The Morbidmobile Blog

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

I have thoughts of installing a sleek/minimal aeriel where the skull was at the front of the bonnet but not sure of the legalities.

Sadly bonnet mascots have been more or less outlawed, having a spike mounted on the bonnet would no doubt raise questions such as "Are you plying for trade?" by trying to impale your next victim/rear passenger.

I expect you're probably thinking along the lines of a shark-fin or similar but that could probably still disembowel a stray pedestrian if you hit them right.

On a more technical note, the centre of the roof would be the best bet. I'm assuming here the whole roof is steel? If not, there are other solutions but we can come back to that later if necessary - meanwhile the aerial on the bonnet would pick up all kinds of stray ignition and possibly injection noise (not if yours is B200E K-Jet, only L-Jet and i can't remember which yours is), maybe even alternator noise and absolutely kill any decent radio reception.

Going back to the amp etc, there was a small wiring harness that linked the radio to the amp, then the speakers would come from there. However, going on what Kay has posted i'd guess yours didn't have an amp but it would pay to check.

[TomSaintJames]

I have won folks! The hearse has choons!

First off I removed the drivers footwell dashboard trim, as Dave suggested, to confirm if there is, or isn't the factory amplifier. I had hoped, and suspected, not as this car seems to be very a base spec one. It was good news, a nice spacious cavity, minus amplifier! In fact it looked very tidy up under there, with all the metal parts looking nice and shiny.

Next, I was concerned about the lack of wiring and suspected there may be more to it than the couple of manly looking wires found in the radio recess/tray. This is what I found, I taped the groups up out of the way for clarity.


Two nice plugs with all the wire colours that should have been there, I suspect these would fit the standard radio? The top 4-way plug had all the wires for the rear speakers (which, it being a hearse don't exist!), I hope these are still present somewhere further back in the car as we will want a couple of speakers in the main living area of the motorhome-to-be.

These are the wires from the radio recess area, you can't quite see here I don't think, but the white/black and brown/red were very shonkily 'wedged' in the spade connections of the two wires for the cigarette lighter...! Not sure why, as the orange switched live, and both red/green permanent lives are present. So they came out.


The new head unit came with an ISO compatible loom/plug, and ideally I would have wired the cars electrics into a female ISO end, but not having one I just used bullet connectors, not quite so neat and tidy but i'm sure it'll suffice.


The head unit is the most modern and fancy one I have yet played with, it has all sorts of connection possibilities, DVD/Amplifier/Subwoofer/Video in /video out/microphone for handsfree/USB/steering wheel control inputs etc. One very useful feature is the USB extension cable, this way we can plug phones/MP3 players/flash drives or whatever into it,a nd I had an idea for where to route it - through the back of the tray below the radio.

So I drilled a hole in the back of the tray to route the cable through. The cable is long and flexible enough that you can pull it forward to the front o fthe tray to connect, but also puch it to the back out of site if required.




Next off I wired the head unit side of things to the male neds of the bullt connectors, handily both the constant and switched live already contained the correct bullet connectors, so that saved me a bit of time.

Unfortunately after plugging it all in, nothing happened! SO out came my handy little pen tool with a light bulb and earth clip, to see if I had live anywhere. The switched live was good, but the constant live was dead, so I put my investigation hat on.

For some time now the clock hasn;t worked, nor have the little lights at the end of the door cards. So I had a single bulb that fitted into the door card, from my box of fuses/bulbs - still no joy. Off comes the door card to inspect this light, as the wiring diagram suggests this is where the poermanent live comes from. I wiggled wires, cleaned contacts, removed and cleaned the door open switch, all to no avail. I did though find what the black double/twin wire was, it was an additional wire for the drivers side speaker! It didn't even go through the proper trunking between the bpdy and door, so removed that too (it was manky, joined twice with no insulation, just twisted, so I doubt it'd have been any good).


Next investigative attack was the fuses, when I played with the rear lights there were a couple of missing/broken fuses, so now that i'd found my box if fuses/spare builbs I inspected and replaced quite a few, half of them were completely the wrong rating too! This fixed the door open light, clock and so hopefully the permanent live for the radio too!


