Page Seventy - A Nice Pair of Hooters

 

Hooters, the Brits call car horns hooters…

Sorry, but it’s such an easy straight line, I must take it.  I want to say it’s the last of the juvenile humor, but it isn’t.  And I’m not proud of it.  I also won’t stop.

I added the Lucas 9H Windtone Instruction Manual to the More Stuff column on the right.  It has some good info for maintaining and adjusting your hooters, see? here we go...

Rootes used two brands of hooters, er, horns, Lucas 9H Windtones, at least for Series IV and V (as far as I know) and for the early models (as someone said on the forums), Clear Hooters F725T Twin Alpine horns (I know it’s model F725 per the Series V Workshop manual, the “T Twin Alpine” part comes from the Clear Hooter ad – see below).

Clear Hooters model F725

Clear Hooters ad showing the F725A Twin Alpine hooter

Alphie clearly should have a nice set of hooters… sorry, there will be more.

I have a set of Lucas and a set of Clear Hooters, neither of which worked when I jolted them with 12 volts, so I performed a postmortem.

(Pic at the top of this post - A General Motors Delco Remy unit was in one of the boxes (or boot, I don't remember) that came with Alphie so it made the photo too.)

Autopsy photo of a Lucas hooter

Lucas hooter after cleaning.
It looks like it should work, but it doesn't

How They Work

Lucas Windtones

When you smash the horn button in a panic, you send electricity to a small electromagnet that pulls against a plunger connected to a diaphragm, pulling it towards the magnet.

The plunger has a “step” that pushes open a set of contact breakers much like the points contact breaker in the distributor.  (See the pics.)  When the contact opens, it deenergizes the magnet, and the diaphragm springs back to its original position.  This process happens many times a second, and the movement vibrates the diaphragm, creating sound.

The low tone diaphragm is slightly thicker than the high tone diaphragm, hence the different tones.  The Lucas horns have a large adjusting screw in the center of the case that lengthens or shortens the diaphragm’s movement giving some further adjustment or tuning of the tone.

The little setscrew near one of the terminals on the outside of the horn would seem to be an adjustment as well, but it isn’t.  The screw pushes against one side of the contact plate to prevent it from bending and permanently closing the contacts over time.  It’s a factory setting, so don’t mess with it.

The internals of a Lucas hooter

Close up of the Lucas breaker/contact point

The set-screw on the outside only adjusts this post,
which only prevents the breaker point bracket from
bending - it doesn't adjust the sound.

Clear Hooters F725(T Twin Alpine)

The Clear Hooters work on the same principle, but the mechanism is different.  The Clear Hooter uses two electromagnets that pull on a metal disc attached to the diaphragm.  The disc has a small plunger at its center, which pushes a set of contacts (like the Lucas),breaking the circuit when the disc reaches the magnets.  When the circuit breaks, the magnets deenergize and the diaphragm springs back, creating vibration and thus the sound.

The breather hole allows the diaphragm to move
 but also allows water in with a good soaking

Unlike the Lucas horn, the adjusting screw on the outside of the Clear Hooter case tightens and loosens a spring which changes how often the contacts break in a second.  So, unlike the Lucas horn, the adjustment screw allows you to tweak your Hooters, I apologize, but there’s more.  

The guts of a Clear Hooters, a bit more robust than the Lucases
but still suseptible to too much water.

Lucas

The high tone Lucas was rusted so with a good cleaning, it probably would work.  The low tone one though had a broken connection between the magnet coil and the contact breakers, meaning the contacts would not open and the diaphragm would not vibrate.

Here's why on of the Lucases doesn't work.
I tried fixing it but bodged the job badly.
(Solder doesn't stick, in case you were wondering.)

After a good cleaning, one of the Lucases kinda worked; it clicks and buzzes, a little.

Clear Hooters

The Clear Hooters were much more rusted, and the autopsy showed that the diaphragm had holes rusted through it, so it would have sounded sick and weak if it worked at all.  The other mechanisms looked to be in decent nick, however.

