All I can say id poor Bill
Great job he/you have done

[Great job done by Bill and yourself - very tidy indeed!]

Great job done by Bill and yourself - very tidy indeed!

Cheers guys - really pleased with it   

Well done that looks really good 

That looks great Dave, Your mate has done you proud. What does it sound like? will you be deff by the time you get to Stoneleigh!

Rob

It sounded very nice from my house when he started it up

We thought that was thunder at Elemental

 
How does it sound? You should ask the the staff at the Co-op who use the store room located underneath the workshop, in fact I think the layout down there may actually mean the Buggy may have been located directly above the toilets. Judging by the comments from the Manager, who I fear may have been sat on said seat at the time, I don`t think he was very happy that we didn`t give him fair warning who, instead of spending a penny may just have dropped a couple of quid, if you know what I mean.

A few weeks ago, I changed my rear LED indicators for something I thought would be a little brighter than the ones I was using, and today, in glorious blue skies and much sunshine, I made a startling discovery, that they still could not be seen. It seems that most of the aftermarket LED clusters we are all using suffer with this, and I thought it about time I tried to find out why.

So I thought I would play with an OEM rear light unit from a BMW E46 and see how they managed to get it right, when we all seem to be getting it wrong. Now, I must start by saying that what I did here is certainly not for the feint hearted, as these BMW clusters are fast approaching several hundred pounds each.





But because they are so expensive, and have big circuit boards in them instead of replaceable bulbs, it does mean that when they go wrong, people often send them to me to be repaired, and ultimately I have ended up with a few spare ones kicking about to cannibalise.





With the circuit boards removed, you can see that apart from a few electronic components, the boards are nothing more than a layout of LED bulbs, slightly different in shape to the round ones most of us are familiar with, but not really any different. They are just high power output LED bulbs. For reference, the large panel is the stop and tail lights, and the 3 thin boards make up the indicator circuit.





And these LEDs simply shine though the holes in the plastic panel. Seems simple enough, and very similar to what we have ourselves. Yet these ones work well enough for a production car, yet ours cannot be seen in daylight. Time to look a little closer at the problem.





This next picture of the circuit board laying against my lights actually illustrates most of the problems. First of all, it is important to remember that LED lights are very directional, and you may have noticed that if you position yourself directly in line with them, that they actually look much brighter from a certain angle.

That is all well and good, but if you look at the silver/white set that I have just installed on the right of the picture, you will notice that everything is pointing skywards at a steep angle, and coincidentally it is about the same angle as when we are standing upright behind them thinking that they look good, when actually if you squatted down behind them, at about the same height as if you were driving, you may notice a significant reduction in their intensity.

Now look at the BMW circuit board, and you will notice that all of the LEDs are mounted at an angle, (they appear vertical in the photo) so that they are pointing horizontally at the eye height of the driver behind. That is one of the problems for us that often needs solving - the lights must first point in the right direction. But hang on a minute, my existing stop and tail lights work brilliantly, and they also point skywards - what is different there?

Looking again at my silver/white cluster, (and the BMW lights), you may notice that the ends of the bulbs are a nice rounded concave shape which actually magnifies and focuses the light beam even more in a given direction, whereas my brake lights have a convex dimple on the end which results in a larger amount of light coming out of the sides instead of the end, which is why they work best at an angle. If you looked head on to my brake lights they are not as bright as they are when viewed from an angle and this is also an important fact to consider.





And this got me thinking. I now know that the LEDs need to point at the vehicle behind, but a small rounded lens pointing directly at me was significantly smaller than the larger surface area of the recessed reflector that wasn`t really being used. So if I were to replace the Concave LEDS with Convex ones, then instead of seeing the directional 3mm round dot of an LED, in theory I should see a larger amount of light as a result of using the reflector instead. Well, that was the theory.





Well I guess that there is only one way to disprove a theory, so its out with the grinder





But even with all the excess fat trimmed off them, they are still exceptionally large lights, and currently far too big to use behind my lenses





As its just the indicators I am playing around with at the moment, I carefully chopped the unit in half and will revisit the tail light section another day. The indicator unit was trimmed down as far as I could, and I also had to reduce its depth by grinding off some of the high peaks on the front. Care was taken not to damage the reflective surfaces with the generated heat. You can probably tell by the mess how much fun I am having with this.





The LEDs were all replaced with slightly larger 4mm Convex ones, and the circuit board rewired to allow for independent operation from the main board. Because my Buggy had already been fitted with big resistors to control the flash rate, no further wiring alterations were necessary.





