Cus' NA6

[Cus]

Welcome back humans!

As you can see in the last picture, I remembered to put the heat shrink on the wires BEFORE soldering them, so that was a first.

Here are the speakers all installed and ready for their maiden voyage.

lil-red-speakers-installed.jpg

They do come with a metal grill, but they stick out a further 5-6mm which means I can't actually close the doors with them on, so I'll need to do some measuring and trimming sometime soon before I put a foot through it or something simularly special

lil-red-speakers-clearance.jpg

So how do they sound? Well, pretty good actually. They seem to get fairly close to their advertised 40Hz, but because they're not splits, the highs on the driver's side are fairly non-existant because I don't have ears in my legs. The lows are beefy enough to be noticed at 110 on the freeway with the hard top on, not "fully sick" but that's to be expected, I've got no sound deadening except for the factory carpet, so there's a fair spectrum of random noises it needs to compete with. Having said that it does crank rather loud, the HU can be set a couple of clicks lower than previously for roughly the same volume, I'm not using an amp of any kind, just a kenwood HU - the cheapest one they had at the time with a line-in on the front, which is now plugged into an el-cheapo BT lighter-socket dongle so I can talk to people legally when they call, and it gives me back/play-pause/forward buttons conveniently located right next to the steering wheel.

Today I went to get an iced coffee and ended up on a mini central-vic tour for three and a half hours trying out different music generes and volumes while admiring the countryside. It was a sunday well wasted!

[Cus]

Greetings Humans!

Lots of things have been happening in Cusland lately, some of them even relate to the Lil Red!



Today's adventure was measuring the voltage drop at the back of the lights compared to the back of the alternator, results are: 14.2V at the alternator, 12.1V to 12.6V at the back of the Lights (Low beams have a higher loss) Fresh wires and relays have been added to the "Later" list, along with a new indicator stalk because it randomly makes the high beams come on.

Also pictured is my makeshift heat shield covering the pod filter, because there was nothing between it and the extractors and it'd get pretty warm, pre-heating all of the air before it even got through the filter. The filter is cooler to the touch now, so it looks dodgy as all get-up, but it works! It's open on the bottom quater so it can suck air from sort-of the headlight area instead of directly off the extractors. Hot days still make the car feel more sluggish than crisp nights though, so a proper solution is still being brain-waved.

Next adventure though is a water shield for the back of the speakers, as Lil Red has to live outside now I've moved house and it turns out water does get in there pretty efficiently!

[Nevyn72]

Also pictured is my makeshift heat shield covering the pod filter.....

Is that a Milo tin?

If so, nice work mate!

[Cus]

It surely is a Milo tin!

I've been busily fixing my front guard from where a crombledore got me at the end of last year, there are photos, my phone hates me, I can't share them lol

[bruce]

I've used a plastic flowerpot as a cover for my pod filter (to keep the water and dirt off as it is behind the front bar).

[Cus]

[Cus]

Good news! Technology and Cus are working together now!

That was where I was up to before applying bog which I may have to scrape off tomorrow (looks like the catalyst was dicky)

This little tear in the metal resulted in me learning to weld. Did some practice runs on a bit of scrap, then got in there and welded it, then cleaned it up with the flappy disc.


And going back to the start of the saga, this is where it was up to before I got serious about fixing it.


So its been a good week, I've learn to weld, panel beat, fiberglass, bog, sand and paint.

[Cus]

Good news everyone!

The bog is in the process of being scraped off, along with the entire top coat of red. The panel's been resprayed before, fortunately for me, by someone who failed dismally at prep (or, is about as good at it as i am) because the entire top coat and it's primer are coming off, leaving the factory red underneath, which has a better gloss to it than the paint i'm taking off, which makes it easy.

Today's lesson: don't let other people touch your projects. I had a nice thin layer of bog in one spot to test if it was bad or not, SWIM came along and "beefed it up" for me....

[Cus]

Aaaanndd done, almost. Just need to wait a couple of days, sand off the orange peel, polish the crap out of it, and we're done.



It's been a fun project, it's cost me $85 in (mostly) paints, and I've learn to do a whole bunch of things I didn't know how to do.

Next time I'll do a better job, there were some things I found out the hard way (eg: don't use a ball peen hammer, for anything, ever) and the underlying prep for the panel could have been better, but I was having withdrawals from driving it. (and the rest of the paint is far from pristine, so it won't be too far out of place)

[Cus]

Greetings Humans!

As everyone with an NA knows, the interior lights are about as useful as a handbrake on a canoe. I carry a torch in the car purely so I can see things on the passenger seat when I pull up at night time. Nothing says "I'm Cool" like needing a torch to see inside your own car!

I happened upon a pair of these:


They're 12V per side, and draw 300ma all up. Some de-soldering, and little bit of cat-6, and we had these:



They looke like this in the car:


It was certainly an improvement, but still no more useful than a duck's umbrella. Well, I could see my knees quiet effectively, but I tend not to balance things on my knees, so we needed to get to the improving.

So I wired up these fellas:


I put them around the rear view mirror, and it started looking better:


So I added in a pair of lights in the corner of the a pillars too...


