The 'E' Type Forum

After a couple of years' searching I was overjoyed to find a pristine example of this module, introduced by Jaguar as an option in 1967 towards the end of S1 production:







It works perfectly and fits in visually much better than many of the upgrade alternatives available. Unfortunately these units seem to be as rare as hen's teeth.....

Yes, of course I'm kidding. What follows is not so much a recommendation, more a confession. Sane forum members may choose to move on to other posts. Or you might regard it as an instructive case study into what happens when the E Type obsession starts taking a serious hold on the patient....in which case, stay with it...

Anyone who saw the film "Flash of Genius" (brilliant, the story of the inventor of the intermittent wiper) will know, these things didn't appear until about 1970 when Ford stole his invention....
Anyway, my story started when Angus sent me a Velleman K2599 wiper delay circuit that David (Heuer) had tested and OK'd as functional, and asked me to see if there was a reasonably non-invasive way of installing it. There wasn't, really, not without cutting a hole in the dash or in the under-dash panel, which I was reluctant to do:

But I found a new, smaller unit from the same supplier (Quasar Electronics) – the AS8093 – with the control rod sticking out longitudinally rather than perpendicular to the PCB, and decided this would allow me to fit the thing on a bracket hanging down from the dash, with the knob sticking out towards the driver. It’s on the left of this photo, with the potentiometer in pieces (I’ll come back to that):

I couldn’t find a case big enough to accommodate the unit and small enough to fit behind a modest bracket, so I had to do some creative butchery on both PCB and case:

Then the bracket. And now you can see I had more ambitions for this bracket – a hazard switch and the fan override that Angus recommends for when the Otter fails. A 3-in-1 solution. The bracket itself was easy, with a couple of spire nuts and just 2 holes drilled into the return under the dash face to secure it. I glued and shaped hardwood ends to make it look more solid, and Graham at GB Classic Trim kindly sent me a piece of dash vinyl to cover it.







And what switches was I going to use? Not modern ones, for sure. I bought 2 HRW switches/escutcheons and a Dip escutcheon from SNGB and during idle moments over Christmas asked myself how on earth I was going to get new lettering onto the back of them….Also decided on a chromed, knurled knob for the wiper control. Electric guitar knob on Ebay, cheap as chips.

I won't bore you with my attempts to get decent lettering onto the backs of the escutcheons. The font had to match the other switches, for a start. The black background can only be obtained if you spray paint the back of the Perspex. You can get white transfer and stick-on pvc letters for railway modelers and so forth. But oddly enough, nobody sells reverse letters, nor exactly the right size, nor the correct font...This was the point at which I started wondering about my sanity. Eventually I did a powerpoint mock-up (Arial Bold Rounded is the best match, if you care - I know you don't) and printed off. Then with a lot of masking and messing about I got the result you see. Sheer madness.

Time for supper now but in the next exciting episode I'll briefly cover the electrical aspects. I know you just can't wait.....

Very impressive Jeremy, especially the escutcheons. I know what a pain it was trying to get a new switch legend strip with "hazards" in it made.



Simon

Great Jeremy....you could start churning them out for forum members .....Steve

I did consider mass production Steve, but I fear the men in white coats would arrive to take me away before I got very far…..
Anyway – the electrics:
1. The radiator fan override was easy. I have a Coolcat with a relay, so it was one earth lead from the relay to the new switch, to mimic the action of the Otter, and another lead from the fan motor to illuminate the lamp when the motor is running. Just the work of running the cables in an outer through the bulkhead (I opted for the choke cable hole, same place I used for the upgraded rev-counter cable from the dizzy), then re-doing the strapping along the frame. Simples.
2. Hazard flasher a bit more complicated, because the traditional Lucas switch is single pole. I bought a DPDT relay to keep L & R sides separate and tapped into the indicator wiring just above the steering column downstream from the indicator switch. Oh – and as I have LED lights, I got the LED-specific flasher unit from Classic Car LEDs, since the current is far too low to operate a normal flasher unit. Nice bright red LED warning light too. There’s space behind the dash to accommodate the 2 flasher units and the relay quite comfortably:

Brilliant....seriously impressed
Enjoying this thread

Jonathan

3. Finally, getting the wiper delay working....well it didn't initially, as I had it connected up to send a 12v pulse to the connection point up by the parking switch mechanism. When I finally tumbled it and realised that what was needed to activate the wipers is a brief earthing moment, it was fine. I turned the knob back and forth and the delay went from short to very long. Brilliant I thought, let's get it all installed, wires cut to length, connectors all soldered up etc.

