Broadsword Calling Danny Boy...
Wow. Has it really been 4 months since the last update? That’s what having an enforced 3 months off work due to stress will do to you... And the way I’ve been feeling has meant little getting done. But I’m back in the saddle now.
Last update I mentioned that I had wanted to get Vikki painted this year. Well, the fickle finger of fate stabbed me in the eye on that one. No sooner had I decided on a colour and got a quote from a recommended paint shop, Kitty (my Jag) decided to have a fit and blew a turbo. The upshot of which was that my paint budget got swallowed up by big cat veterinary bills. Ah well - there’s always next year.
So, it’s mainly been fettling, when I felt up to it.
Whilst I was at Stoneliegh, I looked for some old style wire lamp guards for the headlights and the driving lights. Whilst everyone had the 7” headlight guards, no one seemed to have the 5 3/4” driving lamp guards (The chap at the Europa stand suggested a florist, or a midnight visit to a cemetery!). So I trawled the web, and found some on the Rimmer Bros. website. They weren’t too expensive, so I ordered both sizes and fitted them. I think they look quite smart:
What I did buy at Stoneliegh got fitted next - a badge bar, a Marlin owners club medallion & a repro AA badge:
As I was adding shiny bits to the front of the car, I followed in Patrick’s footsteps and rigged up some headlight cable conduits, using braided stainless flexible tap connectors. They’re cheap, look the part and match the braided brake hoses:
They’re held on with a back nut on the chassis, and a grub screw on the headlight stem.
What I have spent a lot of time on just recently is wiring Vikki for sound, so we could have some music on our travels, and save our voices. On long journeys, especially on motorways or fast roads, it’s almost impossible to talk to one another without getting a sore throat trying to make yourself heard over the wind and Vikki’s bellow.
So I did some research, and decided on putting an intercom in. After much deliberation (and the fact that one was going cheap on eBay) I bought an Autocom Pro 7 Sport motorbike intercom.
It came with the headsets that riders fit inside the crash helmets, and the unit itself. Obviously, we didn’t want to wear helmets, so we had to mount the headsets in something....
Autocom do some F1 style headsets with boom mikes that plug straight in, but they wanted an extortionate amount of cash for them. Then I found out that some of the guys with lo-costs and 7 style cars have already cottoned on to this, and make their own. They take a standard set of decent ear defenders, and mount the helmet headset in the defenders. In fact, they found out that that’s exactly what Autocom do!
So I bought 2 pairs of Peltor headsets for £15 a set, and mounted the headsets:
As the headsets where second hand, I replaced the boom mike covers with spares obtained from Autocom - they where only a couple of quid. I also fitted there open helmet wind socks on them as well.
Every hole drilled for a cable got a strain relief grommet. The one on the boom mike holds it rigidly in place, so it’s easy to move the flexible boom without anything wiggling around on the ear cup
The headphones had the old foam covering taken off, and they slip inside the ear cups, held in place by the foam inside and a velcro pad on the back of the phones.
That little Blue Peter moment saved a couple of hundred quid! :-)
I then made some break-out boxes for the headset leads:
And did some surgery on the Autocom unit, desoldering the vox activation level pot and the voice volume boost jumper and installing them in their own box on a fly lead:
The din socket is for attaching a 2 way radio, for vehicle to vehicle comms. You get a small hand held 2 way radio, and Autocom do interface leads that will plug in here. You can then talk to anyone on the same channel. Bandits at 6 oclock, Tally Ho.... ;-)
All of this got screwed to the back of the dash:
You can see a fourth breakout box mounted to the left of the 12v power outlet - this is a 3.5mm stereo jack, which will is patched into one of the Aux ports on the intercom. The other aux port got the clever bit though - a bluetooth dongle.
This is a cool bit of kit, that when paired with my iPhone allows me to answer the phone on the go (If someone rings, it auto answers after three rings), and allow wireless transmission of my music via the A2DP protocol. So now I have tunes and phone in the kit-car! Yay!
The intercom and the bluetooth module are mounted on top of the chassis under the fibreglass scuttle top, and everything is plugged in using the din plugs. With the dash back in, you can’t see anything that would leave you to believe that there’s anything remotely modern under there.
When I want to use it, all I have to do is plug the headsets in, start the music and drive
When I talk or the passenger talks, the Vox picks it up, lowers the music volume and routes the speech through. Brilliant! And when the phone rings, it automatically pauses the music and the intercom answers the phone. Once the call gets dumped, the music resumes automatically. It even gives me the sat-nav voice instructions if I have the application running - it’s better than some road cars! :-)
I plan on getting a small DAB radio to plug in via the stereo aux port, so I can have the best of both worlds - iTunes and the radio on the move, and no need for any modern looking stereo intruding on the retro styling.
2 Comments →
Reader Comments (2)
Jason,
I stumbled across your build diary on the internet and have spend the past 30 minutes reading it with great joy!
You have done a fantastic job, and the car looks stunning. I was wondering, it looks like you built it all in a single garage -- I am looking at building a kit car in a single garage and was wondering what the experience was like -- any tips / comments?
My garage is 2.5m wide by 5m Deep, and I am worried it is a bit too small for building it, but you seemed to manage ok!
I would appreciate your thoughts and any advice.
Regards,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Yes, Vikki was completely built in a single garage, with the ocassional trip out onto the drive for a bit more room or to sweep up! :-)
Building in a single garage is possible - it just takes a bit of scheduling to enusre that you only have the parts on hand that you need for that portion iof the build. Marlin did a / does a system where you can buy in modules, so I did that - buying each module as I needed. Helps spread the cost as well.
Of course, if you have enough room in the garden, and a amenable other half, you could get a cheap shed as some other builders did - and store all parts not directly required for the job at hand in.
If you're woried about how much room you have, you can do what I did at the beginning - find out how big the finished car is, make a scale drawing of it (a bock will do) and then put it in a scale drawing of the garage. That way you can see how tight you'll be for space near the end of the build before you start.
Cheers
Jason