But first things first, our
traditional Poasjrit (or Easter Tour in proper English) on Easter Monday. Was
again a lovely drive through our lovely three countries area
(Germany/Netherlands/Belgium). Sadly I forgot to stop more often to take some
more pictures, or it was just too crowded to do so …
And the car behaved rather well,
though she thought it a good idea to scare me a bit! Before setting of I had
checked all fluid levels and the coolant level was still spot on. But after
entering the town of Valkenburg a/d Geul (with well over 150 kilometres
covered) an ominous red light suddenly appeared in the dashboard’s instrument
cluster. The low coolant light to be precise. And of course it appeared just
when I hit stationary traffic, and directly after I hit a speed bump. First
thought (wishful thinking) was that the small spade connector on the header
tank had come off. At least while sitting in the traffic jam the temperature
remained rock steady. And after a few minutes the low coolant warning light
switched itself off again. And the temperature gauge was still refusing to
move. Looks like a glitch I had almost forgotten about and which is usually
caused by (slight) corrosion on the spade connector of the coolant level sender
in combination with sudden pressure changes in the coolant system. Something to
keep an eye on!
And the old GPS unit decided to
remind me of the fact that it really isn’t up to it anymore. Which brings me
back to this post’s title! Earlier in the month I started in earnest with the
preparations for this year’s 10 Countries Run; designing, fabricating and
fitting a mount for the new GPS device (TomTom Rider 550), which I purchased
earlier in the year. The original plan was to fabricate a simple plate to which
the mount could be bolted and which could be strapped to the centre ventilation
grilles using cables ties.
With a centre grill retrieved
from my spares hoard, I cleaned,
measured and carefully inspected it. After which I thought it a good idea to
add some more cable ties for peace of mind and to keep it secure in its position.
But also to stabilize the rather flimsy mounting of the ventilation grills.
And that’s where it all went
wrong 😋 With the help of AutoCAD and machining software (from Schaeffer AG)
the simple plate got ever more complex. But in the end a lot of the cable ties
were ditched in favour of a fully machined two layered design with two
rectangular recesses at the back. These should allow the mounts to fit nicely
over the protruding ventilation grills, while resting against the grill’s
surround. And thus preventing the mount from moving across the grills. And only
two sturdy cable ties (hidden from view) remain to mount it to the centre
grills:
With the design ready it was time
to have the two files loaded in the milling machine. And after milling and powder
coating this is how the two parts look like in real life:
But before screwing the mount
together there was a first trial fit of the “positioning” plate. Glad that one
fitted perfectly, though it is a pretty tight fit. Maybe next time I should calculate
in slightly more tolerance for the powder coating:
Also the original TomTom
mount/loader fits perfectly to the front part of the mounting plate:
And the final test was assembling
all parts and placing them on the centre grill I have used as a template so
far. As you can see again a perfect fit:
Remains fitting the
mounts to my two road going cars. And that includes securing the flimsy mount of the
grills to the dashboard moulding, thus preventing them from falling out of the
dashboard while driving over the not always very smooth tarmac around the area!
And also finding a correct electrical feed for the loader. But that will take
some time because the dashboards of both cars need to be removed for that, and
not really looking forward to that! To be continued ...