And here we have the resultant LED indicator module ready to go. Granted, its not that pretty, but do not forget that I am trying to prove a theory here rather than produce a finished bit of shiny bling.





Now if my theory is correct, by changing the shape of the LED to convex ones, then instead of seeing 16 round dots of the individual bulbs, I should instead see 16 full sections illuminated due to maximising the effect of the reflectors.





And I think that was fairly conclusive. I still have a long way to go with this, and will continue to experiment, but there is no doubting that even when your lights are pointing in different directions, just by changing the shape of the ends of the LEDs them selves can have dramatic increases in the amount of light being shown.

Interesting . . . . . . .   

I`m not a great fan of the racing harness that many use on here, and I like the freedom of movement from the old style inertia style seat belts as found on normal cars. However, over the last few trips, I have been having more and more problems with my seat belts getting stuck. The belt retractor (technical term for the mechanism) hasn`t wanted to recoil the belts when taken off for a while now without a bit of help, and now they are significantly jamming when trying to put them on. When you pull them, they lock, but once locked they do not want to free up to give any more length, which can be a real pain when you are my size and having to struggle.

There is an old trick of the trade to free up classic car belts when this happens, and that involves dipping the retractor into a bucket of a warm soapy solution for a while, and this has the effect of degreasing the internal plastic cams, allowing them to freely function once more. Usually takes ages to dry them out, but it works really well. But not something I am going to bother with this time as my belts are starting to fray around the edges, and if the truth be told, they are looking very tired and could really do with replacing.

And herein lies the problem. Most (front) inertia seat belts are designed to work in a totally upright position, and if the retractor is at any sort of angle, then it thinks the car is on its side and it will lock. Not helpful when your roll bar starts off by sloping back at an angle, and hence one of the reasons I originally used a knackered set of belts, as the internal wear meant that I could install it at a very slight angle without locking. Many of the rear inertia belts now have a built in adjuster so that you can actually dial in the angle it is being fitted, and it will then work perfectly. Sounds good, until you realise that the rear belt configurations do not include the shoulder loop that attaches on the top of the B-Post, nor the long stalks that they are clipped into, and are actually a fair bit shorter in length. The solution looked fairly simple. Buy a set of fronts and a set of rears and cannibalise them to make what I wanted. So, with my contacts that I have within the industry, I asked one of the belt manufacturers (Securon) if they would custom make me a set by swapping over the retractors from one set to another, especially as they had a multitude of different sets and products on their website.

And their answer was . . . . Bugger Off       

Actually, to be fair, there technical department were very helpful, and because of type approval, legislation prevented them from making custom stuff, but they did suggest that I had a word with a company called F.D.T.S. Ltd and ask for Sue, as she was known for making custom belts.

Sue was brilliant, and after a quick chat, she suggested that rather than cannibalising two sets of belts, that I make myself familiar with their website, especially the item names and terms, various mounting options, do some measuring on my car, and then give her a call back, where she quizzed me on just about every aspect of seat belt requirements from length down to the various types of nuts and bolts used to fix them. She then suggested that I should use a different (and much smaller) multi angle retractor that could just be "fitted" without the need to dial in any angles.

I then asked her what colour she could make these in, and if green was an option? To which she replied, "Sure, what shade?".

To my amazement, they have around 70 different colours available, and she not only sent me over a quick picture, but offered to post out some samples if needed. Nothing seemed to be a problem at all, and she said that it would only take a couple of weeks to make them. This all sounded too good to be true, and it was time to ask the one question that I had been dreading. The elephant in the room. The price. How much of a hit was my credit card going to have to take for this one? And I nearly fell over when she gave her reply.

I needed them, I now wanted them, so I ordered them.   

And as good as her word, two weeks later I had a parcel arrive containing two sets of belts and an extra bag of mounting brackets that she had thrown in, as she thought that they may come in useful





And there was no doubt whatsoever as to what vehicle they had been built for   





I certainly hadn`t initially set out to get green belts, but when you are confronted with an option list in front of you that ticks every single box, its seemed silly not to go for it, and I am really pleased with the colour that came back to me.





You can see from the picture here what I meant by the mounting angle. 99.9% of inertia seat belts will not function if installed like this, and I am pleased to report that these ones are silky smooth and work perfectly.





Whilst coloured belts are not to everybodies taste, I think that they really suit my Buggy and I am exceptionally pleased with the work that Sue and her team have put in to provide me with such an awesome set of seat belts. The quality of workmanship is second to none.

So, back to that elephant in the room then. A fully tailored and custom set of belts, made to my exact spec and colour. How much do you reckon that they cost me in the end? Have a guess? But before I tell you, let me just give a quick plug for Sue, and if you do contact her, mention the Beach Buggy Club and I`m sure she will go out of her way to assist you.


