New Member - About to Commence Restoration

[Dicky Motors]

I’m not sure where new members should introduce themselves, but here I am.

I’ve joined the Club as well as the Forum because I’m just about to start work on a 1981 Moke.

The history being that a friend in our village in Hampshire, passed away a year ago, leaving a Moke and an Isetta bubble car, oh… and sadly, a wife.

The Moke hasn’t turned a wheel in more than a decade, but his widow wants to keep it as a runaround hence has asked me to restore it to running order. To do that I shall probably blitz it and simply replace with new anything containing rubber, and obviously address any tin worm.

I’ve got a few decades of (amateur) car work under my belt, and my first car was an Allegro (yes, I know how much that dates me) so I can just about remember how to rebuild an A Series.

Having not been around minis, or derivatives thereof, for a lot of years I have been amazed to see that parts prices seem very reasonable, which is a pleasant surprise.

The only unusual item that I have been asked to add to the car, and I apologise in advance if some of you think it is heresy, is power steering.

I’ve found a company in Lincoln who supply an electric column and the necessary control unit and wiring for £300, which doesn’t seem unreasonable, but if anyone has any experience of the nuances of adding power steering then I’d be grateful for any tips. My first instinct is that I shall need to keep an eye on the alternator and battery to ensure that there is adequate current delivering capacity.

Once the car is completed then I hope to be permitted to borrow it to take it to a few of your events, so watch this space...

Edited to add that having looked up the chassis number prefix AKPPB19Y this appears to be a 998cc Moke of Australian origin.

[Nigel(no top)Sykes]

Welcome to the forum.
I should try contacting Mark, he’s in charge of our spares department, he recently restored an Australian and put power steering on that….though I think he’s since removed it. His contact details are in Moking.

[Tim]

There's a good bit of info here aboout fitting an electric steering column to classic Minis. It would be pretty much the same for Mokes. https://www.16vminiclub.com/forum/gener ... r-steering

The short form is that its possible to adapt the electric steering coloumn from a small GM car (Corsa in the UK, Barina in Australia) to fit. It requires an adaptor at the bottom, to connect to the standard steering rack, and you'd probably want to change the steering wheel to something that wasn't grey and plasticky. In the original vehicles there is an ECU that makes it behave differently at different speeds, but apparently they work without.

The kits I've seen advertised usually come already adapted to fit the rack and some have a kind of adjustable controller that let you set how much assistance they give, but I don't think any of them have speed-sensitive adjustment.

Tim

[Dicky Motors]

Thanks Nigel, I look forward to receiving my first copy of Moking, and will certainly be interested to know why Mark removed his PAS set up.

Thank you also Tim for that very useful link. The kit I have already seen contains a potentiometer to control the level of assistance, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to rig up something which captures wheel speed and drives a drives a transistor in place of the potentiometer.

In fact to be really trick, somewhere I’ve got a bunch of very cheap GPS receiver boards which emit position and speed as a serial message stream. It shouldn’t be too difficult to use an Arduino to read that stream, extract the speed word, and then drive the transistor. Obviously it would be essential to also have wheel speed as a fall back to cater for GPS signal loss.

But first things first, let’s get the car running and roadworthy...

[grantourer]

Hi. I used something like this on car audio in the 80's on my Wife's Mini Jet Black, and a Grundig Porsche radio. Increased volume as speed increased and decreased volume when you slowed down. May work for your steering. I think the speedo cable is M19-1, but you need to check it.

https://www.truckid.com/classic-instrum ... iew=965282

[Tim]

I'm currently converting my dead speedo to electronic. I have just received a converter from Mini Spares that screws into the speedo cable drive on the gearbox in place of the mechanical cable, and sends out a pulse stream instead.



https://minispares.com/product/Classic/ ... o%20search

The first step will be to feed this in to an arduino and convert the stream of pulses into speed and distance. Initially I'll display them on an LCD display, but the second step is to convert the original speedo and odometer to stepper motor drive. I've already got proof of concept of that working.

I thought that the electric steering columns also expect a stream of pulses, but if you could find out the details it would be very easy to emulate with an arduino.

Tim

[Dicky Motors]

Thanks for the tip on the pulse generator.

I’m pleased to hear that I’m not the only one on here with an Arduino ‘habit’.

