General Seat Panda Terra

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General Seat Panda Terra

The patio is wood, I drew the lines on in felt tip to give the photo some perspective.
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Fiat in their wisdom seem to use twice as many wires/fuses as necessary.
Manage to make a very basic system complicated.
Have lousy wiring diagrams that miss out some sections completely.
Change colour of wiring to diagram
Change colour of wire halfway along its route.
Think that the abbrieviation for orage is 'C'; green is 'V' etc etc
And use very poor quality components.
But all of this is very italian.
Fantastic engines and design surrounded by budget pap.
The feelgood/grin factor however are fairly high;)
 
Fiat in their wisdom seem to use twice as many wires/fuses as necessary.
Manage to make a very basic system complicated.
Have lousy wiring diagrams that miss out some sections completely.
Change colour of wiring to diagram
Change colour of wire halfway along its route.
Think that the abbrieviation for orage is 'C'; green is 'V' etc etc
And use very poor quality components.
But all of this is very italian.
Fantastic engines and design surrounded by budget pap.
The feelgood/grin factor however are fairly high;)

I feel your pain, I used to own a Lada, it's wiring diagram letters didn't correspond directly to colours either. However, it was exacerbated further by the use of the cyrillic alphabet, how exactly does one even begin to pronounce 'Ж' or 'Д' for example?!
 
Sometimes work and having a daughter who wants a 'Celeb Crib' or something like that interferes with the calm pace of life.
Owning a Panda bodyshell as part of a self assembly kit doesn't help much either.
Electrically everything is working properly except for the wiper. That is a long story on its own which I shall relate later in the future when I think it is funny. It's a bit of a trigger at the moment.
Hey ho. Let's do something else to take our mind away from wiring, fuses and reculsetrant relays.





I thought it was about time I swopped the rear axles. It was a warm evening and............... Well how long can it take anyway.

It was all going so well. Everything undid (even the brake lines) to make it easier I dropped the rear spring shackles. And that went well.

Did you know that 4x4 axles don't fit the same way as normal MK1 jobbies.
I was hoping they would use the same 'U' bolts and plates; but no they use a different top plate (which I don't have) and use individual bolts (which I don't have) to sandwich the rear springs.
Fortunately I had some 10mm plate and cut out and drilled replacements. It was at this point that I realised that I didn't have long enough 12mm bolts. I couldn't move the car, it was dark and.......... Listen..... Now its raining.
Fantastic.
 
hmm, that is a bit of a pain.. so you are taking out all the 4x4 bits?

i'd stick with the 4x4 leaf springs.. the ride in Talon compared to the marbella is much better due to having more leafs.
the suspension on the back does bottom out easy on the marbella... that or our roads this way are just that bad...
 
The ride may be more comfortable, but the power transfered to the rear wheels will twist this single leaf when accelerating or heavy offroad,the whole axle will go forward and backward more than it should,tires may rub...etc...,
 
OK it's 'Fess-up' time.
So that wiper.............

The reason that it all went quiet on that from was through complete embarrassment.

Over the course of the build I have been helped and supported to a large degree by our mate 'Pandasport'
He does exist and isn't just a legend. If anyone knows more about Pandas than him it must be the Italian bloke in the factory who could always get them to work whatever bits they had managed to build them out of that day..!

Despite my stupidity, daft questions and inborn incompetance, P'sport has patiently listened and presumably my naive enthusiasm has been enough for him to continue to help.

However; there is one thing that I know he hates......... Stupid people who break things; get another one, and break that as well because they haven't learnt anything in the meantime.
So; taking pity on me over my wiper dilema he PM'd me and offered me a working wiper motor, just removed and known to be good.
Eagerly I dashed over to his place, snatched the motor out of his hands, and raced home to complete the obvious success story...

Err no....... Within about 10 minutes of getting home I had managed to fry the electrics in the motor and it has taken a fortnight for me to pluck up the nerve to go and confess to him.
Well we all know now.
I have also learnt the hard way that there are 2 and possibly three different types of wiper motor fitted over the production period.
The early ones has an intermitent delay relay fitted and the motor self parked every one sweep. So the delay gave it a pop and it wiped and parked.
Later models had all the clever delay stuff build into the motor itself. once it got a signal it kept going and going (and going) and used a regular switching relay to give a jab of 'Earth' contact to signal the motor to stop and park (I fried two of these before I found this out)
There seems to be a very late motor that only had two wires going to it but I haven't found out much about them yet.
In their wisdom the only diagram Fiat provided to all the manuals was for the early intermitent delay unit. There lies the problem.

I have another plan now........... It's very secret......... It will work and no bets on how many more wiper motors I can get through.
 
Progress; The 4x4 axle is on.
I do have some 4x4 springs en-route but I'm pleased that the little car is back on wheels.
I have re-piped and re-built the rear brakes. The rear flexi was a bit short but for the time being I have made a bracket and also made the brake pipes long so it all works. I shall alter everything when I get a proper 4x4 flexi.



My temporary axle plates are OK. It will be interesting to find what the real ones look like.



And the wiring is coming together. I have sort of started over, based on the steep learning curve of the last few days.

This was my chair for four hours this afternoon



I purloined a complete loom which I have blended into the repositioned fuse box etc. I had to pretty much give up on trying to follow the correct wiring colours as there don't seem to be any. I have bits of about 4 wiring looms now and they all have different colours.!!

I'm hoping to get a chance to get the 'final' loom in place and hooked up to a battery sometime over the next few days.....

It's a busy time and I have (fingers crossed) a very important announcment to make on Tuesday..............................
 
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Progress; The 4x4 axle is on.
I do have some 4x4 springs en-route but I'm pleased that the little car is back on wheels.
I have re-piped and re-built the rear brakes. The rear flexi was a bit short but for the time being I have made a bracket and also made the brake pipes long so it all works. I shall alter everything when I get a proper 4x4 flexi.



My temporary axle plates are OK. It will be interesting to find what the real ones look like.



And the wiring is coming together. I have sort of started over, based on the steep learning curve of the last few days.

This was my chair for four hours this afternoon



I purloined a complete loom which I have blended into the repositioned fuse box etc. I had to pretty much give up on trying to follow the correct wiring colours as there don't seem to be any. I have bits of about 4 wiring looms now and they all have different colours.!!

I'm hoping to get a chance to get the 'final' loom in place and hooked up to a battery sometime over the next few days.....

It's a busy time and I have (fingers crossed) a very important announcment to make on Tuesday..............................

Wow this is some fantastic progress, I am SOOOO interested in seeing how this car is going to look/run. Can you post a video to youtube when it is done of it running etc?? And whats the announcement? I cant wait till tuesday ;)
 
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