Welcome to my digital home! There are lots of articles you might find helpful buried in this site on topics such as modifying an Alfa Romeo 159, rebuilding a Lotus 7 (Robin Hood 2B), not to mention a ton of stuff on technology in general. It’s all here somewhere, so use the search function or navigate using the menu structure. if you want to talk, reach out via the contact function, I usually do answer!
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GeneralWell, despite wanting to spend thousands of pounds on the perfect setup, I decided I had to transition away from Vinyl completely first and get used to the fully digital interfaces. So, in my usual, straight out of left field way, I bought myself an M-Audio Xponent and some new speakers 🙂
The Xponent is an awesome tool, it is the perfect transition medium for anyone thinking of moving into digital and is very well featured. Its a little on the plastic side, and the faders feel like they are fisher price, but it works like a dream and is portable enough to follow me around the country!
I now have two primary setups, home & away.
Home is the Xponent, married to my main desktop feeding a pair of KRK RP6G2 Active Studio Monitors, and it sounds awesome!
Away is the Xponent. married to my X200s Laptop & feeding a pair of M-Audio AV20 portable studio monitors, although it lacks base, it has punch, power and clarity and lets face it, we don’t want to piss off the neighbours in the hotel now do we 🙂
I still suffer from the age old problem of not actually having time to use this lot, but the away kit helps with that problem a fair bit, so once I get fully transitioned, expect a flurry of new mixes on the way!Related Images: [...]
Alfa 159After the successful modification made to the gearbox cooling system https://jabawoki.com/2016/01/27/alfa-159-gearbox-cooler-modification/ I found that, while the cooling was perfect while the car was moving over 30mph, there was an issue at lower speed.
On more than one occasion I found that if I sat in traffic, slowly edging forwards towards a busy roundabout, once I got to the roundabout and accelerated away, I would have a shift flair for the first gear change. This would disappear by the second change so was clearly a cooling issue where the lack of airflow meant that the gearbox temps would rise in traffic until you had airflow again.
The fix is/was simple. I just needed a thermostatically controlled fan adding to the radiator so that I could generate airflow at low speeds.
After doing some basic research I found a really nice 5″ fan from SPAL, available from Merlin Motorsport.
This unit was very high power and perfect for the job but I needed a thermostatic control solution as well. Merlin had the ideal solution as well, a Davis Craig Thermostatic Adjustable Fan Controller.
This fan controller was ideal as it had a separate external temp sensor that was fitted into the radiator itself which meant I did not have to cut into the oil lines to make the mod.
Fitting required removal of the bumper as usual, but that gave me an opportunity to fix a crack that was temporarily repaired previously.
Adding the fan was very easy as it came with its own mount kit that essentially used special plastic ties that passed through the fins of the radiator and clamped it securely to the rear of the unit.
Fitting the fan controller was a little more tricky but only due to the very short wire run on the temperature sender which meant it had to be within two feet of the fan. Fortunately it nestled perfectly between the ECU and the headlight!
The unit can control two fans but I am only using it in single mode. It has an adjustable temp trigger so mine is set to 75C which is a reasonable point to start testing from. The added digital temperature display is also quite useful for diagnostics!
I will have to see how it pans out but I am pretty confident that this will sort the last pesky shift flairs for good!
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3D / Alfa 159So, many of you who read my previous post on the TEVO Black Widow 3D printer might have thought, oh hes bought another toy. Well, while that is mostly true I had an actual reason for getting one.
— Download the free model and print your own —
I have long been a modifier of my toys, and the Alfa 159 I drive takes the brunt of my desire to modify and improve. To that end there is often a gap between my imagination and my ability to manufacture, that has long eluded me. Until 3D printing became a thing.
So here’s the issue. The Alfa 159 halogen headlights suck. Even with the brightest bulbs available in they still suck, So the best option is/was to fit aftermarket HID’s. Until this year that was all well and good and the car would pass its annual MOT with aftermarket HID’s fitted, however this year it looks like the rules are changing and if it has after-market HID’s fitted it will fail 🙁
So, the options were, fit Halogens back in or go with the latest style high power LED bulbs. The main issue with the latest LED Bulbs is they get super-hot and need a big cooling assembly on them which make them too long for the headlight. So to use them you have to leave the dust caps off the back of the headlight which is less than ideal as it allows the moisture and dirt to get in and cloud up the lights.
I have been trialing a few different LED’s and all of them are far too long. If you look at the image below you can see just how far this particular LED protrudes, and this is one of the shorter ones!
This LED can be purchased from ebay for £19.99 and I have been using them in my main bean for a while now. I am quite happy with them as main beam lights but only trialing them on driving lights at the minute. They do require a small amount of the plastic surround shaving off to fit in the driving light position though. just 1mm from each side as they are a bit fat, but its a 2 second job with a knife and doesn’t harm them.
Once they are installed though, as you can see there is no way the stock dust cover goes back on! So the solution is simple. I need a deeper dust cover that can accommodate a longer bulb. Problem is, they don’t exist, and to have one made would be prohibitively expensive. Until you add a mad Englishman who subscribes to the old ways of “man in shed will make stuff” but likes to embrace modern manufacturing techniques, on a budget.
The result, well that would be “my first thing” available for any 159’er who wants one to download and print for free (yes they fit a Brera and a Spider too) 🙂 You’re welcome.
All in all this took me a weekend to do, and includes the time it took me to source a decent CAD tool, learn it and figure out how to transpose the original shapes into CAD. It took 19 drafts, 4 prototype prints and at least 5 complete “start again from scratch” moments!!