It was a challenge getting the radi ofascia plate in, I had to trim the lugs on the outside so it'd push in, and had to push quite hard to get it in, but the morning ended with a success, and it sounds quite good too! This head unit came with a handy remote, whic works nicely - so when we're lounging in the living area with a glass in hand and want some background classic or jazz or something, it can be doen at the press of a button

BINGO!


Added bonus of the clock working, it's gone from no clock, to having two! There is no radio, as there is no aerial, but we can cross that bridge later especially as there are so many other connections, we could even stream radio from a phone and play it through a bluetooth connection to the head unit. There is still the wiring present for a 'power' aerial too which is useful!

[griston64]

Welcome to Jazz club NICE

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[Laird Scooby]

Great news Tom! Your beast doesn't have rear passenger doors does it? That's where the rear speakers would have been.

I suggest you find a set of beefy speakers and install them somewhere in the back in a place that will be good whether you're driving or using it as an RV/camper.

As for your musical choice, not quite my cup of tea but it could have been worse if it was Goth related!

[TomSaintJames]

No rear doors Dave, a bit of a shame as it would have been a bonus. I notice that the later 940/960 hearses did have 4 doors, and perhaps a slightly longer wheelbase.

I plan to fully utilise the head units’ capabilities, the list is:

-Reversing camera above rear number plate (the headunit has a screen that you can view the camera feed on).
-CD multichanger installed somewhere near the rear, in the 'living area' to-be.
-Subwoofer somewhere behind the drivers/passenger seats
-There are 2 wires for rear speakers that run off of the head unit’s pre-amplifier, so will use these somewhere. Possibly on the underside of roof storage.
-There is a 'line out rear' to connect to an amplifier, to run further speakers off of, these will be the beefy ones
-There is a video out cable too, which we'll connect to a TV screen somewhere in the back, so we can watch DVD's through the head unit.

In other news, the OH and I did a 56.5 mile walking challenge yesterday (the Dorset Giant, but the marshals walk rather than main event), we've done quite a few of these now, from around 30 to 51 miles, in preparation for a 100 mile walk towards the end of May. We started at 8:30am but sadly we didn't finish this one, we got to 45.5 miles (at 20 past midnight!), but Steve's (the OH) knee was really bad, and he was risking long-term damage I suspect if he continued - so we dropped out. The wind was very very strong, on the hills you had to walk sideways into it! Also we got quite wet, although the scenery was lovely, it was very hard going, by far the most difficult walk we've done so far.

Anyway, I've done a little tinkering with the hears this morning, I’m very achy, creaky and a bit footsore so didn't do very much - will have to find some sat-down jobs today, might open a beer too for 'medicinal' purposes. My aim was to remove the PAS fluid reservoir and give a good clean, to remove the sludge that was coating the insides, however I couldn't get the two hoses off.

Fluid removed from reservoir, a rusty burgundy colour which is an improvement of the dark sludgy grey that it was!



Next, I put in a small amount of white spirit to clean the reservoir, I did this twice as it was coming out black!



I left it for 10 mins whilst I had a look at the spark plugs in the hope that most of th white spirit inside would evaporate, then refilled with PAS. There's a small amount of froth on the top of the new PAS after doing a couple of lock-to-lock exercises to make sure the level was correct, so there must be a little bit of white spirit still in there, I’ll have to do another change soon, but it may even help to clean out the pipes and the rest of the system.

I ordered a 21mm spark plug tool, as the biggest I had was 16mm. The spark plugs mostly looked like this. Does all look well to those in the know? Or would it benefit from a new set? My gapping tool is at the other house, so didn’t measure the gap - it looks quite small, but I don’t really know about these things. IIRC they are NKG B6ES plugs.

[TomSaintJames]

Oh and another thing! I noticed a line of oil that appears to be coming out of the filler cap, so I had a look for the flame trap box thing, I could see it but buggered if I could figure out how to remove it! I want to remove and clean the inlet manifold and MAF, so will do both at some point. Hopefully this will help with the poor cold running, starting seems to be fine now, but until it warms up a little it will occasionally stall when you're idling in D or R.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

-Reversing camera above rear number plate (the headunit has a screen that you can view the camera feed on).
-CD multichanger installed somewhere near the rear, in the 'living area' to-be.
-Subwoofer somewhere behind the drivers/passenger seats
-There are 2 wires for rear speakers that run off of the head unit’s pre-amplifier, so will use these somewhere. Possibly on the underside of roof storage.
-There is a 'line out rear' to connect to an amplifier, to run further speakers off of, these will be the beefy ones
-There is a video out cable too, which we'll connect to a TV screen somewhere in the back, so we can watch DVD's through the head unit.