F.D.T.S. Ltd.
Highfield Works,
Rear of 1-3 Parvis Road,
West Byfleet Corner,
West Byfleet,
Surrey
KT14 6LP.  UK

Telephone: +44 (0) 1932 342043

http://www.fdts-seatbelts.co.uk/







And I bet your guess was a lot more than the £59 + vat (per belt) that I was charged ! 

£153.60 inclusive of delivery for a pair of custom made belts !! 
Not only that, but I was given 30 days to pay it - Proper Old Skool Invoicing     

 You jammy so and so, they look great

[The Dangers of letting "Professionals" near your wheels:]

The Dangers of letting "Professionals" near your wheels:   

Due to pressures at home, and having to look after Lisa, I put my Buggy into a local tyre centre run by a supposed mate of mine for a bit of work and I am absolutely appalled by the state in which it has been returned. Like so many garage mechanics these days, he too has become very "Lazy" and does everything now with a ratchet gun, often at full tilt, as this saves time and effort.

Now, you will hear many tales in the VW Community of wheel nuts coming loose, and wheels falling off. This is very common, and the cause of which is often for the same reason. Wrong wheel bolts for your wheels. Wheel nuts and bolts come in many shapes and sizes, and the most common have either a rounded ball on them, a chamfered angles, or a flat washer. These correspond to the same shapes on the wheels where the nut goes. What V-Dubbers tend to do, is remove the bolts, change the wheels to a different style and then simply refit the bolts again, without checking if they are suitable. If your wheel has a chamfered edge where the nut touches it, then a wheel nut with a rounded edge will simply become loose and the wheel will fall off. Its a simple thing to check, and one I would advise everybody to do.

However, I digress, because not only did I know this, but I had actually custom made my wheel washers on a lathe as they were unobtainable, and as they were a perfect fit, I knew that they would never come loose. But, I drove home and set about checking them for tightness. When one of the nuts pulled (not unscrewed) off in my hand, I knew I had a bigger problem here.





I use 4x130 to Chevy 5 stud adaptor plates for my rear wheels, and as you can see, the studs are nowhere near acceptable   





The thread has been stripped from nearly every stud, all because a ratchet gun was used and any problem  tightness could not be felt   





ManxDavid introduced me to a new word for this stud, of unobtanium - wheras I just knew it as FUBAR   





The reason the nuts were tight, is because winding them up so much with the gun had caused them to compress slightly, allowing the side walls to bulge, meaning they would no longer slide through the holes of the wheel with ease. So what did this garage do? Cut the nuts in half and removed the bulge from the end.





Thankfully BuggySteve came to the rescue with a new adaptor plate for me, and from my ebay wheel fiasco a few years back, I still have a supply of 7/16 chevy nuts to use. A quick session with the bench tools, and a new set was produced for use.




I`m not going to name and shame the local tyre centre that who did this, they know who they are, but the impending black eye will take some explaining to his customers as to how it came about. Thankfully I`m just glad that I drove it from there round the corner to another garage, run by my mate Adam who spotted this before I hit the road and pointed out that he had a problem getting the wheels back on.

Hope he realises his stupidity could have killed you and others
name and shame - he should be reported to trading standards, not so much for the stupid thing he did in the first place but because after buggering it up but he then tried to hide the evidence by cutting bits off the nuts.  Then he let you, his "mate", drive off in an unsafe vehicle.

He needs putting out of business before he does kill someone (IMHO of course)
Glad you found it
You two dont need any more hospital visits

Sobering. Whilst I totally condemn what's been done to your lovely nuts and bolts and the potential for an accident, at least the guy told you they might need checking...... probably knowing you'd do so soon. If he hadn't you could so easily have had a terrible crash and from the wreckage of separated wheels the first guess would have been that you hadn't tightened your wheels properly and they had destroyed the threads as they worked off. Wouldn't have explained the cut off ends but you might not have survived to say it wasn't you who'd done that.......

I'm aghast that such a thing can happen to you who take such care and pains on doing things properly.

Must admit when I got my Sidewinder over a year ago I knew nearside rear wheels were more predisposed to work lose so took the bolts out of the passenger rear to then retighten them, only to find they were way to short i.e. they perhaps only screwed in a couple of turns before becoming fully tight. I found all 4 wheels had the same too short bolts so after a feeling a bit pale at having driven about for 50/60 miles oblivious of how tenuously the wheels were actually held on I invested in some much longer ones.

Jeez! It sometimes makes wonder where everything will all end up...

It's just mad out there