What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[dickie65]

Its shocking the number of drivers that have no clue where the air intake is on their car some are very low down !!!

[andrew34ruby]

Its shocking the number of drivers that have no clue where the air intake is on their car some are very low down !!!

Many people driving cars do not know what an air intake is anyway, so not knowing how low it is doesn't really matter.

To me the problem is car designers who put intakes so low. Why?

And they fit expensive electronic boxes too low as well. Why?

[Dave Mann]

I did think about showing how to transit a flood in a car in the Seven, then thought better of it with the low air intake of a 22FZb. The biggest problem with modern drivers is the speed they go at when passing through a flood and with the front air dam which produces a massive bow wave over the bonnet flooding not only the engine ir intake but the heater air intake as well.

[themaces]

Friday 3rd Jan saw a good run for my '25 Chummy over some lovely North Yorkshire roads to meet for lunch at the Wellington Inn, Darley.  Total trip was 110 miles without incident and feeling surefooted after the lovely work completed by Ruairidh in sorting the kingpins and axle eyes. 


  IMG_7714.jpeg (Size: 225.35 KB / Downloads: 402)

[GM6VXB]

To cold and damp with lots of sea spray in the air but took the tourer out for a quick
run round the block.
Noticed the side lights (front and rear) and brake lights were on. All off when I pulled the
actuator away from the brake switch.
So another puzzler to fix when I have stopped putting pound coins into the swear box !.

Did this before and never found out why. Hope it does not go away this time so I can
sort it.

[John Cornforth]

Hi

It could be that the brake lights have lost their "proper" earth and the current is returning instead via the sidelights. A manifestation of the "trailer board" effect.

[GM6VXB]

John,
Looks like the problem is with using LED's for the brake/stop lights.
Put the filament bulbs back and worked as should.
So this afternoons job is to add some 'pull up' resistors across the lamps.
Sort of defeats the object for using LED's as current draw will be higher.
Also found the brake switch has gone sticky, so something else to do and
at a guess another £10 in the swear box !.

[Robert Leigh]

You might well find that if you install perfect earth connections from lamp holders to the battery earth point you will not need resistors or anything else. With LEDs current draw is so low that a slightly poor earth causes different voltage distribution.

[Dave Mann]

With all the salt on the roads our Sevens have been hibernating for the last week, walking past one yesterday I saw a pool of oil under the engine I mopped it up and had a good look and no sign of a leak and left a drip tray there. The drip tray was bone dry today. I'm puzzled as to where it's come from.

[John Cornforth]

Regarding LED stop and tail lamps. The ones from some suppliers consist of a single LED, with two different value series resistors to give a high current for stop and a lower (= dimmer) current for tail. That's all fine and dandy, but there is an increased chance of backfeeding and odd effects with this simple setup, especially if the car has a mix of LEDs and filament bulbs. In my setup, I resorted to adding series diodes in the wiring to prevent back feeding.

Another effect is that if bulbholders are not in the first flush of youth, their slightly tarnished connections may work fine with filament bulbs as the higher current tends to "wet" the contact. I'm uncertain of the exact mechanism, but possibly a bit of micro-arcing burns through the tarnish. If you use lower current LEDs contact may become less reliable, especially if the "bulbs" have hard nickel contacts rather than the traditional more accommodating soft solder. The cure is thorough cleaning or using new holders.