Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch | Technical matters | Back Room Forum

Mon 2 May 2016 13:18

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - edlithgow

Doing a lot of futile fiddling with the car at the moment, and I thought a remote starter switch would streamline my inefficiency.

Step 1 : Find an abandoned arcade game in the jungle, not so difficult in the jungle around here.

(I found a shot-down Soviet-made helicopter in the Cambodian jungle once, which would have been a great source of switches for my Best-40-Quid-I-Ever-Spent-Lada, but my penknife wasn't up to the job, plus I was a bit parenoid it might have been wired for bangs)

No such problemn in the Taiwan suburban jungle. OTOH there are hordes of F-ing mosquitos, and I'm wearing shorts. RUN AWAYYYY!.

Step 2: Go back with long trousers and sleeves, jungle boots, a hammer, and an electric tennis raquet. Hit console with hammer while waving raquet around head. Occaisionally the other way around when confused. Sweat gets in your eyes, and a hammer isn't actually much good for killing mosquitos.

Behind the surface plastic the plywood is eaten away by tiny horrible jungle creatures (as I am), so the console breaks up pretty easily. I just want some switches so I leave the motherboard and screen.

[url=www.servimg.com/view/18149521/174][img]i86.servimg.com/u/f86/18/14/95/21/th/jungle10.jpg[/img][/url]

Step 3 : Check switches for continuity with multimeter. The jungle isn't friendly to exposed switchgear so I'm expecting most of them to be bust. All the square ones I check are, but luckily, the BIG RED ROUND ONE shows continuity. Hooray.

[url=www.servimg.com/view/18149521/175][img]i86.servimg.com/u/f86/18/14/95/21/th/contin10.jpg[/img][/url]

Step 4: Put a couple of crock clips on the (rather wimpy) wires from the BIG RED ROUND ONE. I wish I'd cut these a bit longer, but I was being eaten at the time.

Step 5 : Test on car, connecting one crock clip to battery+, and the other to the starter solenoid terminal. WORKS!!

[url=www.servimg.com/view/18149521/176][img]i86.servimg.com/u/f86/18/14/95/21/th/in_car10.jpg[/img][/url]

Dunno for how long though. Might be worth soldering some heavier wire on, and maybe checking some more of those square switches in case any of them work.

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Mon 2 May 2016 13:23

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - Wackyracer

Life was soo much easier in the old days when you could just press the button on the remote solenoid. :)

I think Gunson (or whoever) used to make a remote engine start thing which was just a push to make switch in a case with croc leads coming from it for some ridiculous sum of money.

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Mon 2 May 2016 14:03

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - mss1tw

Am I the only one who wants to know why there are loads of arcade machines dumped in the jungle?!

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Mon 2 May 2016 14:09

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - gordonbennet

When cars were simpler, back in my kerbside cowboy days, apart from a dwell meter, timing light and a liberated from old scrap dashboard Lucas ammeter, one important bit of kit was the remote starter...press switch two leads ending in croc clips, one to the battery live one to the starter solenoid low tension, hey presto remote starter.

I love these threads, its like our own private hippy roving reporter doing a hey maaaan see this through a haze of wacky backy smoke, keep em up Edlithgow.

Edited by gordonbennet on 02/05/2016 at 14:10

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Tue 3 May 2016 00:31

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - edlithgow

When cars were simpler, back in my kerbside cowboy days, apart from a dwell meter, timing light and a liberated from old scrap dashboard Lucas ammeter, one important bit of kit was the remote starter...press switch two leads ending in croc clips, one to the battery live one to the starter solenoid low tension, hey presto remote starter.

I love these threads, its like our own private hippy roving reporter doing a hey maaaan see this through a haze of wacky backy smoke, keep em up Edlithgow.

Aw shucks. No ones called me a hippy in years. Probably not since the army.

Talking of purple haze, I'm thinking a smoke machine might give some clues as to what's wrong with my car, or at least tend to eliminate vacuum leaks from the list of mysteries.

Simplest might just be to use my motorcycle, with a bit of 2-stroke and or diesel in the fuel. Don't want to break it too though.

Could also do with a dwell meter, but there'll be few living on this island who've heard of them. Nor hippies neither.

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Mon 2 May 2016 14:44

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - edlithgow

Dunno. The rise of computer games? The tyranny of the smartphone? The fickleness of yoof?

The local river holds (or held) national heavy metal pollution records (and holding such a record in Taiwan is rather outstanding) because there were a lot of circuit-board metal recovery operations in its watershed.

They've clamped down on that quite a bit now though, so a bulky, obsolete, and/or broken arcade machine might be troublesome/unprofitable to get rid of.

And if you were on a crowded island with an arcade machine to get rid of and vehicular access to patches of jungle, where would you put it?

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Tue 3 May 2016 00:44

Any, AFAIK - Colourful Ethnic Starter Switch - edlithgow

When I lived in London, Hackney Marshes had a similar fly-tipping problem, though usually builders waste (which also happens here) rather than arcade machines.

I did once find a safe with its back blown out there. Didn't actually have a use for a safe with its back blown out, but I thought it was quite interesting in a Bob Hoskins, Lock Stock and Two Broken Barrels Lahndhan way.

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