Cleaned but the rust throughs on the diaphram
means this hooter hoots no more.

Even with mixing parts from the high and low Clear Hooters, I couldn't get either to make more than a click...

The Solution

I needed more Hooters, never enough, and again, my apologies.  I found some more Clear Hooters on eBay.

Straight out of the box, I hit them with 12 volts and a flimsy, buzzy “meeep”.  I hoped they would make me jump, but now I have two more Hooters to play with – will it ever end?

I cleaned the Hooters up, painted them, checked them with the multimeter, reassembled them – they look smashing, by the way – but still the anemic “meeep.”

Aftermarket?  That would give me beefy blast I need, but I really want a set of original honkers, stretching a bit on that one.  

The hunt for a nice set of hooters continues.

Some Speculation

I suspect the diaphragms are the biggest problem.  I think the horns can take normal environmental wetness, humidity, the occasional rain-through-the-grill, but not thorough soakings like sitting under a tree for decades.  Once the diaphragm rusts, it isn’t as flexible as it needs to be.  There is a forum post where a guy fabricated himself some new diaphragms – impressive, but more work than I’m willing to do for a set of hooters – you thought I didn’t have anymore, but you were wrong.

The internal wiring isn’t protected from water other than being in a sealed space.  That space however, has pin holes for air to move as the diaphragm moves.  Once water gets in, the electricals, the contact point especially, corrode.

Old hooters that have been spared the elements continue to hoot, those that drink too much water, hoot no more.

Nice looking hooters that don't work very well

I could have made a lot of horny jokes, but I'm a mature man of taste and manners...

Here are Alphie's hooters for now.  

They have one major advantage - they work...

Until I can find a working set of original hooters, the Chinese bad boys will have to scare the pedestrians off the sidewalk.

Eh, they get the job done.

Another Clear Hooters ad

Page Sixty-Nine - Alphie's Night Out: A Tale of Two Tickets

 

Here's a fun little story.

Sometime in the 1970’s, Alphie drove two people to see a movie at the Von Lee theater in downtown Bloomington Indiana, and you’re wondering how I know.

During Alphie’s tear-down (six years ago!), I found two halves of two cinema tickets, one in the console and the other inside the seat upholstery, and because I never throw anything away, I kept them.  Yesterday, I found them again and got curious...

Laying the right half of ticket number 00427 over the left half of ticket number 00428 (hence I brilliantly deduced that Alphie had two people on board), gave me the name of the theater chain, “Kerasotes Theatres” (French spelling no less), which I sent out into the internet ether.  Wikipedia tells me that Kerasotes had “957 screens in 95 locations in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and Wisconsin at one point.” 

Two tickets overlaid to make one, impressive detective work, no?

Under the chain’s name, it says “Von Lee #2, Bloomington In.”  Back to the interweb, three of the 957 screens were at the Von Lee where Alphie ferried his crew to a movie on screen #2 sometime in the 70’s.  OK, the “sometime in the 70’s” is a guess based on the $1.50 admission, which also fits the time when Alphie still prowled the streets. (And Kerasotes didn't own the Von Lee until 1976.) Someone laid out $3 for the entertainment that night, afternoon?

Alphie had a 1979 Illinois license plate somewhere in the boot or a box, but since Illinois didn’t attach any meaning (still doesn’t I think) to the letters and numbers on their plates other than to identify the vehicle and its owner, I can’t tell where in Illinois he was registered.  Illinois shares a border with Indiana, so it’s plausible that Alphie crossed state lines to take in a flick.  Anyhoo...

Back to the web for some information on the Von Lee theater:

Von Lee Cinema
517 E. Kirkwood Avenue,
Bloomington, IN 47401

The Von Lee in the 70's, judging by the cars

Here's what the web had to say:  “Built in 1928 as the Ritz Theatre by local investors, it was renamed Von Lee Theatre and reopened in 1948 by the Vonderschmitt Theatres chain.

A spacious single-screen cinema now converted into three smaller auditoriums, the theater rests on the border between historic downtown Bloomington and the Indiana University campus.

