You mean the three buttons on the levers for flow and heat controll? They just pop off if you pull at them with enough force.

How does your derusting bucket work?

I'm still interested in learning how to remove the buttons on the heater control arms, so if you know a trick, please enlighten me! 

Today's picture shows a prototype of a circuit I've been working on for a while: It's a detector circuit for the crank sensor pickup on the Murena 2.2 engine. The sensor is not used, only connected to the diagnostic connector, and it's a little special compared to normal sensors since it does not contain a magnet. It therefore needs to be biased with a current flow to actually detect a signal. The oscilloscope trace below shows how it triggers on a signal at about 40 mV. This test was made in my electronics lab with a random piece of iron. I'm going to working with the trigger sensisitivy on a running engine.

I'm working on this because I want to use the sensor to measure ignition advance using a dedicated microcomputer. To do so, I need a reliable trigger signal.

The bottom picture shows one of the rear shock absorbers in the derusting bucket. They are now clean and ready to be primed before being painted with in the correct Koni-red colour. I had them both restored about 10 years ago, but the paint they received back then started to come off.

I'd like to upgrade the illumination of the heater controls to LED, but can't figure out how to remove the buttons on the control arms. Is there a trick to do it?

Today's picture shows the difference between different illuminations of the switches. The top three are all illuminated by standard 3mm LEDs. The first has a 1K2 resistor and the next two 1K8. The bottom two switches still have the 24V incandecent bulbs. I've replaced the bulbs on all five with 3mm LEDs with 1K8 resistors and I'm quite pleased with the result.

/Anders

Hi Dokkedal

I received you e-mail.

Thank you very much, it is much appriciated!

Best regards Frederik

Send you an email.

While I'm still waiting for the cylinder head to come back from the machine shop, I'm continuing my progress on electrics. I will probably have a few pictures to show after the weekend, but today I'd like to post about the backlight on the switches on the left side of the steering wheel.

They are extremely dim because they're fitted with 24V bulbs which obvioulsy emit very little light at 12V. The bulb is otherwise a normal T5 bulb of the same type fitted in the instrument cluster for which I have ordered a set of yellow LED bulbs. I'm hoping they will produce a colour which will be close to the original bulbs.

These will be too bright, however, for the button backlights, so today I tried making my own LED bulb with a standard 3 mm yellow LED and a 1K2 resistor to limit the current to 10 mA max. This is much brighter than the 24V incandencent bulb, but I think the colour matches well and personally, I think the 24V bulbs are so dim that they don't really help at all.

Hello Roy,
Thanks for looking.
I'll email you tomorrow with a photo of my VIN plate.
My cars are all 2.2DT engines, so G8T71X engines - The one in question is a G8T716 motor and it's my best Espace mk3.

I have never owned a DCi - too scared!
I think it's the last of the pre-canbus DT's, with proper relays and fuses - It would be great if you can tell me more about it.7

Regards
Mark.

2.2DT Grand Espace 1998 RHD
2.2DT Espace 2000 LHD

Thanks Andrew. You're right, mine is absolutely saveable. It's actually very decent and now that I've painted the top of it black with fuel resistant engine pait it looks almost new (except that it's black and no longer gold chromated, as it appears to have been from the factory).

The rest of my fuel assembly is perfect, including the pipe and plastic filter pickup in the end. I guess I'm lucky my tank has been kept closed over the years until I removed it two years ago. I will be interested in your spiyda unit if I do not succeed rewiring the old rheostat and need to transplant a 2CV or other new rheostat onto the assembly.

I've now reinstalled the assembly without the fuel level sender with rheostat and float. It will be fine for my initial tests and running in.

I'm otherwise still waiting for the machine shop to finish their work on the cylinder head. During pressure testing they found one of the freeze plugs was leaking a little. That would have caused a problem so I've obviously asked them to replace it and retest.

While I'm waiting, I'm working on electrics under the dash. I have a good amount of cabling to route to the fuel pump relay, electrical water pump controller, and O2 sensor display. I fitted an Alpine radio with CD changer and a car alarm with immobilizer years ago both of which I have now removed, so I have to clean up what I did then. The picture shows my custom cabling being routed behind the instrument cluster.

I've also worked on the radio, which is a 1988 Blaupunkt Paris that was in the car when I bought it. I have replaced the aluminium electrolytic capacitors on the output amplifier module and installed a white LED as new backlight for the buttons. It's now ready to be installed.

And now that I had the instrument cluster out, I took out the tachometer unit to calibrate it. The picture shows it calibrated to 3000 RPM on my table with the use of a function generator and frequency counter. I've cailbrated it with similar precision at 1000 and 7000 RPM. I'm working on reverse engineering the unit, which is mechanically of quite high quality, but electronically somewhat lacking and difficult to calibrate. Information on the Philips SAA1049 IC used by Veglia is scarce, so there's a bit of thinking and analyzing needed there.

/Anders

Roy, I've read your recommendation of the Spiyda gauge wizard, but I have not been able to find a replacement rheostat that will fit. I can only find complete in-tank units.

/Anders
[/quote]

Anders, I struggled to find a replacement for a non-existent fuel sender, in the end Carjoy was prepared to sell me (as an existing customer) a used OEM one which works perfectly. My old fuel sender is the one photographed in Roy's tech bulletin on the topic, it was the worst he had ever seen! I tried for months with a generic unit intended for marine applications, linked to a Spiyda, but without a notch in the mounting disc the arm was always fouling the side of the tank and calibration of the Spiyda involved syphoning 50 litres of petrol out and back into the tank. Having run out of petrol for the umpteenth time I bit the bullet and paid the price for a used OEM unit from Carjoy and am delighted with it. Yours looks savable so I would recommend persevering with repairing it. BTW if anyone wants a used Spiyda please get in contact with me.

Please email me directly (roy@matraclub.org.uk), not here, as I need to know the full vehicle spec. first.  Are we talking F9Q or G8T?  I need the full VIN, vehicle Fabrication number and engine Fabrication number.

Roy