Then I found that the unit I bought has no "off" position. So the wipers wipe once every 40 seconds whenever the ignition is on. Grrrr. The original larger unit has a much better potentiometer in fact, as it has 3 click positions: Off, long delay, short delay. This one is continuously variable with no "off". I absolutely didn't want to go back to finding ways of fitting the larger unit. So I cut the potentiometer off, drilled it open, and cut away a piece of the resistor track (round which the contact moves) at the "zero" position. This then gives no current to charge the capacitors so the unit can't work. Put it all back, and then found the relay on the PCB had started sticking, so the "intermittent" wipers would keep wiping until I hit the relay. Double-plus GRRRRRRR.

Ordered another unit from Quasar, this time in kit form so I could modify the pot a bit more carefully. Noted the kit had a different relay. Took my hacksaw and file to the PCB once again (so it will fit into the case, are you still with me at the back there?). Soldered it all up. Finally it works properly, hooray. I will contact Quasar about that because it’s a poor show about the relay, but in view of my butchery operations I’m not about to send anything back for a refund.

I do think the first unit works a lot better but if you want to fit it, I can’t see anywhere to fit it behind the dash (if like me you have a heated rear window). And even if you don’t, drilling a hole there is irreversible. The only way seems to be to drill a hole in the under-dash panel, and fit a knob sticking downwards. But if you want the fan and the hazard gizmos too, things will start getting messy quite quickly it seems to me.
Time for bed, said Zebedee….

Just one postscript....attentive members of the class will be asking - why bother with all that malarkey when the Hella intermittent wiper unit upgrade, detailed by David on this forum, is so easy? Well, the Hella unit has been discontinued....although there's one on Amazon just now for 126 quid, plus postage

Yes I was asking myself but admittedly nicely excuted, esp the escutcheons and the chrome bits. Are you thinking of producing a little batch ?

Very very neat. Trouble is , you’ll now have nothing to do on wet motorway days.

But then I’ll have even less, with no wipers or washers or roof or fan or.....

A couple of suggestions that may help; there's no need for the potentiometer to be soldered directly to the circuit board so you can separate the two, connect them with 3 core wiring and have more flexibility over where the potentiometer and knob go and - potentially use a wider range of delay units as your source. Secondly you can get potentiometers with an on/off switch built in so they would turn the unit off in the fully anti-clockwise position and save you having to go in and cut the track.

Really nice looking finished unit

Jeremy, I do admire your handiwork

As an aside, the Bosch intermittent wiper switch part number 0 336 920 004 is still available as an alternative for the Hella unit, search fleabay and they do show up, though becoming rarer.

Geoff

johnetype wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 28, 2020 8:39 am

A couple of suggestions that may help; there's no need for the potentiometer to be soldered directly to the circuit board so you can separate the two, connect them with 3 core wiring and have more flexibility over where the potentiometer and knob go and - potentially use a wider range of delay units as your source. Secondly you can get potentiometers with an on/off switch built in so they would turn the unit off in the fully anti-clockwise position and save you having to go in and cut the track.

Really nice looking finished unit

Thanks John - yes that was my thought too. I did look on some forum for Velleman wiper delay enthusiasts (who woulda thought such a group existed?) and somebody had tried to install the larger unit with the potentiometer mounted separately...and it didn't work. The Velleman guy replied that it was sensitive to location/wire length/interference and they made no guarantees if people relocated components. Certainly if a unit with a separate pot could be found that would make the whole project a lot easier. The problem here (perhaps underlined by my sticky relay episode) is that whereas the Hella unit was a properly engineered mass production item, this is more a low-volume hobbyists' kit and it feels much less robust.

MarkRado wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 28, 2020 5:06 am

Yes I was asking myself but admittedly nicely excuted, esp the escutcheons and the chrome bits. Are you thinking of producing a little batch ?

See above re fear of white coats Mark

Jeremy wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:31 am

MarkRado wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 28, 2020 5:06 am

Yes I was asking myself but admittedly nicely excuted, esp the escutcheons and the chrome bits. Are you thinking of producing a little batch ?

See above re fear of white coats Mark

I can fully understand why Jeremy doesn't want to go into mass production or even make another one.
I got a friend to print mine onto the back of clear acrylic and then cnc router the shape. I think (know) he was fed up of me by the 20th "could we just change/try this?"
The electronics are the easy bit, producing something that looks as aesthetically good as Jeremy has achieved, that's the hard part.

Simon