Purchased in 1976 by Kerasotes Theaters, operations were suspended on May 28, 2000 as the company built two multiplexes in the city, making the historic cinema expendable to their operations.

Now owned by the City of Bloomington, the Von Lee Cinema has been the center of various community efforts to reopen or otherwise "Save The Von Lee", and it has also since been designated a historic site.

However, it has remained dark and the auditorium has been demolished. Offices have been built on the site, while the front section of the theatre serves as a restaurant.”

Per Wikipedia, “After Kerasotes the theater, it faced the wrecking ball. There was a quick response from City Council member Chris Sturbaum to save the history of the Von Lee building.  He lobbied the community to save it and developed a plan to do so.  For many weeks after the first notification of demolition, Sturbaum set up a display about the history of the Von Lee and its significance to Bloomington. He even began to show movies in front of the closed building. Eventually the plan worked and the Von Lee was kept intact.”

The Von Lee preserved with the new offices

All this from two old ticket stubs someone tossed in the console 40ish years ago, you just never know.  That's why I never throw anything away!

Page Sixty-Eight - Some Consolation

 

How to restore Alphie’s “reasonably original” console.

I have three consoles – one from the black Alpine, one from the Organ Donor and one from Bob (the guy who gave me Bob’s Butt, remember?)

1. Find the lock that fits the rest of the car; remember, one key fits the ignition and doors while the other fits the boot and console.

2. Picked the console with the best (meaning least rusty) sheet metal, took it to bare metal and primed it.

3. Carefully peeled the original vinyl from the sheet metal so I could make a pattern later.

4. Cut a piece of tool box drawer liner for the non-skid, rattle-smoothing bottom liner, no glue, just laid it in.

Tool box drawer liner works great! 

5. Laid out the old vinyl on the back of the new vinyl and drew a pattern.  Foreseeing me screwing up, I cut the vinyl leaving a generous margin for error – important step!

Old vinyl as a patttern for the new vinyl

New vinyl ready to glue

6. Did many, many test fits – another important step! 

7. Got out the stinky contact cement, loads of clamps, binder clips, paint stirrers and popsicle sticks (lolly sticks for the Brits) and set to gluing the vinyl to the metal.  See the pics.

Wrapped, glued and clipped to dry.
(The popsicle (lolly) sticks keep the clips from denting the vinyl.)

8. The console lid gets a specially sewn cover from the gang at Sunbeam Specialties, but I stuffed some extra polyester batting between the foam and the cover because the foam didn’t fill the space as well as I wanted.  LOTS-O-TEST FITS and glued it to the cover plate.

I forgot to take pics during the process, but here's the finished lid.

I bought some stainless #6 oval Phillips head screws, as short as I could find, and some #6 finish washers for the underside of the cover.  No Rust! and they look spanking!

The lid on the cleaned and painted console sheet metal

9. There’s a little square (trapezoid if I’m being precise) of cardboard, which vinyl wraps around to create the top piece at the back of the console, behind the console lid.  Mine was buckled, so I cut a piece of sheet metal to replace it, glued it up and placed weights on it to smooth out the vinyl.

Old, warped cardboard on the right, new sheet metal on the left.

Vinyl wrapped and ready to glue down.
The dots are where the hinge will mount.

Glued up!

Underside of the lid with new stainless fasteners.
(I'll clean up the tag ends of the vinyl, don't worry.)

    10. Glue and clamp the little trapezoid to the console metal and attach the lid with new #10 stainless screws.

11. Cut out the hole for the lock and mount it in place.  Fiddle with the lock until it locks and unlocks easily.

And the lock works!
(I see the little bulge in the vinyl, but it's too late to fix it. 
Don't look that closely!)

Page Sixty-Seven – Rip Van Alphie Awakes!

ALPHIE LIVES & BREATHES - after forty-five years (maybe more)!

Clint (previous owner) tells me that he thinks Alphie last ran around 1979 or 80, and I brought him home six years ago…

That’s a long sleep! 

