, not an issue. Electrical stuff? I am totally lost. It's such a shame that Tink has so little spare time... I shall have to pick his brains over the phone.

 

* it took about 45 minutes...

 

Got the wire out and chucked it on the bench.

 

 

This is NOT copper-coloured. That ain't conducting like it should. New wire DEFINITELY needed.

 

[MrBounce]

With all the old wire thankfully binned, I moved on to sorting its replacement. Tink suggested putting 2 wires in, as it'd be useful for any additional items needed and much easier to splice in. I soldered them together, added a ring terminal and some heatshrink, then taped the two wires together. I've fed this back through the hole in the inner wing, but have yet to tape things together and properly clip the wiring in place. This will be done soon.

 

I needed to find somewhere for the fuse to go. It has two very helpful holes mounted in it. I would have used the inner wing, but the Midas has a very tight engine bay. I couldn't easily put it on the inner wing as somebody had put a big bracket with two horns there instead. I also wanted it to be easily accessible if needed. Under the horns is quite a far way from accessible! I settled on using the crossmember that the master cylinders sit on as there was a convenient space for it there. Two holes, two screws, done. I need to do some tidying to the wiring and pop on some P clips to secure it. Then that area should be finished for now. This car is SO good at making simple jobs into difficult ones...

 

New wires soldered on to ring terminal and added to fuse holder.

 

 

A convenient home was found for the fuse holder on the crossmember by the master cylinders.

 

 

And all in place (wiring still to be tidied and taped).

 

[MrBounce]

Another quick update. I did some tidying up under the wheelarch - I have re-wrapped the wiring loom with black PVC tape so it's not just a load of random wires hanging down. I was planning on not doing much else, but I was looking at the negative terminal and a couple of the ring terminals from the earth wires were crimped. 

 

"Well, this just won't do", I thought, and immediately removed them. I got some heat shrink and some new terminals, and a bit of solder. These have now been correctly attached without the space issues. There are 4 ring terminals so space is at a premium - much like everything in that engine bay. However, it all looks much tidier. I changed the bolt as well, as the original was a bit short. I am much happier with the way this now looks. Small steps, but good ones.

 

My cheapie heat gun though is rubbish - plug it in and it's now permanently on - must be a switch issue. I will have to investigate...

 

Ring terminals re-done with heat shrink.

 

 

And all bolted up. Tidy.