Rather than an LCD display for your mileage and speed, have you played with the newer OLED type displays? To my mind they seem a bit easier to read and assimilate than the LCD, but I haven’t yet found a source of suitable cases, and don’t have a 3D printer of my own (yet).

Pulse generation using an Arduino is possible, but does require some thought, especially if you don’t want the odd erratic moment.

A friend has put a modern (2016) Ford Coyote V8 into his nineteen sixties Mustang, and the modern engine management computer only emits engine speed via the CAN Bus, so I built an Arduino with a CAN interface to read the particular message and then generate a pulse output to feed a 1960s tacho.

The Arduino timing counter registers are simply once one understands exactly how they work, for which I found this book to be a great help:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/ ... frontcover

If the link doesn’t work, it’s Arduino Software Internals by Norman Dunbar

Sorry for thread divergence, but I should be collecting the Moke for restoration tomorrow, so will post some ‘before’ pictures.

[Tim]

Hi Dicky, that looks like a useful book. I've been messing about with Arduinos for a few years, I use them to control GoPros in deepwater cameras for my work. I have used Oled displays and they are very good, but the finished unit won't have a display, so the LCD is just temporary until I get the electronics reading the speed sensor properly, then I'll implement it on the original speedo and odometer.

I've now got the prototype hardware built, just need to write the software.

Tim

[Dicky Motors]

So, having got the car home and onto the lift, what have I learnt?

The front left corner has had some impact damage from a large rock or such like, so hard that the bump stop has been forced upward and bent the subframe.

At some point the left hand flitch panel has been cut, possibly to ease access to the engine mount, so the whole panel will need to be replaced.

The right flitch panel had somehow cracked (stress?) near the top damper mount, so that too will need to be replaced.

The right hand pannier floor is seriously perforated and will need replacement.

The fuel tank undercover has been distorted and will need to be replaced.

The front suspension all came apart fairly easily, so I’ve already started blast cleaning those parts that will be retained – suspension arms and the like – ready for coating with epoxy primer.

On the subject of painting, I’m still debating what to do once the flitches and the floor panels are done.

The car was galvanised on production, hence some panels are in remarkably good shape, but others have areas where the paint is detaching from the plating which has started to oxidise and powder.

So one option is to address only the areas which show signs of paint distress, and simply paint those to match the existing, and leave the galvanising as is elsewhere.

The next option is to have the entire shell blast cleaned back to bare metal and sprayed properly. Obviously that will destroy the existing galvanising hence feels counter-intuitive.

The third is acid dip back to bare metal, and repaint. Again, to the detriment of the galvanising.

I know that there can be issues with acid dip not being properly cleaned and resulting in ongoing problems, but the Moke seems a fairly simple structure which would lend itself to dipping.

I would be interested to hear other peoples’ opinions and experiences…

Finally, a couple of pictures showing the charming little car:

Engine_Bay.jpg

Dash_and_Footwell.jpg

left_three_quarter.jpg

[Dean]

Hi DM,
The front subframe bend. Is that just the part where the rubber buffer bolts on to? I had that and found the metal bent back fairly easily using some locking pliers.
The distorted under tank plate: I think every Moke I've owned had that.
Dean

[Dicky Motors]

Unfortunately, not only is the bump stop mounting bent, but the steel is actually cracked along the fold line.

NSF_Bump_Stop2.resized.jpg

I'm going to heat up the bump stop area before trying to straighten it, then will get it blast cleaned, and then will TIG along the crack, and then finally, if access permits, I shall run a bead of fresh weld along the back of the fold.

[grantourer]

HI, not wishing to detract from Dean's post. The Subframe in our Portuguese had less damage than yours, ours had suffered accident damage, as a taxi and hire car on Crete, and had a measurable twist on it. Ended up replacing it.

[Dicky Motors]

HI, not wishing to detract from Dean's post. The Subframe in our Portuguese had less damage than yours, ours had suffered accident damage, as a taxi and hire car on Crete, and had a measurable twist on it. Ended up replacing it.

You were spot on: we dropped both subframes yesterday, and the front, when placed on a flat surface, rocks diagonally by about half an inch, so I think it's scrap.

The rear is 'true' but a couple of the threaded inserts have become detached, so there's some work to be done there.