IanS

Just a thought but there are 2 starter rings fitted to pintos. I have forgotten the diference but the effect is as you describe. Most pintos have the standard ring but some transits were fitted with a ring gear with a diferent number of teeth per inch, these required a special gear on the starter. Sorry I do not know the measurements but perhaps someone will have thier memory jogged by this. Ian

Sierras were never fitted with balast resistors. You only should have a balast with points ignition. With points type ignition you could cook the coil if the ignition was left on the points were closed and the engine stopped. You will get some signal from both ends of the coil because the current rise time is fairly fast when the plug sparks. For the technical there is inductance due to the length of the wires from the battery throught the ignition switch to the coil so the high frequency part of the signal will get through from the battery side of the coil, but there will be a bigger signal for the tacho from the switching side of the coil.

You probabaly have a 50 amp alternator so the guage might spend some time at full scale. That said I have never seen a small car battery that will take 50 amps at 14 Volts. Right on to the nitty gritty. Your donor had 2 wires to the + of the battery, a thick one that only goes to the starter (leave this alone) and a thiner one that takes all the other current. Lift the second wire from the batery and extend it with 3.5mm dia wire (10sqmm) or thicker to the - terminal of the meter. Now useing the same size wire conect the + terminal of the meter to the + of the batery. Make sure that all joins cannot short to the body. Job done. If the meter reads + when the engine is stopped and the lights switched on just reverse the connections to the meter. Light(s) in the meter have one lead to earth and one to the feed for all the other instrument lights. Ian

I worked with electronics for 30 years some parts dont change and feel like they have been round since the arc was built.

The regulator is a standard electronics 78 series voltage reg at if I remember 10Volts. It is in a TO220 package and is a 7810 available from RS and posibly CPC

If this is a rebuilt / reconditioned alternator There is a good chance that it is also duff. A lot of them are rebuilt and not realy tested.. The first check I do in situations like this is batery polarity.. At the risk of teaching granny to suck eggs.

You will need to check that all the brown wires are earths in the CPU. For this you will need an electrical multimeter set to ohms (lowest range) or continuity. Connect the plug to the cpu and measure continuity from brown to brown, the meter passes a low current through the circuit and this will not damage the cpu if connected to the wrong wires. Hopefully all browns join at the CPU if so connect any to any. There might be a few sizes of wire connect big to big, small to small.. Good luck

This wire allows more current in the coil when starting. The amplifier limits the current normally so that the sparks are the same energy at tickover and flat out, older contact breaker ignition systems gave a reasonable spark at tickover and nearly no spark at 6000RPM. It can help when your battery is on its last legs and winter has bitten. Ian

Sorry No picies of my screens yet. If i am able to get to donnington I will let you know Ian

Hood material is what my side screens are made from. I have the frame trapped between 2 layers. They are sewn round a frame. Sewing them is not hard with a domestic sewing machine if a bit of thought is given as to where the seams are before you start sewing. You will need a leather needle in your sewing machine, these can be got from any sewing shop (look up haberdashery in your yellow pages) and rot proof cord. I obtained material and cord from woolies at a show, they advertise in most kitcar mags and do mail order.. Joining the top to the bottom was done by extending the material up about 1 inch above the frame on inside and outside leaving a channel. The bottom inch of the polycarbonate was roughed up with sand paper to give a key and then the polycarbonate had a layer of Sikoflex222 spread on both sides and this glued it into the channel. The ends have come undone a bit and I have bolted a stainless U strap 1 inch high by 2 inches long round the front ends to stop this Ian

The screen is surrounded by 2 pieces of U section aluminum channel. The first goes up the sides and over the top, the second goes along the bottom. The glass should have a rubber strip in the channel seperating it from the aluminium. The bottom and upper halves of the channel should be joined by a (from memory) 2inch long by 1/8 inch self tapper screw, one fitted each side. This is fitted horizontaly through the sides just missing the bottom of the glass and into the bottom rail. This assembly is then held to the uprights by 3 short self tappers per side and the upright by 2 bolts per side to the scuttle. The bottom rail should touch the scuttle at the rear bottom but has a gap at the front bottom due to the angling back of the screen This is filled with sealent as Allan says in his reply. Thats how I did mine after watching the video. Ian