(Apparently I need a computer science degree to get a video embedded in Blogger - go to the More Stuff column on the right for the Alphie Lives! video.  BTW, The whirring sound you hear before I crank Alphie are fans blowing the exhaust out of the garage.)

The video isn’t the FIRST start because, of course, I had some problems. 

1. I burned Pertronix Ignitor when I hooked it up to a 1.4-ohm coil, it requires a 3-ohm coil. More on this below.

2. I had the plug wires in the wrong order – duh! 

3. The timing was WAY off, and I couldn’t get it to idle slow enough to set it.

4. The idle was high because I had the “secondary throttle barrel” (as the service manual calls it) of the carb open, so as soon as the engine hit, it raced.  Fixed that.

5. The timing isn’t as easy as it should be.  Alpiners know there is a timing adjuster thumb screw on the vacuum advance, BUT the distributor has to be turned to a ballpark timing because the screw adjuster can only adjust so much.  Getting the little clamp that holds the distributor to the block is a bit, shall-we-say, fiddly, but I persevered and got it. 

6. BEFORE I tried to fire up Alphie for the first time, I discovered that I had the wrong fittings on the fuel line out of the tanks and into the fuel pump.  Care to guess how I determined they were too small?  I only poured about a quart of gas on the floor. 

I discovered I needed a better engine ground when I burned my hand on the clutch hydraulic line.  Fixed that. 

I also found some oil and exhaust leaks during all this.

I should readjust the valve too.

So, he's not quite ready for the road just yet.

Back to the fried Ignitor: I was pretty sure I had cooked the Ignitor because I had spark, and Alphie was chugging fitfully along with his wrong firing order and WAY too advanced timing, but when I tried to fire him up again, I had no spark.  I spent two days (maybe more) checking everything with the multimeter then double checking, then triple checking but couldn’t find anything wrong.  The coil was obviously not tripping, but I couldn’t figure out why.  I suspected the Ignitor, so I ran the Ignitor unit test on the Pertronix website, but the results were confusing. 

I spent about 2.5 hours on the phone with the Pertronix guys before we got the test done correctly and determined that I had blown the first Ignitor.  (Turned out I had the multimeter leads wrong for the positive ground test.)  

The voltage is supposed to drop from 12-volts (battery voltage) to zero (or at least below 3-volts) when the magnet is turned past the Ignitor unit.  Mine went from 12 to 4-volts, bad Ignitor unit.  The Pertronix tech guys were great, by the way. 

I bought a new Ignitor and 3-ohm Flame Thrower coil and Bob’s your uncle, plenty of spark!

I shot the video AFTER all that!  You can tell that Alphie still needs some fine tuning; he’s kind of chugging a bit during the video.  I can hear an exhaust leak, and I can see some oil drops on the floor, so there’s more work to do before Alphie can leave the garage.

Shiny Knockoff Spinners!

I LOVE 'EM!

The pic at the top of the post shows an old spinner next to the rechromed one so you can see just how much better they are!

A huge shout out to Joe DelVecchio at Red’s Parts Attic & Chrome Plating for re-chroming Alphie’s spinners.  They look AWESOME!

Red’s Parts Attic & Chrome Plating, 23220 Laura Lane, New Caney, TX 77357.  (713) 299-1555 or joe@redspartattic.com

Page Sixty-Six - Back to It

 

I left off with the seat bottoms, now for the backs.

Maybe you have noticed – I have – that many Alpine seats often look deflated.  The foam decays, yeah, but the cardboard Rootes used as structure absorbs water and collapses over time, especially the cardboard behind the foam in the seat backs, if it's there at all.

(Pic above - the lumpiness is slowly working its way out as the vinyl slowly stretches and constracts.  I set them in the sun to loosen the vinyl.  I'm working on the metal pieces that cover the hinges.  One was missing and one was pretty rusted - I'm fabbing those two pieces.)

I bought some matte board (the stuff used to frame pictures) and fitted it to the frame.  When I took Alphie’s seat backs apart, they didn’t have cardboard behind the foam, so I cut some matte board to fit it.

