Car fittings (a bit OT)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Impossible to say without more lithium ingestion

[Capitol]

That V6 was outstanding. Mine did 180K before the body fell off with rust. The V8 was inherently unreliable.

[Capitol]

By then discrete transistor production had moved to Taiwan and it was uneconomic to produce anywhere else. The products had moved on by the 70s to be a lot more integrated and the computer designed FET products were coming in.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes. The same basic Lucas starter was used on a variety of cars. I'm not sure how many different 'power' versions they made, though, to cover all engine sizes. Obviously, the drive pinions could be different - but could be swapped over.

[Graham C]

I remember an American automotive magazine c.1990:

Q: Why do the British drink warm beer? A: Because they have Lucas refrigerators.

The Ford RAC Rally support vehicles c.1975 were reputed to carry something like 1 gearbox, 4 wheels, 2 exhausts, 8 windscreen wiper blades and 20 Lucas alternators.

When I was keen on rallying in the 70s I bought a Lucas fuse box for extra protection on my headlights. It came fitted with two 35A fuses. The headlamps ran around 25 amps, which of course didn't blow the fuse, but the plastic box overheated and melted due to the poor design of the claws which held the ends of the fuses.

[Tim Watts]

Not just them - the worst IME was Fiat.

1976 Fiat 131, had those "bullet" ended fuses you don't see much now, if at all. Ours burnt out something like 2-3 sets of contacts on something high powered, probably the headlights. We had to take the box out periodically and redirect the circuit to spare holders.

It was a pig to get apart - a crows nest of not very flexible wires inside. It was also the main throughway to get wiring through the bulkhead so it had more connections than necessary for its primary purpose.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A Lucas twin 35 amp fuse box (with places for spares) was fitted to millions of '50s cars. Without melting.

[polygonum]

I suspect it really was too expensive.

The ability of computers to be used as tools to design and model optical systems is phenomenal. Doing that "by hand" and building models/prototypes was a very much more expensive and slow process.

[tabbypurr]

so a joke and an obvious falsehood. I've run old Lucas electrics and they were fine, decades after they were made. Most things failed back when Lucas ruled, not just electrics.

There were lots of jokes about Ladas & Skodas too, they had equally little to do with reality.

Failures happen with every brand. Lucas had most failures because it had most bits installed. Thankfully cars are better engineered now.

NT

[tabbypurr]

Yup. Mine didn't melt because it wasn't connected :) Not a single fuse connected anywhere as far as I could tell.

NT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Standard Lucas wiring was one fuse for none switched accessories, and one for ignition controlled. Lights usually none.

Take one of the spare fuses and fit it between the two, and the ignition became live with no key. ;-)

[Chris Green]

I always assumed the 'no fuses for lights' was a safety thing, if that fuse went at night it would be dangerous. A short that extinguished one light and, probably, disintegrated a bit of wiring would be less dangerous.

[David]

I don't know.... my Triumph Herald had a single fuse in the whole vehicle. That was for the headlights.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'd be very surprised at that. Think Triumph used the same basic Lucas setup of two fuses, plus an additional one for the headlights. Referred to as top middle and bottom fuses.

[Weatherlawyer]

At what part of an explanation does humorous become serious?

[Weatherlawyer]

Because they were using Lucas lights that weren't working. In the good old day we had railways that were and bicycles for the rest of us if it got too dark to use the car.

Wasn't there some sort of restructuring of the wiring circuit design in the late 1960's. I recall trying to change the polarity of a dynamo but can't recall why or what on, nor how successful it was.

[Tim Lamb]

I remember that! Choice of rotting the bodywork or corroding the wiring loom?

[DerbyBorn]

It involved "flashing" one of the terminals. Never understood how it worked. Heard of it being done on a huge exciter on a massive motor - using a fork lift truck battery.

[Graeme]

In message , DerbyBorn writes

I remember doing that to a MKII Cortina, which was my first -ve earth car. Back then, cars didn't come with radios, and I wanted to install my +ve earth radio, so flashed the car to +ve earth, and removed the CARE NEGATIVE EARTH sticker from the engine bay. That sticker is still attached to one of my tool boxes today.

My '68 Traveller is still +ve earth, although flashing Minors is still common even now.

[damduck-egg]

Sounds like something you can be arrested for.

G.Harman