Countersunk seat bolts

I saw another builder with virtually flush seat mounts on the GBS Zero Owners & Enthusiasts Group, Looked much better than nuts/bolts on the outside and worth copying the approach.

Some Googling and searching on eBay turned up a whole line of undiscovered products designed for Go-kart seat mounting. Kart countersunk seat washers in alloy, nylon and titanium. Perfect.

My mount stack retaining the 50mm square washers inside to spread the load and thick washers above as spacers.

M10x25mm bolts were ok, 30-35mm would have been even better - my new learning for today is countersunk bolts are measured over their entire length including the head. I decided on alloy countersunk washers at about £5 for 10.

On the other side my initial thought was to use T-Nuts in the seat rail, so they cannot rotate when tightening - theres no room for a spanner in here. However - thinking through, not really keen on the robustness of these - I want my seats staying attached to the floor under all circumstances.

The option I decided on - especially since seat attachment strength is critical to safety - known good M10 nyloc flange nuts with flanges ground down so they fit inside the seat rail but cannot rotate. Should have been stainless really but I had none to hand.

Very fiddly to get the nut in place on top of the seat rail and tighten, but overall the finish looks much better to me.

Comparison part way through the job - passenger side closest with say 5mm or so below the floor pans, old style bolts still on the drivers side with at least 12-13mm for the nut alone. Looks tidy enough although the floor pans are not as flat as they used to be.

Hindsight and patience would have avoided my mix of metals - stainless bolt, BZP nut etc.

Steering wheel bolt change

Can't really call this maintenance, there was nothing wrong with the old steering wheel bolts other than looking shabby.

Replaced them with some new M5 button head stainless ones.

Great improvement over before - the original black bolts had gathered a tinge of orange rust from being in the elements.

Gear lever gaiter / boot

Minor tidy up and upgrade - the gear lever gaiter, or boot, and tunnel top area was very minimal - but also getting a little tatty. The hole in the tunnel top was originally round - but adjusted to ensure it would not knock the lever in 5th.

I found an MGB part for the surround, available in chrome or matt black, found by trawling eBay and google images. The centre hole is over the minimum 80mm inside radius required. The only gotcha was the side bolt positions are right over the tunnel chassis tubes, so are cut short to be flush on the underside and hot-glued in place. The other two hold everything in place with rivnuts.

The old gaiter was removed and used as a pattern for the new one. I went for a single piece and no drawstring to simplify it - knock on effect is its not possible to double stitch the front seam, so my seam is positioned towards the front of the car - out of sight.

The new gaiter made from an off-cut of the original tunnel/aux panel vinyl cover material, time will tell if it is robust enough for this purpose. I didn't modify the tunnel panel hole - the gaiter and surround just sits over it. Looks the part.

I'm also slowly replacing the on-show original BZP M8 button head bolts: tunnel top, dashboard etc, with stainless flanged button versions to clean up the look a little.

Re-install seats

New plate washers and bolts arrived so quick job to bolt everything back in.

Slightly new arrangement which saves me 5mm seat height! (12.5mm down to 7mm) this is secondary to spreading the seat load on the floorpan a little more.

Inside: A half height nut, who's job is only to stop the bolt falling out when putting the seats back in, and a 3mm thick 50mmx50mm plate washer.
Outside: No change - penny washer and new full size nyloc. 

This still gives just enough clearance to lift the seat position adjuster bar.

Changed to hex heat bolts rather than cap head, the hex locks into the rail and along with the half height nut on the other side its never going to turn.

Plate washers showing the size in context.

...and all shiny and new on the underside until the next run out which will hone the bolt length.

Remove seat bolts

I already knew, checked, the lowest point on the car which scrapes cambers or speed bumps are the seat bolts. i.e. no real harm done, they can be sacrificial and replaced as and when.

These were getting up to the line though - worst on the drivers side where the inside rear nut was down to two threads and 4mm of its former 11mm self. Lasted 18.4k miles though so no complaints.

I'll replace the lot, probably use slightly larger washers on the inside too - some 50mm plate washers to help spread the seat load.

Interesting dent/notch in the leading edge of the passenger side footwell - that must have been a rock/other immovable object. Thank you for steel floors GBS!

I gave it another coat of under-seal while I was there.

 No issues inside - just a collection of road detritus.

Update - seats re-installed

Brushed finish clock surround & Shift light

The glare from the clock surround just has to go, and while I'm there installing a couple of warning lamps in the space between the speedo and tacho.

Before for reference:

Brushed Stainless

Temporary tool created from scrap to ensure the sandpaper runs square on each pass:

The process: clamp one end of the dash surround and then straight passes with the tool using the edge of the bench as a guide. Just have to be careful to always drop the sandpaper on to the piece completely vertically for each stroke.

Reflections from my garage lighting now looking suitably reduced which is the effect I am after.

Offered up with clocks re-installed.

The red LED will be a shift light, and the blue  a secondary brighter turn-indicator tel-tale. There is an indicator lamp in the tachometer - its just too small and dim to see when driving and really easy to leave indicators on.

Happy with that - relatively simple process and hopefully prevents or at least reduces spot/sun reflections with the diffused finish. I'm undecided over lacquering the panel - now it is brushed and notwithstanding it's stainless steel it  is probably more susceptible to rusting - I may just leave it and see what it does through weathering.

Loom additions for new warning LEDs

Adjusted the stock GBS plug and play loom to drive the new warning lamps - spliced in the needed 4x lines. The shift light signal switches on ground and the indicators on 12v. The indicator feed is already joined with diodes to prevent crosstalk - so spliced into the loom after the diodes to get a single 12v feed for whichever indicator is lit.

