Series 1 Heater Cable Routing and Spring Type

[rfs1957]

Could anyone throw any light on this ?

There was a promising thread here :

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14638

but the pictures seem to be dead.

My car always had the heater-flap control cable coming out into the engine bay through the "sister" hole just above the water-valve cable.

The routing isn't terribly satisfactory as it then has to negotiate around the washer-bottle before being fastened to the heater box.



My question however concerns the spring that is, I imagine, meant to give a positive flip-flop to govern the Open-Closed choice, such that it holds it either Open or Closed with some spring pressure.





As you can see, I have fudged a spring to give the desired effect, but it will have to have a significant portion of dead-straight (my twisted wire, and YES - I did stab my finger, as all lockwiring sufferers will recognise ) as any spring"diameter" near the pivot will foul the operating arm.

Does any of this look right, and does a spring indeed exist that is meant to operate with an arm such as mine - I'm not even sure if it's original ? Tho' it does look pretty much like this C19761.......



Robey shows spring C15587 as being parallel for almost the whole length, which looks like it won't cut it.



EDIT NUMBER ONE - actually, whilst it looks like the Ebay one, mine must be from another model, or even perhaps off another car, as it's not kinked to get the spring-post sideways in the right direction.

It looks like it was designed to fit a shaft with a flat on it, whereas my shaft is just round - can someone confirm that's correct ?







but I've just machined the peened-over zone off, and switched the pillar around to the other side, plus a bit more of a kink .................





It'll do until I find the correct part.

EDIT NUMBER TWO : and I could have avoided wasting everyone's time if I'd just looked a bit harder in Factory Fit.





This one appears to show the heater-flap cable running like mine, BUT it's showing a LHD car - was it different on the RHD models, I wonder ?

[rfs1957]

I can confirm that those were indeed the right parts.



Warning however.

The Robey C19761 part looks great.

But .....

1. the holes in each cheek don't line up, and the two webs require twisting .....

2. the odd-shaped clamping holes are too small, and don't fit ; they required judicious filing .....

3. it's made out of significantly thicker steel, so as supplied it's wider than the original - and therefore didn't correctly grasp the end of the flap's shaft .....

4. so you have to squeeze it to be narrower .......... and then the pinch bolt no longer fits, so you need to find a smaller size .....

5. the component has the nut-locking cutout in the wrong place, so you end up fitting the screw backwards from underneath .....

All in a day's work for all E-Type spare-part purchasers, hein ?



The spring required no modification - surely a first ?

[Series1 Stu]

The spring required no modification - surely a first ?

Have you learned nothing, Grasshopper? Clearly, you bought the wrong spring and just got lucky in that it fit.

We've earned the right (and spent a lot of hard-earned) to be cynical about such things.

Regards