Scorpion #621 resurrection

I'm going to take a brief break from shoehorning that console back in. Instead, I decided to find my wipers and install them. I couldn't find them for the longest time and had resorted to buying Porsche 944 wipers to attempt a retrofit. They weren't working out the way I had hoped and I really didn't want to do permanent modifications to the spindles to make them work, so I was ecstatic when I had an epiphany and located my wipers tucked away in my shed on top of a box of Scorpion spares I have no immediate use for. I remembered seeing them a couple of months ago when I was looking around in there for something related to my RX-7 and had assumed those were spares for the RX-7. Anyway, here they are:

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A little rough, but complete! The wiper blades could use renewing but I'm happy to even have them. I decided that I can't put them on the car looking like the did, so I went to work with a wire wheel, stripper and sand paper to get the old coating off.

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Then I coated it with several coats of SEM black trim paint. God I love this stuff!

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So then I go to put the wipers on and it's then I realize that the nuts that came with the car are some sort of castle nuts and are NOT OEM. In fact, they don't even screw onto the post.

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I flipped them around and they do hand-tighten over the post, but THIS is not going to do:

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I had to go back to a movie I took 3 years ago after I'd picked up the car to confirm that yes, these were the nuts that I got with the car and YES, they were installed upside down. They had to have been put on hand tight as I didn't have a wrench thin enough to get under the hat of the nut to tighten it down.

So, great. An easy-ish project has been stalled while I look for suitable replacements. Luckily, I found a wiper assembly in the UK with the nuts still on the spindles, so I'm trying to work out a deal to get them sent here.

tJ
 
Don't those just need metric 'acorn' nuts - the threaded shaft is either 6mm (10mm head) or more likely 8mm (12 or 13mm head) . Have you tried a plain nut just to see what the thread is?
 
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It's not the thread that's the issue. The acorn nuts need a shaft that will fit inside the recessed area of the arm. I found the correct nuts in the UK and they're on their way over here.

tJ
 
It's not the thread that's the issue. The acorn nuts need a shaft that will fit inside the recessed area of the arm. I found the correct nuts in the UK and they're on their way over here.

tJ

I see - you mean a threaded sleeve I presume - curious design. The Volvo style uses a tapered cone spline, so the top nut simply presses the aluminum of the arm seat into the splines and secures it. Then there is a plastic cap that covers the nut.

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Curious design...this is a recurring theme with these cars. ;) I see the Volvo arms have a cap to cover that nut, which is nice. I'd be fine with just putting an black anodized nut of the correct pitch, but since it won't grab threads, I'm left scrambling to find a solution. These are like old-school SSR lug nuts except about 1/3 the size. Nothing in the McMaster-Carr catalog, which is my go to for oddball hardware. There's a person on the Montecarlo Consortium Facebook group that has been looking for ONE OEM nut for 6 years and finally found one. I didn't have a lot of hope, but I was lucky to find a wiper assembly (minus the arms) on the UK eBay which had the OEM nuts still on the spindles. I couldn't believe my luck.

tJ

I see - you mean a threaded sleeve I presume - curious design. The Volvo style uses a tapered cone spline, so the top nut simply presses the aluminum of the arm seat into the splines and secures it. Then there is a plastic cap that covers the nut.

X19-01007.jpg
 
I got the door panels back on today after a false start last night. There's that inner seal that goes on the door and the door panel hooks onto it. Only I couldn't remember how it all went on. It seemed like the seal snapped onto the door and the door panel should hang off of it, but the damn seal wouldn't stay still. I finally went back to a vid I took of me pulling the car apart and realized that there were supposed to be clips holding on the inner door seals. I had only one out of 5 on the passenger door. I didn't video me pulling the driver's door off, so I have no idea how many of those clips were present, but I could only find the one clip from the passenger door in my stash. So off to Autozone to buy the clips and ended up finding small speed nuts that did the trick.

Once I snapped the speed nuts in the 5 places they ought to have been, the seal stayed in place and I was able to hook the door panel back on with ease. Then the rest is 3 screws, the tiny hex head screw holding the door lock pull, and 5 bolts holding the door handle cover and armrest on.

Speaking of armrests, the original driver's side arm rest was in bad shape, but the passenger side was fine. Also, for some reason, the arm rest pads were black instead of blue. Shortly after I picked up the car, I purchased a new armrest pull and 2 blue armrest pads from Midwest Bayless and stashed them away. I transferred the blue armrests to the originals and noted that my new armrest didn't match the old one. I realized then the PO had painted the armrests. So, I had to take them back apart again and repaint them with SEM black trim paint and put them back together again.