Fluid removed from reservoir, a rusty burgundy colour which is an improvement of the dark sludgy grey that it was!



Next, I put in a small amount of white spirit to clean the reservoir, I did this twice as it was coming out black!



I left it for 10 mins whilst I had a look at the spark plugs in the hope that most of th white spirit inside would evaporate, then refilled with PAS. There's a small amount of froth on the top of the new PAS after doing a couple of lock-to-lock exercises to make sure the level was correct, so there must be a little bit of white spirit still in there, I’ll have to do another change soon, but it may even help to clean out the pipes and the rest of the system.

I ordered a 21mm spark plug tool, as the biggest I had was 16mm. The spark plugs mostly looked like this. Does all look well to those in the know? Or would it benefit from a new set? My gapping tool is at the other house, so didn’t measure the gap - it looks quite small, but I don’t really know about these things. IIRC they are NKG B6ES plugs.

I was going to fit my reversing camera above the number plate and then i thought about it. Not a good idea! There will be a monumental shock to the camera every time you shut the tailgate - not good for its life expectancy! Instead i'm going to mount it at the back end of the headlining where it can look out through the top of the tailgate glass and the only vibration it may get is from that are - no shocks of the tailgate being shut! Have a look at the back end your headlining area Tom and see if you can find somewhere suitable to mount the camera there, will be much safer in terms of no shocks from the tailgate shutting and safer from light-fingered camera hunters!

As for your head unit outputs, if you have pre-amp out as well as line-out, you're quite lucky. While both are line level, you will find that the pre-amp output is "flat" - in other words no tone controls are applied to it. The line-out on the other hand has the tone controls applied to it, whether that's by a digital graphic equaliser in the unit or the old fashioned treble and bass controls.

Bear in mind both these outputs are line-level so will need an amplifier to use them. There should also be speaker level output wires from the head unit as well so if you don't want the extra expense of amplifiers and/or don't have the space for them, you can still run rear speakers.

Something you will need to watch out for, most of the cabling supplied with the head unit will be for "normal" cars so the CD changer and camera cables may not reach where you want them to. If you mount the camera where i've suggested, you should be ok though but running the cable into the tailgate etc might be just too far for it.

Not sure i would have added white spirit to the PAS reservoir without removing it first! It's a solvent but leaves an oily deposit, not good! Meths would have been better but there's no real need, ATF has a detergent quality of its own so i'd suggest you get a big syringe (think you already have?) and do weekly fluid extractions from the reservoir until the fluid remains clean and clear - takes a few weeks but once done, just do one fluid extraction every 6-12 months depending how clean it is.
You might get away with it and i hope you do but i'd still do a weekly fluid extraction until it's clean and clear.

Spark plugs look good, gap should be 0.65-0.70mm, looks as if it's somewhere fairly near that from the curve on the earth electrode.

Sounds as if you need to give the whole PCV breather system a good clean again. Cans of carb cleaner at the ready i hope!

[TomSaintJames]

Morning all,

Well we have done our first camping experience in the hearse! We completed a 51 mile challenge walk over the lovely Shropshire hills on Saturday, we started at 9 in the morning and finished at 4:05 Sunday morning. Not a great time, but the terrain was more challenging than previous 50 milers that we've done and we were tired at the start of the walk!

I did a pre-fettle of the hearse before we went, I knew it wasn't water tight, but there had been some serious water ingress over the last couple of weeks (it was dripping/running out of the headlining!) meaning that the foamy under-carpet insulation behind the passenger front seat was waterlogged, and the metal under here has the beginnings of some rust (hopefully just surface). The culprit was the roof rails, which have been previously bodged it seems, the middle two supports that bolt onto the roof were quite loose, movable by hand with visible sapce between them and the roof with some, what look slike painted-over rust bubbling in varying stages. The screws seem to do nothing and there is evidence of previous sealant.





So stuff that, says I. Waterproof (even sets in wet conditions and under water!) black silicone sealant was bought, I chose this stuff as it was quite wet down here on Friday. Compressed air for blowing out as much water from under the roof rails as possible before sealing them up, quite a lot came out! Also some moss and other bits of dirt etc.



