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1951 LD10 KKV 222

Descriptive and in-depth articles on how to do repairs or restoration. (Wilf's articles visible by forum members only).
Vulgalour
Posts: 236
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 11:04 pm
Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

Today and yesterday have been jolly hard work. Yesterday was a full eight hours battling with wiring and I got to the point where I was totally workblind and seeing mistakes that just weren't there. Today, after a good sleep and a fresh start I worked a few things out and made some great progress. There will eventually be a few wiring videos documenting where the wiring goes and the problems Pat and I have had with this job. It has not been a pleasant job at all.

The main issues stem from this being my very first venture into automotive rewiring in full. Added to that is the fact that the wiring in the car, the wiring on the diagram, and the wiring in the new harness all have different colours so you have to try and keep track of three different colour sets to work out what goes where which is a lot harder than it might seem when it's also something you're totally unfamiliar with. Then there's the repair sections, which have caused even more of a headache. Finally, there's the lack of any cohesive information on wiring routing, with every car seemingly having a totally unique approach since it seems every LD10 out there has had at least some of its wiring replaced by now and every owner has done it slightly differently.

However, after four hours work today, which included having to remove the fuel tank, I finally got the chassis run of the wiring out. It was incredibly dirty, fiddly, and frustrating work but because I was pacing myself I didn't lose my temper with it and that is probably the most important lesson I learned for the whole venture.

Image

I've identified all but one wire in the new harness provided, which is a black with white trace about the length of the cabin. This will likely become clear as everything is reconnected. The new harness doesn't include wiring for the stator tube so I will have to make that section up myself since I don't want to leave the original wiring in there when all the rest is being replaced, and I haven't yet had another go at removing the stator tube as I've been focusing on the other sections.

I still have to figure out the correct routing for the speedometer cable and the temperature sender capillary tube, both of which looked to be incorrect once the new wiring harness was situated. I'll have a look at the LD10 pictures I do have to see if I can find some commonality between them to help suggest where they should come through the bulkhead, after which the route will likely become more evident. One nice thing is how much tidier the wiring now looks, even without things connected, it all just looks much more presentable and less confusing.

Once Pat and I have everything tested and working properly we'll release the video content to clarify the job better, much of the 26G currently recorded is likely to be repetition and mistake correction. I prefer to record a whole job if I can and then edit the content into one cohesive whole afterwards, results do vary on that, video production is certainly a skill I'm still learning!

Unfortunately with this job Pat hasn't been able to help much, in part because of work commitments, and in part because much of it is a one-person job, there simple isn't the physical space to get two people in. He has been able to lend a fresh pair of eyes and a second pair of hands for some parts which has maintained my sanity and sometimes saved me from my own workblindness by pointing out obvious things I've not been able to see. I hope he realises just how important that is with a job like this and how often being the reset point has really helped me keep on track.

Vulgalour
Posts: 236
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 11:04 pm
Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

Another brief update here just to keep you all abreast of progress. I finally got the chassis section of the new wiring installed. Aside from it being a little fiddly, it really wasn't too bad to do. That section is now ready to be connected to the rest and tested once a few other jobs are ticked off the list. Unfortunately the weather didn't let me play as long as I would have liked so I didn't get as far as trying to sort out the stator tube, that's a job for another day still.

One thing I did do last night was some image research. I still wasn't entirely happy with the wiring route for the dashboard/bulkhead section, it felt like I was missing something. Unable to find any physical layout diagrams, I was having to rely on photographs of other LD10s and I could only find one that hadn't had the original wiring altered, and that photo I couldn't download because it was from a defunct auction listing so I basically had a low resolution image search thumbnail to work from. However, it was good enough that it showed me what I'd done wrong. The wiring for the dashboard/bulkhead goes in from the engine bay side first, and then into the cabin. It's still a tight fit with the new slightly thicker wiring, but it does go through. Then you have one large branch of wires that go to the voltage regulator and another large branch that goes to the shelf under the bonnet hinge. On our car there are several screw holes that look to be factory and while we suspected the missing component was an old junction box, we could never prove it until seeing this old auction photo. On the new harness, instead of the junction box (which are apparently quite fragile and easy to overtighten, leading to them breaking, not to mention the corrosion issues) it's a selection of sleeved bullet connectors so all we'll need to keep things tidy is some suitable clamps that we can screw into the original holes, much like the original P clamps that run along the inside of the chassis rail to hold the harness in place.

This now means all of the new harness bar the one mystery black-with-white-trace wire is installed and ready to be connected. We will make new stator tube wiring since that does need to be done, and there's a handful of items to address such as the auxilliary lights at the front that aren't currently connected.