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They really came out well. Here they are in the car:

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So done for the day. As you can see, I still need to get the center console reinstalled, as well as the handbrake console and glove box, along with little stuff like the dash vents and sun visors.

Speaking of the glove box, I decided to take it down out of the rafters and open it. I found the paperwork I had from smogging the car in 2016 along with some other interesting receipts, including one from the PO who, in 2014, had all of the seals in the engine replaced, along with the timing belt. And they had an ANSA exhaust put on at that time. Also, much to my surprise, I found these:

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I had assumed mine were missing before I got the car, so about a year ago I finally sourced a set. Now I have 2 sets.

tJ
 
Last night, I noticed that the SLOW DOWN/REPLACE CATALYST/EGR warning lamp bezel is cracked on my console:

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So I drew this up in Fusion 360:

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Here it is off, hot the printer:
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Dipped in IPA and posing next to the real (broken) deal:

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Tomorrow it cures in the sun and I'll give it a light sanding with 400 grit and shoot it with some paint and it should be good to go.

tJ
 
Yesterday, I printed a second warning lamp cluster bezel for grins. I cured them both in the sun, sanded them, and painted them with SEM black trim paint. On the left is the sanded, unpainted bezel. On the right is the painted bezel:

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For comparison with the original broken bezel:

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Warning lamps installed upside-down:

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Lamps properly installed and cluster installed back on the console:

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tJ
 
Another mini project. The shifter/parking brake console had issues...

The parking brake rubber seal was missing, so there was an unsightly gap around the parking brake. The plastic switch housing was warped by the sun, and two of the switch knockouts were taken out but no switches were installed (more unsightly holes). It's almost as if the console was taken from power steering car, but my car doesn't have power steering. 🤷‍♂️ I found an extra HAZARD switch and installed it in one of the holes, but I still have another hole. Finally, the rear part of the console where it bolts down near the firewall was missing some sort of finishing piece to cover the screw.



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I managed to pick up the OEM rubber parking brake gator along with an unneeded parking brake and switch from eBay, but when I went to install it, I found that the underside of the plastic piece it attaches to was missing all but 2 of the little protrusions that hold the rubber in place. It also was clear to me that the gator was meant to stretch into place, so it's not surprising that those 40-year old nubs snapped off ages ago. Fabulous.

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I would have tried just gluing it on, but those little nubs were on bosses, so there was really nothing to glue the rubber gator onto. So, took some measurements, and then I went to work with a dremel and remove all of the bosses. You can see in the pic above where I had started removing some of them.

Once the bosses were removed, I took my measurements and drew up new strips with nubs in Fusion 360 and 3D printed them. I super-glued them into place:

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Once the glue set up, I put the gator on the console plastic, but predictably, some of the nubs broke. I noticed, however, that some of the super glue got on the gator and seemed to stick to it really well. So, I glued the rest of the gator on to the bezel and it stayed put.

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I painted the bezel with SEM black trim paint because it looks so damn good.

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You'll notice that the middle switch area looks rather untidy. That's OK, because when the switch is installed, you don't see that.

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I added back the HAZARD switch and a fog lamp switch I picked up from Midwest-Bayless. Sure, they're not functional, but they look a lot better in there than those gaping holes. I may eventually put fog lamps in the car later.

More to come tomorrow!

tJ
 
Before I can put the parking brake console in, I need to get the center console in. Oh my god, that was a PITA! I had to disassemble my shifter to pull it out of the way. Then try putting it in place. Pull it out. Push wires around some. Put it in again. Pull it out again. Push more wires around. Try to plug those damn air hoses back in. Put in in again. Pull it out again, push more wires around. FINALLY, I got that $!@*!# thing in after 45 minutes of d*cking around with it. I think the culprit was the rheostat at the bottom of the console, the wiring of which was interfering with the cage that holds the heater controls. I bent up the tabs of the wiring so they wouldn't interfere and things went in a little easier.

One thing I noticed is that the little protrusion with two air fittings on the console itself has a little spring that sticks out the back of it. Seems like something's missing there as it didn't seem to actually do anything. It fell out during the refitting. I have a sinking feeling my floor/dash vent changeover isn't going to work. I kept it but I'm not going to pull the console out again unless I know what it's for.

