Going to Work & Speedo Progress-ish.

You remember I said it was taxed from the 1^st Feb? Well in the wee small hours of that day my Wife woke me up to say there had been a power cut – what she actually said was “uh – s’bin … pwer cu’ ……. ‘laams not on …… se’ c lock ……. (snore) & handed me her watch – a ladies one with tiny tiny hands. So I , being equally ½ awake, re-set the clock & the alarm & went instantly back to sleep.

 

The next thing I knew was Daughter-the-younger coming in the bedroom to use the shower – which meant I was 20 minutes late having mis-read the tiny tiny watch hands & set the alarm to the wrong time. This meant I would miss my car share, it was dry so I resolved to take the Fury – HURRAH! It went well after its winter hibernation.

 

I e-mailed 12 O’clock Labs (who made the “SpeedDRD” speedo calibrator) & got an e-mail the same day saying I probably needed a “4.7 K ohm pull up resistor” which of course meant nothing to me, but after some googling & another e-mail to confirm what I’d discovered, I was stood in Maplins purchasing a resistor for the princely sum of 49p. I took the dash out (again), poked the ends of said resistor up the bullet connectors & joy of joys the speedo responded to the first test signal. But what to do? I couldn’t insulate the wires of the resistor & just wiring it between the bullet connectors would result in the resistor wires fatiguing off in no time.

 

I ordered a four way connector & fitted the resistor & wires to that so everything is all held rigid which neatly solves the problem & after a quick test, everything seemed to be still working. Until that is I started the car - the speedo went MAD flicking about all over the shop (sigh). So the dash is back out of the car & I made a video to show the guy at 12oclock labs what's happening. To their credit I got an answer back on the Saturday, they'd seen the video & think it's picking up interferanve on the input side & possibly the input signal is out of range for the unit, Either way they seem to think it's an easy fix. If it is, then I just need to take the car out & calibrate the SpeedDRD & everything on the car should work for the first time in quite a while.