And now it's daylight!

Everything is currently held in with masking tape, now I know the concept works I'll re-wire it with smaller gauge wire (all I had on hand was speaker wire) and mount it behind the trim panels, and viola! Daylight, even with the tops off.

When I re-wire it the passenger interior light switch will control the left lights, and the driver's light switch will control the centre and right lights. At the moment all of the top lights are being powered from the passenger switch, which isn't an issue, the LEDs combined dray less power than the one festoon globe that used to be in there.....

[Cus]

So, it turns out "daylight" was actually a little bit too bright.

Instead of removing some lights like a rational person, I've spent the last couple of days putting together an arduino to control them.

Now opening the doors will fade the lights on to about 25%, or if you want the full 10,000 suns you can switch your side to on and it'll fade right up to sunburn with both options fading back to off when you're done.

[Nevyn72]

Nice work, I've always loved what these little devices are capable of, just got no idea how to go about it!

[Cus]

Thanks Nev

Without sounding like one of "those" people that say "Oh! It's easy!" and then proceeding to list a dozen complicated steps ... it actually is easy. Here's a dozen complicated steps

Excuse me while I get way, way off topic for a moment.

Technology is going through the "quickening" industry went through a couple of hundred years ago, where first they made simple tools, then used those tools to make more complicated (and better / easier) tools. I don't know how to *make* a screwdriver, but I can use one.

So the Arduino is at it's heart an Amtel "ATmega" chip, to make it work you need 5 Volts, a 16Mhz crystal, two capacitors and a resistor. To program them however, you need an interface to the computer, and a compiler so you can write code on the computer and have it run on the chip. These "small steps" previously were rather complicated. So much so that I could probably work it out, but I've 24 years of computers under my belt, normal people with partners, kids, jobs, and generally, lives, stood not a chance of making them work.

Arduino (the company, not the product) set about making the toolbox better. You load the software onto your computer, it comes with the software to program the chip, and the software to talk to the chip, and most importantly, examples that work out of the box. Their webpage (http://arduino.cc) has an entire "Learning" section that details, well, everything. From "how to plug it in" to the nuances of ... the complicated stuff.

Then, they made all of the hardware designs Open-Source, and released the software for free. The upshot of this is that there are Chinese companies smashing out "Arduino Compatible" boards that are functionally and physically identical, but an eighth of the price. (Remember, at it's heart an Arduino is just an off-the-shelf microprocessor made by an entirely different company)

Because they are so cheap, every man and his dog can buy them. (Well, I've not met any dogs that've bought one, but I know quiet a few men that have) and because the company started out giving away the software, it's created an ecosystem of people giving away the code they've written to do complicated things as well. (eg: An LCD display can display text on the screen with 5 wires and 2 lines of code using someone else's toolbox)

We're definitely at the point that all the things you and I are likely wanting to do, have already been done.

OK, back to the point I was originally going to make.

If you have time and a willingness to fluff around, "it's easy".

Step 1) Decide what you want to do.

This step is key, if you don't have an end-goal in mind, you'll never get your head around the tools you're using. Turning lights on and off is always a good first-time project because you can see the system in both modes of operation (on and off)

Step 2) Go to ebay, and buy a cheap "Arduino Compatible" kit.

Mine cost me $80ish and came with a breadboard and jumper wires and random components. Breadboard is amazing for "brute-force" design, where you get a rough idea of what you want, and keep fiddling around until it's how you want it.

Step 3) Google "arduino" + "part you have" + "what you want it to do"

Step 4) Usually someone has made the part you have do the thing you want, so see how they did it, adapt it to your situation

Step 5) Have a coffee.

Repeat steps 3, 4, & 5 until you're happy, then transpose it onto veroboard so it can't be unplugged accidentally, then have another coffee because you're done!

The green board in the previous picture is a lighter-socket phone charger, I pulled it out of it's case, took the connectors off it, put 12V from the car in one end, and get 5V out the other end. It looks complicated, I only have a vague idea of how it works, and I couldn't design one from scratch in a million years. I just know I put 12V in and get 5V out. "Better Tools"!

The board underneath it is power in from the car, a common Earth rail, and an IC that is 7x Darlington Transistors packaged together.
Under that is the Arduino itself, I have 5 inputs wired - door switch, and one for each position of the two light switches('door' and 'on'), and three outputs going up to the darlington's - one for each side of the cabin, and the glovebox.

So the arduino turns the darlington transistors on and off (think of them like a relay, but much faster and quieter) and the darlington in turn works the LEDs. I do this because the LEDs are 12V and the arduino is only 5V. By itself the arduino can only run one or two LEDs safely, but there are 60 now thanks to the darlintons doing the hard work. I could also run colour changing RGB LEDs from the circuitry that is there, but *that* would be silly

(Sorry for the pontification, I get passionate about some things, like how amazing technology is, which means I ramble, which means I need to put it in context, which means more rambling, it gets out of hand sometimes )

[speed]

Very cool. Thanks for the explanation. Awesome result!

[Apu]

I have a better solution...you come up with a standard kit and simple instructions, name a price, we buy!