Still have the glove box and driver's side panel to put on.

tJ

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Well, tonight I had to take the console back out again to troubleshoot some connections. Last night, I started testing things and found that the blower motor didn't work, nor did the turn signals. The hazard flashers DID work, however, so I found that strange. Additionally, the lights in the entire center console don't work. Finally, I was right about that little spring at the back of the heater vacuum control switch...that spring is supposed to press against something in order to engage the floor vents (presumably an end cap). The switch never had that piece as long as I've had the car, so my guess is that part never worked. I'm guessing the blower didn't work either...I don't recall if I ever used it as I only drove the car a couple of times and I doubt I needed the heater.

When I put the console back together, I consulted the pics I took of how the wiring went back together. The heater control switch was wired with a blue wire, a grey wire, and a pink wire in my pics from 3 years ago, so that's how I wired it back up. No go. I rechecked my wiring diagram and found that the orange wire that seemingly had no where to go did indeed have a place it needed to be plugged in. The grey wire was incorrect...so I swapped the grey wire for the orange and BAM, I had a working blower. In retrospect, this made sense.

I checked the fusebox and found that the #2 16A fuse was blown. Today I went to O'Reilly Auto and found some 16A euro fuses (surprised they had them!) and replaced the blown fuse. Now the turn signals work, as well as a couple of idiot lights that didn't work before. I was pleased to see my rewired parking brake light was working (the wire was broken off in the harness, thus was missing when I got the car).

The console lights not working drove me crazy. After pulling out the console, I found that the rheostat was broken. The little slider/lever that is attached to ground that the wheel moves back and forth was loose and the wheel was just freewheeling. Of course, this is a part that isn't available at the moment, so I had to think of something. So, I decided to bypass it.

I took my multimeter and confirmed I was getting voltage on one of the yellow/black wires:

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Good, I was getting voltage (although methinks 10.4 volts is a little low? I'm getting 12.4 at the battery terminals, so there must be a bad ground somewhere. If anyone knows the likely culprit, speak up.

Having determined I was getting voltage, I fashioned a connector wire with male spade connectors on both ends.

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Then I joined the two yellow/black wires together and left the black ground on the rheostat. Voila! Lux!

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I'll wrap up the exposed connectors in electrical tape.

Oh, and my wiper acorn nuts came from the UK yesterday. They were pretty beat up and oxidized, so I cleaned them up and painted them, and put them on the car.

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My next step is to figure out a solution to the heater vacuum switch. This will involve CAD and some 3D printing. More to come.

tJ
 
I have to say how impressed I am with how many parts you have made using an additive manufacturing plastic printer for your car. Where I work we have multiple units and are continually looking at how we can integrate the parts into a production solution, the stumbling block has always been the additional work you have to do to end up with an acceptable finished part which you demonstrate. We have the additional constraint that we can’t use wet coat paints and labor is huge part of the cost of our products so additional sanding etc is right out. We have printers which can do a 1m cube to make rough parts and numerous others which do our smaller parts. Most of the parts we make are for product development to represent castings, stampings or extrusions and of course injection molded parts.

Nice work and resin type of printer you are using versus the FDM type (Which is what we primarily use) really works well for you, good choice.
 
Thanks Karl...I appreciate that. I have been using FDM printers for a couple of years now and, up until recently, I had never considered them suitable for making finished car parts. FDM printers are great for mocking up a part. If you have the patience to fill/sand, you can make a decent finished object, but, as you know, it's time consuming. I still have a Lulzbot Taz 6 with all the bells and whistles, and we use those, as well as Ultimaker and Tevo printers at the makerspace at school.

I've used a Formlabs Form 2 resin SLA printer at my buddy's studio on and off over the past 3 year for things that needed a slick, finished look, but the consumables are expensive, and a failed print ends up being a time-consuming nightmare to clean up. More often than not, I used it to print bucks for things that I would then make molds from. It was perfect for prototyping.

About 6 months ago, I picked up the Anycubic Photon S printer, and it's been a game changer. It has done an impressive amount of work, especially given the modest build volume. The resin is about 1/4 the price of Formlabs' resins. The FEP sheets on the resin vats are easily changeable, whereas on the Form 2 you have to replace the whole vat to the tune of $125 after a limited number of prints. A failed print takes minutes to clean up rather than the better part of an hour. If the FEP sheet is really messed up, no worries. That's a 15 minute fix and it costs a couple of bucks a sheet.

The best part of printing in resin is the ease of sanding/cleanup. It's unbelievable how quickly I can get a part ready for paint. Some of my parts I don't even need to paint, so I don't.