I'm part way through creating the physical layout diagram and wiring diagrams to illustrate the job a little clearer and for future reference for those that might find that useful. We're still a little way off starting the car again, another job that's been added to the list is a clean up and repaint of the fuel tank since it seems silly not to while we have access to it and that will allow us to really clean the back end of the car up nicely. Now it's just a case of waiting for the weather to decide what it wants to do before we press on with the next phase.

Vulgalour
Posts: 236
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 11:04 pm
Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

Image

That there is the wiring diagram as it stands for the wiring that the car came to us with. Or at least, it's the stage I'm at with laying it out. I now understand a bit better what goes where and while I'm aware that my labelling isn't conventional, I'll fix that in the next version.

The purpose of this was to get my head around what the wiring was doing, and wiring in general. I'm one of those people that learns by doing more than by reading, so this was a practical exercise for me and I feel like I understand what I'm looking at a bit better now than when I started.

The little open black squares are where the wiring was spliced and it's laid out pretty much as if it were in the car physically, rather than the London Underground style wiring diagrams are normally in. It should also help explain some of the confusion with the way it had been wired, what with changing colours and odd splits where they shouldn't be up front. It worked, everything did function, until things started not to. Hopefully it makes some sense to those readers with some wiring experience.

Brian-H
Very Wise Man
Very Wise Man
Posts: 1095
Joined: Fri Aug 09, 2019 6:04 pm
Location: UK

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Brian-H »

What on earth were the original electricians thinking of by running the wiring for the offside headlight all the way over to the nearside and then back again. That's like flying from London to Brussels but going via Amsterdam - maybe par for a drugs courier.

Vulgalour
Posts: 236
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 11:04 pm
Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

You begin to understand some of our frustration with what we received! Worth noting that this isn't how Barker/Lanchester intended the wiring to be, this is how it came to us. I've a few more items to add - headlight dim/dip switch, earth points, etc. - to complete the picture but it's certainly helped me understand what was going on and why it was such a head scratcher. The new wiring harness was svelte in comparison to what was pulled out.

Brian-H
Very Wise Man
Very Wise Man
Posts: 1095
Joined: Fri Aug 09, 2019 6:04 pm
Location: UK

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Brian-H »

Vulgalour wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:03 pm You begin to understand some of our frustration with what we received!
Definitely :shock:
Vulgalour wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:03 pm Worth noting that this isn't how Barker/Lanchester intended the wiring to be, this is how it came to us.
Hmmm how did Autosparks end up doing it like that if that's not the way it was originally done :?:

Vulgalour
Posts: 236
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 11:04 pm
Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

This isn't the Autosparks harness either, this is the wiring the car came to us with last August. This is me trying to understand how it had been rewired by a previous owner. The Autosparks harness is a lot more like the proper wiring diagram, just in different colours. When I have the other diagrams completed I'll be able to show all three alongside one another so you can see the differences. I had expected making up the diagrams to be fairly easy, and have learned that it's a bit more involved than anticipated to make a nice clear diagram so it's taking me a bit longer than I would like.

Brian-H
Very Wise Man
Very Wise Man
Posts: 1095
Joined: Fri Aug 09, 2019 6:04 pm
Location: UK

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Brian-H »

That explains it then, the person who rewired it like that was a drugs courier 8-)

Vulgalour
Posts: 236
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 11:04 pm
Location: Kent

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by Vulgalour »

You mean, they were in a hurry and didn't really care about any casualties along the way? ;)

---

It's been a while since the last update, so apologies for those that have been waiting the next instalment of our little journey here. Happily, I've got a fair bit of footage from the wiring job so far and will now be releasing a short series on how the job has gone, mistakes included, which will hopefully help folks attempting to undertake this job. We make the mistakes so you don't have to! As I type this, we haven't finished the rewiring since we haven't yet connected everything up, but we do have all the new wires installed bar the stator tube which I haven't had the time to have another look at. My everyday car, a 1988 Maestro, recently decided I needed to do some bodywork by shedding a rear arch when I washed it so that's rather taken priority at present.


mikemillen
Posts: 307
Joined: Mon May 03, 2021 8:34 am
Location: Bognor Regis

Re: 1951 LD10 KKV 222

Post by mikemillen »

You don't need to unsolder the sidelight connection... push the wire forward and remove the top paxolin washer, then you can pull the wire out of the rear of the bulb-holder.

To open the headlights, pull on the catch at the bottom... it's spring-loaded.

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