The Snail

[Paul Goldsmith]

Thanks Sam, really helpful info and great tip about not cooking the starter motor !
It sounds like my Alpine manifold is the same as your but somewhere I've also got the original Hunter manifold too, so can play with what works best. Will look up those tubular manifolds too.

 

[Panky]

I fitted a hi-torque starter from Ratsport it's smaller than standard. It's still closer to the down pipe than I'd like but it's been fine for ten years or so.

 

[Paul Goldsmith]

I'm going for that Ratsport starter, I spoke with Jules a while back and just need to confirm my starter ring teeth. Good reminder for me to now resume on that.

 

[Panky]

Remind him to orientate the body so it's away from the exhaust as it does get very close if assembled a certain way.

 

[sunbeamsam]

So first test run. Interesting cylinders 3&4 burn slightly cooler. I had a panic when I first started the engine, cylinder 1 was 200 degrees down - but then I noticed the servo hadn’t been reconnected.

 

[sunbeamsam]

Also continuing with the stereo upgrades. Sub woofer in glove compartment, extra speakers behind seats. Amplifier wired, but working properly at the moment.

 

[sunbeamsam]

 

[Panky]

That's not good - no room for gloves now

 

[sunbeamsam]

Been fiddling with the bike carbs again.


Cleaned up and blown through. I’ve a little ultrasonic cleaner that worked a treat on the small/plastic/rubber bits

 

[sunbeamsam]

Will probably be much later in the year before I do a trial fit.

 

[sunbeamsam]

 

[sunbeamsam]

Not sure why that went up twice.
Finally got around to swapping the fuel gauges over. Not sure why but the one on there was reading backwards, had tried swapping the wires over but it still did it. Still tops out at 3/4 but an improvement netherless

 

[S0updragon]

Aaah you could have relabelled it to read ‘miles left’ and told everybody that is was a special rare upgrade lol

 

[sunbeamsam]

I had thought about getting some custom dial faces painted up. Most thought so far has been for the Speedo:

Snoozing, ambling, cruising, too fast, way too fast, are you mad?, this van doesn’t go that fast, hallucinating etc

Oil and temp could just be:

Not hot enough, okay, panic

 

[sunbeamsam]

So made some progress on the stereo. Seems amp number 1 was too powerful and me only listening to it at lower volumes wasn’t getting the best sound quality. So swapped for a smaller alpine unit which sound great. I then covered it in wood effect tape to make it blend in.

 

[sunbeamsam]

Keeping it loud!

 

[sunbeamsam]

 

[Panky]

So made some progress on the stereo. Seems amp number 1 was too powerful and me only listening to it at lower volumes wasn’t getting the best sound quality. So swapped for a smaller alpine unit which sound great. I then covered it in wood effect tape to make it blend in.
View attachment 5538

View attachment 5539

Wooden amp? wooden work

 

[sunbeamsam]

Have now added a socket in the roof for the solar panels to connect in. They feed through a separate ammeter into the batteries via a selector switch. After doing this I modified my car charger to plug in via this route too, saves taking the rear seats out each time I need to top up the batteries.

 

[sunbeamsam]

Switch shouldnt really be necessary but the voltage sensitive split charging switch seems to jib a low current (from the solar panels) so this wired in direct to the batts.