Baby Blue

Welcome to my AE82 project. I bought this on the 7^th of Februrary 2021 for a grand total of $5500. On the fatefull day on the 9^th it showed up on my driveway whilst I was wagging school just to muck around with it, but who wouldn't do that. I affectionately named it 'Baby Blue after its paint colour, ice blue.

Just in case you can't be arsed reading all of this

Getting it back in it's element

On the 5^th of December 2021, I had sucessfully gotten my P plates (this means I can drive out on my own without supervision like with L plates), I decided I would take my car up to Melbourne for a bit of a cruise. It was all good and well, I was almost near the CBD, I was in the Domain tunnel going uphill then noticed I was down on power, a loud ticking sound coming from the motor. Alarm bells started going off in my head all telling me that the car had died. I kept going until I got to a safe spot to pull over in the emergency lane. I put two and two together and looked at my temperature guage and made the conclusion that my head gasket has failed. At the time of creation of this page, it has been 4 months since the engine failure and not much has been done about it. After a long read of my factory workshop manual it clearly states to throw the head away once it warps beyond permissable values. After a chat with a coworker of mine, the exact same point was bought up after 3 used head were surfaced and warped again. I bought two spare head off running engines from marketplace.

Drivetrain

Steering and Suspension

Body

After sitting for a while and also after 36 years, the paint is not exactly in the best cosmetic condition. There are some parts that are worse than others. For the most part the paint looks servicable, the pigment looks decent; just the clear is damaged. The damaged clear coat is a relatively easy job to carry out, just takes a lot of prep work. There is a spot on the boot lid that has some marking on it, it does look like rust but I am not completely sure. I hope that it isn't as that would mean that I'd need to get a hold of some OEM paint which is not exactly the easiest thing especially when the paint isn't a common colour compared to say, white or red.

Interior

Electrical System

As is typical of cars of this era of cars, the wiring is pretty poor. As this car is from before the time of LED and HID, it uses halogens. There is no clear cut answer on that LED or HID can be swapped in legally, I have to keep with the halogen. Since we established that the wiring is poor, that raises some issues with the lighting system. A common theme is that the wires are very thin, with a power-hungly halogen set-up this is not ideal. Wire, naturally has a resistance over a certain length. The resistance depends on the cross sectional area of the conducter and the length of said wire. Why this matters is Ohms law.


					0.5mm² Copper
					≈0.036Ω per metre
					for 10 metre run length (both postive and negative condutors) is 0.36Ω
					

					I = P / V | 55W / 12V = 4.6A
					

					V = I * R | 4.6A * 0.36Ω = 1.7V
					

					P = V * I | 1.7V * 4.6A = 7.6W

Above is an example of using 0.5mm² cable to run a 55W halogen low-beam. In bold are the losses. 1.7V has been lost in only the cable, this means that at the globe, the voltage across it is 1.7V less than at the battery. 7.6W is the power dissipated from the loss, this is just wasted heat. That dissipated power is why if you put too much current through thin cable it just melts. Below are the calculations for my setup exactly.


					2.5mm² Copper
					≈0.0072Ω per metre
					for 10 metre run length (both postive and negative condutors) is 0.072Ω
					

					I = P / V | 55W / 12V = 4.6A
					

					V = I * R | 4.6A * 0.072Ω = 0.3V
					

					P = V * I | 0.3V * 4.6A = 1.5W

Wow, see the drop in losses! I am using regular 2.5mm² building cable, same as what is used for power points. At the voltages cars use, 12V, voltage drop is a massive issue. When it gets scaled up to 240V the loss in voltage over the cable is negligent. With the drop in resistance and voltage drop this allows the filaments in the headights to glow brighter than they previously did.

How did I pull all of this off? I had a decent size IP65 control box sitting around at work. I put a little bit of DIN rail and some appropriate DIN rail relays. I used some connectors to piggy back off the orginal headlight globe connectors and ran them into the control box and to the coils of the control relays. After the contacts from the power relay, is 2.5mm² building cable straight to the terminals of the halogen globes. I have built in some circuit protection for the cable since we are working with a high capacity battery that will vapourise the cable instantly.