All in all I’m pretty happy with it, and the main thing is it actually works. I will reprint these at some stage in ABS plastic as my printer is only setup for PLA at the minute which by its nature is biodegradable and will not last too long in the engine bay. I may yet refine the shape as I go to take off some of the sharper edges but it’s a perfectly functional solution to a problem that was going to remain otherwise unsolved.
I have many plans for future parts that I will be designing so this is just the start 🙂
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GeneralWell, its been a while, but after nearly a full year of ownership I thought I would share my thoughts……..
I bought a pair of Rokit RP6G2 Limited Edition (Yellow) Speakers nearly a year ago now and after a lot of use I can confirm they are truly an awesome sounding set of speakers. The honesty of the reproduction is not sacrificed to provide a “decent” sound from multiple digital sources. In fact, they sound just as good playing an Mp3 encoded at 192Kbps as they do outputting a raw track from Ableton, yet do not loose the accuracy or quality required to pick out the levels and sound scape….. truly an accomplishment.
The acoustics of your room is of course a variable…. I had them initially in a small room and that increased the low frequency response ten fold, vs now, when I have them in a much larger room, where the bass is sacrificed somewhat, but not to the extent that its a problem I might add. If money was no object (and they are on my Christmas list), the icing on the cake for these speakers is clearly a KRK 10S and the acclaimed ERGO system. The addition of these items would make the overall sound from this configuration truly something to be reckoned with.
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InfoSecOpen post to see coverage:
Computer Fraud and Security – February 2009 – Ethics & Hacking
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Alfa 159Once the planning was complete and I had the Amp prepared for some serious load, it was over to the car for a complete strip of the boot and sound proofing. The approach taken was to utilise a number of different sound proofing materials once I stripped the car back to the shell.
To start with , a Bitumen material was used to create a panel deadening effect to eliminate rattles and vibrations. This was applied to all panels in as much quantity as was viable. The second stage was to utilise a 12mm thick high density foam to act as a sound proofing material. This was used to create a sound proof shell in the boot to stop the low frequencies going anywhere but into the cabin, as such, this material was not used on the parcel shelf, where the bitumen product was, but was utilised on every other surface that was externally facing. Where it was just not possible to utilise the thick 12mm foam, I made use of a 7mm medium density foam that was more pliable and easier to work with.
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GeneralBack in 2008 I wrote an article on an idea for a new deck stand. After a few years of not needing one as I migrated to a midi based solution that fitted on my desk, I added a few more bits of kit and ran out of space. So about mid 2012, I ended up with 3 days free in my schedule with no family or work and decided to build a new platform. I designed a fresh platform from scratch but used the same MDF sheet approach to keep costs down.
The plans are here: (visio)
The build process ended up requiring me to invest in far more tools than I actually owned, so it cost way more than anticipated, but it was worth it. The build process can be viewed below:
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RH2B Build DiaryWhen I collected the car and drove it a few times in the winter was incredibly loud, like TO LOUD, and I like loud! So Something wasn’t quite right with the exhaust, and it needed to be sorted.
I removed the exhaust and bought some acouosti-mat sound deadening material to repack the exhaust only to discover it was not repack-able. Fortunately, a local fabricator said he would cut it open, repack and weld it back up for me, so that averted the crisis!
All that remained of the original packing material.
To say it needed doing was an understatement, it was completely empty of packing so was essentially a straight pipe with an echo chamber!
Once the fabricator sorted the packing for me, I wrapped it in exhaust wrap, reinstalled the heat shield and put it back on the car. The sound was much more palatable. Sporty, throaty but not deafening!
Much better!
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LiveMixeshttps://jabawoki.com/wp-content/mp3/Jabs_14092001_OldSkool_House.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Alfa 159 / ElectronicsWell, I continue to work on this and now have a beta unit in my car on a long term test. It is pretty rough around the edges and has one major(ish) issue that I am working to resolve, but its a good starting point to work from.
So what I have now looks a bit like this:
(click to enlarge)
Its still a very simple design that uses as few components as I can, but as a result it has some issues:
As the the LEDs are quite hungry (50Ma each) the ATMega328 & the voltage regulator has to work hard to feed them.
The above point causes a small delay in start-up of the unit of around 200-300ms.
This delay is a problem as the unit is powered by the feed to the brake light, when the brake is pressed, so in essence it adds a small delay between the stop/tail lights of the car illuminating and the high level brake light. Long term this is unacceptable, but for now its a work in progress so I can live with it.
The first generation PCB was designed to fit into the dust cover of the brake light, but after I attached the ribbon cables for the LED’s it didn’t fit so is now wedged under the parcel shelf for now. This gives me easy access form the boot to change the unit as I progress the design to remove the delay and make it instant. Here is the mock-up of the PCB using matrix board (left to right we have the finished design, the component layer, the jumper cable layer on the front, and the soldered join layer on the back):
And the finished article looked like this:
In the end I decided to opt to hot glue the LED’s into the reflector and wire them back via a ribbon cable to allow me more flexibility on changing the circuits easily:
Long term I intend to make a unit that can replace the original light bar, so the LEDs will be mounted direct to a PCB that will be installed into the light bar in some way, or easily attached to the back of the reflector housing, not sure which yet.
I am working on a number of new designs at the minute that remove the delay and am getting some help from a true expert in the field of automotive electronics who actually designed stuff that is used in the Mclaren MP4-12C.
The current V3 unit that is in the car looks like this when operated:
You can download all of the project files (sketch, layout & schematic) from the downloads section.
Watch this space for V4 of the unit.
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