Now i'm no good at sealing/beading or whatever it's called, previous bathroom efforts have taught me this, but I tried to be tidy. Not that it really matters as it's difficult to see due to the height of the vehicle, hopefully this'll stop water ingress for now.



What really needs to happen is to take all the roof rails off, sand the roof back, remove any rust, re-paint and re-affix the roof rails with better fixings. The same needs to be done inside too, have the roof lining out to inspect the underside of the roof, and have the floor and all the carpets up to see what the floor is like, i'm not looking forward to that as there will be rust...

In other news it was 160 odd miles from us to where we started our walk, so I hoped it'd do it on one tank, but about halfway home the needle was well into the red, so we filled up. Only 48.39L went in, IIRC it's a 60L tank so that proves the inaccuraacy of the fuel gauge!

48.39L = 10.75 gallons so with 263 miles done, that's 24.45 MPG.

That's not as bad as I feared but also worse than I'd hoped! I was a bit heavy footed on the way up to Shropshire, so hopefully the next tank will be better. With all this use recently, she is nicer to drive and holds 70 easier. It's just the hills! One very noticeable issue on the motorway, or really at speeds above 55mph is the amount of vibration! Both through the steering wheel and throught the seat, i'm thinking this is probably a wheel balancing issue, but also maybe drivetrain vibrations? We still haven't sorted the prop bearing/gearbox output seal so that's grinding away noisily, although it was less noticable with all the bedding on the rear floor acting as accidental noise insulation.

Next on the to-do list is the final (for now) PAS fluid transfusion, get the exhaust blow-free, get the prop bearing sorted and have all the wheels balanced. But it is ever improving!

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

One very noticeable issue on the motorway, or really at speeds above 55mph is the amount of vibration! Both through the steering wheel and throught the seat, i'm thinking this is probably a wheel balancing issue, but also maybe drivetrain vibrations?

Good work on sealing the roof rails Tom - you missed your vocation as a silicone sealant applier! Seriously, you've done a pretty neat job.

It does sound very much like you have wheel balance problems there, the arm between the lower control arm and the body fixes on just underneath where your hoofs are so if the wheel is vibrating due to being out of balance, some (not all because of the various bushes) will transmit into the floor in that area. The seat is bolted onto the same section of floorpan - you see where i'm going with this! Likewise because the control arm is connected to the rack, vibration will travel along it and up the steering column where the wheel will amplify it.

As for the economy, hills and so on, you've got a big heavy car made heavier and less aerodynamic by the hearse conversion and it has the smallest engine of the range. That's a recipe for poorer fuel economy and lack of get up and go up the hills.

If memory serves you have the AW-70 box in it with the O/D (Overdrive) lock out button on the side of the gear lever, press this button and it will drop out of O/D, illuminate an orange arrow on the dash and get you up hills easier. Press it again to bring O/D back in - it's also handy for overtaking when you don't want to use kickdown but need a bit more than just squeezing the loud pedal gives you.
Oddly this might even improve your economy if used wisely as the engine won't be labouring so hard to make the car do what you need it to do.

[TomSaintJames]

Thanks Dave, I naturally chose thetidiest one to photograph...

At the moment the hearse mostly does just local trips, of less than 40 mph so the vibration isn;t usually an issue. As soon as you get upto to 60/70 though it's there. It'll need to get done at some point, it's on the list! It's a big list...

It is indeed the AW70 and is usually reluctant to disengage the o/d unless your foot is on the floor at below just above 60mph, so i've ofund the lock-out button very useful for hills. It's not the smoothest downchange though! Autobox fluid change also on the list.

In terms of economy, the second measured tank came out at 25.21 mpg! It's on the up, that's almost a whole extra mpg than the previous tank.

In other news we have been having a proper go at the garden over the lovely sunny bank holiday. It;s mostly lawn, which was uneven, with holes and mounds with all sorts of crap hiding in the grass (old electric wire ducts, concrete blocks, bricks, shoes?! random bots of plastic etc) so we've rotavated the lot and levelled it. I'm also building a double shed, one part as a log store and the other as a generic garden shed. We';re going to gove it a green roof and grow some climers up it to try and make it blend in with the garden. I'm quite enjoying building it, once the design was 'negotiated' with the other half!