But, as I was researching seats on the forum, someone mentioned that they had used Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) plastic, and it occurred to me that ABS plastic will not absorb water and will retain its shape indefinitely, so I ordered some.

ABS sheet, cardboard pattern and my jigsaw with a metal cutting blade.
Cut at a slow speed because fast will melt the ABS.

I got two 24” X 48” sheets, big enough for two outer and two inner panels - I used the cardboard pieces as patterns.  ABS isn’t as easy to work with as cardboard, but the results are strikingly better.  I bent the outer pieces with a heat gun on low heat.  The stuff melts if you get it too hot so go slow.

ABS outer panel before bending

Outer ABS panel after bending.
There were wrinkles to work out, note the top edge of the frame.

With the ABS in place, I found I didn’t need glue when I fitted the foam.

I strayed from Mr. Parlanti’s instructions in that he glued the center section of the seat cover to the foam.  I found that glue wouldn’t pull the vinyl tight enough, and Alphie’s seat covers are later model ones with the “hinged” centers section, where Mr. Parlanti’s were one-piece covers.

I inserted metal rods into the finish seams on the front side pieces (see the pic) so that I could pull the sides tight with safety wire looped around the frame, again, see the pics.

Metal rods inserted in the finish seams

Inner panel attached to the frame with slots for the safety wire.
Safety wire looped around the frame to pull the seat cover sides tight

Safety wire pulled tight and trimmed

Bend the wire so that it won't poke through the vinyl.
The covers are significantly tighter than if I had glued them.

The rest of the installation followed Mr. Parlanti’s instruction except that I added extra polyester batting over the outside of the frame and under the top portion of the center section to add fill and smooth over the frame pieces.  (Don’t use cotton batting, by the way.  It will collapse over time and absorb water.)

Issues of Note:

The sprocket for the back recline-adjuster is made of some seriously hard steel.  Long story coming.

The sprocket on the recliner gizmo is made of VERY HARD steel.
Note that I got new bolts because 3 inch long 1/4 inch screws are hard to find.

The flat head screws that attach the sprocket to the seat frame use Wentworth threads, infuriatingly hard to find.  (OK, I had the old ones, but they were very rusty, they are flat-headed, and they just suck.) Maybe some specialty fastener companies have Wentworth threaded hardware on the web somewhere, but they are WAY more expensive than it’s worth. 

FYI - pushing the adjuster lever down until it meets
the metal frame locks the seat back in place - unlike modern cars.

SO, I decided to rethread them with a 5/16” tap – broke two taps before it dawned on me that the steel is amazingly hard.  SO, I tried drilling them out, destroyed a 5/16” bit and only drilled one hole – gave up and bought some ¼” socket button head machine screws because they don’t stick out much and just bolted it together.  Not stock but sorted!

Socket button head screw in place
Pro-Tip: Take the pics before assembling the seats.

Seat Springs

(The ones that push the seat forward when you pull the handle.)  I had noticed that many Alpine seats have bent springs, and that the springs tend to drag across the vinyl as they flex.

Perhaps Alphie's seats had been reuphostered or "fixed" at some point because the springs were attached directly to the bottom seat frame.  The spring in Mr. Parlanti's instructions were attached to a tab of sheet metal attached to the frame, which located them away from the frame so that they neither bend nor rub against the vinyl.  I fabbed up a set for Alphie's seats.  You'll see in the pic below that my first attempt didn't clear the frame far enough so I made some longer ones.

Spring mounts - the first and second attempts.
Note that the springs doesn't contact the frame or vinyl, smashing!

Since the springs were bent and rusty, I found some new ones.  They were a bit shorter and have less pull tension, but they work well and two small "S" hooks fixed the length problem.

The old, bent and rusty springs

Console

I upholstered console top.  I will add pics or maybe a new page about restoring the console, but here's some pics until then.

Underside of the console lid

I lined the inside with some
rubber liner for tool box drawers 

The console box is painted and ready. 
I'll glue the vinyl to it and finish the edges soon