fbekholden.com

Interlude 2. Central locking.
Trying to run these actuators in a straight line without fouling puts them about here. Ready to weld in. Attach end of actuator rod to existing lock with supplied joiner. Adjust and tighten with Holden's conveniently placed door card clip hole. Spend days with a mess of wires, bench testing central locking with the alarm system. Could get the central locking to work by itself, or the central locking working with the alarm remote. Getting them all to play nicely together took a bit of trial and error. Got there (by accident - its was an earthing issue) in the end.

Interlude 3. Power window switch.
These are mounted directly in place of the existing window winder. There is a selection of shafts, none are a direct match but this one is close enough. Quick test fit - the 3 mounting holds are just on the lip. Made the decision to make a mounting plate and bolt that to the existing 3 holes of the door winder rather than butcher the door. Thinking was that if the power windows didn't work, I would be able to easily replace with the original winder. A bit of bashing of metal later. Got to say, these units are a PITA to mount. You need to remove the top plate to mount. Undo the 3 screws and the whole thing springs apart. Much swearing and frustration to just get them back together. So to add the mounting bracket, my solution was to drill holes bigger than the mounting screws in the bracket and add washers. Screw the whole thing together with 2 screws, then, add the third with the plate and a washer. Unscrew and add washers to the remaining 2 bolts. Spend more days with the above mess of wires, adding the auto window features from the module and alarm system. This really did my head in, managed to get onto support in the US - ended up I needed 12V from a battery (was using a battery charger) as the system is working on a change of amps to trigger a stop when it gets to the end of its travel or hits an obsticle.
So now I can auto up/down the windows with the switch, and auto up down the windows with the alarm remote lock/unlock.

And back to the power windows.
Using the bottom bracket of the speaker as a mounting point for the motor bracket. There is not much in this area of the door to attach the motor to, so the plan is to fabricate a mounting plate, hang it from this bottom bracket, and then brace it as needed. Got the paper and pens out. Traced and cut 1.2mm sheet with the jig saw, then trimmed the template down, traced and cut the scrap of ply that keeps on giving, to the final shape of the bracket that will hold the power window motor bracket. Bolted it all together and put it in the vice to keep as flat as possible. Hit the ply metal sandwich with a hammer. Many times. Now I feel better. Unbolt, flip around and continue to follow instructions on metal Cut off end of ply and bend the dogleg Use cut off bit to complete the job. Grind away all the excess metal, drill holes for bolt access and centre of motor which is a little proud, and ready to fit.

Not quite. Was going to position the bracket between the two nuts on the speaker bracket. Cut the blue hose about 6mm too short between the motor and rail. Doesn't seem like much but it was causing the cable to rub on the edge of the guide tube at to bottom. So deleted a bit, welded in another nut. Fully mounted. Using a bit of rubber with a hole in it over the bottom bolt to stop the whole thing moving around. Very rigid, no need to further bracing. I had plans and pieces of metal cut to brace the motor bracket to the speaker bracket. My son, who is second year product design at uni, looked at it and suggested packing it with rubber. My only concern is water getting trapped. Might try and glue it in at later point. Fine tuning the fit and just can't get the window guide to rub up and down the rail smoothly. Seems that this is the problem. When everything is bolted up, these press up against the door and twist it. So quick mock up and test to confirm. Much better. After some more grinding, here is the final result of my simple, fun, diversion from rust repairs. Well one of them.

Thats a lot of work upfront scott, you have more patience than me.

I suppose once a prototype is done then the rest will be easy, so to speak.

Sometimes the diversions give you a boost from the laborious tasks especially rust repairs.

Greg

Wow mate. You sure do have patience. I’ve thought about doing all these things over the years but that is all. Great stuff. Keep the motivation flowing.


FB ute fixer upper, EK van on rotisserie

Neat work Scott, there is a lot going on in them doors. After all that you’re probably now looking forward to going back on the rust repairs!

Stephen

great work mate, you must have the patience of a saint to persist with all that !!

Thanks all. Don't know about the patience Blacky, but I do have a lot of time on my hands at the minute so making the most of it. Also, with so many jobs to do, if one starts to shit me, I put it to one side and do another. They all have to get done at some point and these doors would have been a pain to do after painting.

I plan on doing all that in the EK Ute so very interesting read mate. Thanks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Neat job.

I could be wrong, but suspect the last Holden with window winders was the VZ, ending in 2007. I had a VS poverty-pack ute at one stage, security at work thought it was hilarious that I had to manually wind the windows down. Not-so-fast-glass.

Cheers,
Harv

Was in the car with my 17 year old - he though it was hilarious when I did the universal sign for winding down the windows to speak to the driver in the car next to me.

More door fun. 1/4 vents and bailey channels. Stripped the 1/4 vents down as needed new seals and probably look at getting them rechromed. Needed to replace the frame of the drivers side as there is a bit of rust in the bottom. Wanted the glass so a knife fight ensued. Here's what's left - its junk now and I have a spare - one of the few bits I saved off my original FB in Melbourne. Have a crazy idea that you could combine 2 top halves to make a 'new' one. Just need to work out how to attach the bottom shaft. Hours of scraping silicone out of the passenger side one, minutes removing the setting tape from the donor. Note to self - use setting tape. After a few baths in citric acid and a dusting of silver rust paint, the passenger and donor brightwork is ready to go back together (but I still think they will get rechomed). The passenger one is bugging me - the shaft for the latch is loose in its housing. Closer look and its had a sneaky repair job that requires a special removal tool. Can see why this was moving around. No damage to the frame side though. Time for the first sacrifice off the original drivers side frame. And here's a look at the profile of rivets. Would have drilled them out to remove the bracket, but needed to split the bracket anyway.

Ground the shaft off the bracket Drilled and tapped to accept M5 hex head bolt Found a bolt - its a little proud. I'll double check this before reinstalling the glass.

Removed the lower bailey channel guides from the 1/4 vent and the rear of the front doors.
Sand blasting revealed a few holes. Starting with the 1/4 vent, did a quick fold in 1mm sheet to replicate the folds in the channel. Then moved on to 1.6mm which requires a bit more blunt force. Also made up a new tab for the end adjusting bolt. Actually made a few. Took a few goes to hold on to enough metal. Should have just welded a nut on but as I did have a nut this seemed like the quicker option Before a cut the bad metal off, I made a shadow board as a rough guide. Then cut and trimmed until it a fit.