Clocks loom is a bit of a spider - opened up - adjusted - and re-bound as neatly as I can.

No dropper resistors for my LEDS since they have them built in - their current draw at 12v checked at 15ma.

New loom branches:

     Shift light:  Red = 12v, Blue = Shift
     Indicator light: Yellow = Indicator, Black = GND

Tested the indicator circuit which works fine, it will need a daylight test to check on brightness need to tweak the ECU shift light setting to test that.


Update -
Initially set the shift light on a conservative 5,000 revs, well short of the 7,000 redline/cutoff.

During one acceleration test I lit the shift light, and checking on return (Emerald ECU has a max revs memory feature) the tacho showed about 6,200 max rpm. So shift light on somewhere between 5,000-5,500 is probably about right for my road driving.

Has to light in time for me to shift up before hitting the redline otherwise its pointless.

Passenger Foot Rest

Long runs, passenger side, while the seat is comfy you cant touch the end of the footwell and brace your feet against anything.

Modded an off the shelf rally co-driver foot rest to fit using a cardboard template for the floor space, to measure foot position, and another to work out the cutouts to miss footweel chassis tubes. A strip of velcro under the bottom front edge fastens it to the floor carpet and will leave it removable to adjust if need be.

Its not going anywhere: bottom front edge velcro to the carpet, bottom back edge butts against the chassis tube, left edge against the side chassis tube and top corners pushed against the side panels.

Tidy, wife happy, job done.

Aux Panel re-install with radio & DRL

Wiring: Fusebox

New key for the fuse box, in the process of adding the new circuits I documented all the fuses. Colour coding matches fuses to those which have relays switching them: (My fusebox is upside down vs. standard Zero build, fuses above relays)

Wiring: Savage dimmer

My new preferred Savage switch dimming circuit vs the old one.
The same approach is used on all three switches with the output +ve load looped over to the LED side of the switch. Thus on the fog switch, which takes +ve from dip beam it is a true tel-tale, the switch only lighting when the fog lamp itself is lit.

No extra diodes necessary, the LED itself is a diode so won't let current back through to the side lights circuit when the switch is off and in any event its grounded both sides in this scenario.

Update - this could do with a fuse on the LED ground line, shared between the three switches.
If (when?) the LED/bulb shorts it will blow the fuse on the +ve feed - taking out headlights or sidelights fuse. With a separate very low current fuse on GND any problem with the LED/bulb will leave the primary load circuit working.

When off: 

• +Ve feed connects to nothing
• If side lights are on they illuminate the switch dimmed by the resistor

When on:

•  +Ve feed connects to the load and in parallel through the LED, thus when the load gets power, the LED gets power.
• For the fog lamp the +Ve feed is the dip beam line, so when on  with dips off then the switch LED does not light and neither do the fogs.

The savage LEDs are rated 12v so the resistor is only to dim them slightly, I used 0.6W 5k6 Ohm resistors. The resistor should dissipate approx 0.02W when side lights are on.

Aux Panel MkIII

Final steps on the new version of the aux panel, vinyl covered and an override switch top right so the electric aerial can be indepdendently turned off. My thinking is this will be useful either if it gets stuck, or more likely to ensure I don't raise it in the garage while testing the radio. 

I'm using the original sides of the old panel, the second picture showing how the front face is now a little more vertical:

I still don't have a new push-pull for the heater control in the left most position, so just a placeholder blank plate for now:

 Trying to keep the wiring as consistent and neat as possible & went back to the standard 11 way connector for the panel. Re-used the old earth rivnut for a stand-off to support the back of the radio:

With the heater matrix on the other side of the firewall bulkhead & the aux panel itself sitting slightly more vertical there is a good inch of space between the radio back and heater box:

Testing: Side lights off, then side lights on which illuminates the switches, radio volume button(when its off) or dims the radio display when its on:

The Radio did give me one gotcha - it takes two live feeds, one permanent to maintain its memory/time etc, and one via the ignition to allow it to turn on - I wired up exactly as per the manual using the standard ISO connectors - but it turns out this particular radio needs these two feeds reversed to work properly - go figure :)

Update - after talking to Blaupunkt, turns out the radio when wired as standard will turn on when ignition is off but only for 1 hour. So currently wired to not come on at all - may change it back in the future.

And my nifty (although already temperamental) electric aerial. It works well as an aerial, and I like the way its hidden when not in use, however it also has a habit of not quite winding all the way down - I'll pull it apart and re-grease/clean etc at some point:

Daytime Running Lights

The DRLs wiring installed now, switchable via the aux panel. I bought a switching box which takes +Ve, Ground and a feed from the side lights to automatically turn the DRLs off, overriding the panel switch, at night time when the side or headlights are turned on. The 6 lights just below the headlights actually look brighter than this in bright daylight - very pleased with the effect.

More noticeable in these later examples; my Zero is in the far distance on the first with only DRLs on:

Took her out for a test drive to Ashford on the M20 and back on the A20 ... :)

Passed a couple of huge articulated lorries near Maidstone, a matt black Pirelli & a Grey/Silver one possibly Mercedes, presumably on their way from the Silverstone F1 Grand Prix today heading to mainland Europe.

The radio is much clearer, no distortion now at high volume - but still really only useful when waiting in traffic or moving under 50mph, after that buffeting takes over and all you can hear is wind - I'll add in a headphone circuit later.

Over 50mph there is more to concentrate on anyway!

Final part of the upgrades is the holes in the bonnet to let air into the heater matrix. I need to be in a calm mood for that one - no second chances.