I agree that additive printing is NOT suitable in a production environment. The time it takes to print, clean, and finish a piece is a deal killer. But it's ideal for the hobbyist who has lost patience looking for an unobtanium part that's been broken due to impatience, incompetence, or carelessness (or all of the above). Clearly not everything is a candidate for 3D printing, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to replace without breaking the bank and pulling my hair out locating the part.

Now, I think my print for the HVAC thingy is done...time to take it off the printer and clean it up. We'll see tomorrow if it's going to work. :)

tJ



I have to say how impressed I am with how many parts you have made using an additive manufacturing plastic printer for your car. Where I work we have multiple units and are continually looking at how we can integrate the parts into a production solution, the stumbling block has always been the additional work you have to do to end up with an acceptable finished part which you demonstrate. We have the additional constraint that we can’t use wet coat paints and labor is huge part of the cost of our products so additional sanding etc is right out. We have printers which can do a 1m cube to make rough parts and numerous others which do our smaller parts. Most of the parts we make are for product development to represent castings, stampings or extrusions and of course injection molded parts.

Nice work and resin type of printer you are using versus the FDM type (Which is what we primarily use) really works well for you, good choice.
 
Well, I had the day off on Monday but got stuck building a lattice for some jasmine my wife wanted to plant, so that day went bye bye. I did manage to cure the cap for the HVAC switch and test it. Here are a couple of caps I printed with slightly different inner diameters.

uglybutfunctional2.jpg

Unfortunately, the standard black resin I used was too brittle and the tabs broke off when I snapped it on. So I reprinted it in more durable resin, but it was a messier print. That said, it was functional so I went with it. It doesn't have to be pretty.

uglybutfunctional1.jpg


Here is a vid showing it now functions:


The following day I was able to get into the garage and get the HVAC switch back in and the console back in. It went in a little easier this time. I also got the glove box back in, which ended up being more of a PITA than I thought it should. Connecting the ground wire to the glove box light ended up taking a ton of time because the tiny nut that goes onto the tiny screw was just too damn tiny for my fingers to accurately place them. I finally got super glue and glued the nut to my finger so I could keep the damn thing from falling off while I lined it up to the screw.

While I was at it, I decided to take off the old flat bottomed MOMO steering wheel and replace it with a new deep dish MOMO I had sitting in the garage. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with it or not. I have another flat MOMO that I may like better that's in my RX-7. I'll pull it off and see. That also ended up being a bit of a pig because one of the allen head screws was stripped. I ended up having to drill it out carefully. Luckily I didn't f*ck the threads up. One thing I didn't get working yet is the horn. The horn button is one of the 2-wire jobs. The hot wire goes to the horn from the boss and they supply another wire that you apparently need to ground. There was a ring that slides into the wheel that the horn button goes in and that has tabs on it. I might be able to put the wire on one of those tabs. I set that aside for now because I wanted to get the driver's seat in so I can drive the car to a friend's lift so I can do a couple of tasks.

The seat went in with a little drama as I didn't realize that it won't go in the complete upright position. The holes for the screws won't line up on the rails. Took me a night of swearing, pulling the seat in and out of the car, fishing out cockeyed allen head screws, and trying again before I called it a night. Tonight, I studied things carefully and figured out that the seat needed to be partially reclined in order for the holes to be allowed to line up. Then it was cake.

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I would have gotten in the shifter/parking brake console, but a self-inflicted project happened due to my impatience. I have a much nicer parking brake handle to replace my old corroded brake handle. I wasn't going to bother but then when I set the shift/parking brake console over it, it was painfully clear this wouldn't do. So I somehow managed to get the cotter pin off the parking brake handle fully knowing I probably would have a bear of a time getting it back on the new handle. I also knew I should loosen the cable from somewhere (where exactly I wasn't sure), but didn't want to be bothered. What I didn't expect was for the cable to get sucked inside the tranny tunnel and disappear completely. So f*ck....now I have a new project.

The good news is that it's a relatively easy fix, but I need to get the car on a lift. The bottom engine cover needs to come off and I can loosen the cable under there. That will allow me to pull the cable into the cabin again and get the new brake handle on. While I'm on the lift, I'm planning on making a permanent mount for the Mazda fuel pump as well as swapping the ANSA exhaust for the stock exhaust with cat so I can take the car for smog (it's been non-op for over 2 years now). That's why I needed to get the driver's seat in.

I have some little stuff in the interior to do, which I'll document later.

tJ
 
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