Information centre display swap

As per older blog:

https://erwinkappa.blogspot.com/2023/08/information-centre-panel-replacement.html

I made a new attempt today and swapped out a good display from my other Kappa. It was quite a bit of work and I will spare you the swearing and minor details. Lets get started:

And all is out:

I found a small comb underneath the handbrake :-)

And I spotted this device fiddled in below the radio area:

It's very likely part of the telephone carkit, so I had it all removed, still a bit of various cables to remove

And I had also swapped around the complete ashtray since something snapped off and was not closing anymore. And now was also a good timing to get this light renewed. It has a green cap and it's working again:

The ashtray lense was dirty and apparently had some kind of burnt markings, so it was not clear anymore

So I had this inner ashtray also swapped around, all clear again:

And also the cigarettelighter got a new bulb. Nice to see this is functional again and so bright:

In any case, all was put together and working. Except the right half of the display appears to be slightly dim. It's a tint darker and less bright. Not sure what's causing that? It's not very visible on this photo but in real its more noticeable. At least there are now no longer dots/digits missing. 

Now I only need to put the radio back, again I'm swapping this one around for a good one. Then I need to remove the surplus cabling of the old telephone carkit. 

More minor enhancements

Whilst I have been doing more cleaning this week, seats (again), cockpit, engine bay, the bonnet, I spotted some small items missing. Starting of with the 2 scew covers of the instrument panel:

So I had sourced these from spare car

And updated:

I even had the bonnet insulation cover vacuum cleand and spotted 2 missing plastic mounting covers:

And when polishing the bonnet I noticed another 2 push holders of the wiper hose watercable cover were missing

So I had these sourced and upgraded as well. It's all in the details.

Wiring loom heat resistant insulation tape

Whilst I was doing the valve cover I also took the effort to have the wiring loom improved. As said earlier some of the hard plastic covers was crumbled and disintegrated. Other pieces had poor sticky black insulation tape used and was dried out etc. So time to remove as much as possible and clean out the rubbish. This was the remaining stuff that came off

And this is how it looked like afterwards:

So I had bought this heat resistant clothing wiring tape for € 11,-

What a great product! Still took a bit of time to had it all done properly but it was very easy with a great end result

Valve cover - new black wrinkle coating

And another task completed. Something I have never done before and was actually quite curious about it. 

Overtime the valve cover had lost quite a bit of paint and it gives the engine bay a poor look. In this picture I had removed already a lot of paint, mostly the separate inner plate cover:

So I ordered a spray can of black wrinkle paint (VHT SP201). Price € 33,14 including shipping costs.

Luckily I once had bought a cheap sand blasting tool with sand so I figured it would be easy to remove the remaing paint:

But I was wrong, despite some paint was blown off easily most of it was firm. So I ended up buying a can of paint remover. Which did set me back a € 20,-

This removed additional paint but still some parts did still had paint left so I ended up also using a copper brush and sandpaper

So once this was mostly removed I further cleaned it with Thinner (a new bottle bought for € 5,-)
I put 3x times a small coating of spray on it with a interval of 5-10 minutes in between. And afterwards used the heating gun to dry it. Shortly afterwards I used a scraper to remove the paint from the stripes and letters whilst the paint was still a bit soft. After that I simply used sandpaper to make it blank and shiny again.

See paint instructions here: https://youtu.be/oOe8Is8uBiM?si=ZtGY9I1NKKgiABE5

The full valve cover I simply replaced from my other car which had a good one and didn't require respraying. I bought that one a few years back new but didn't came with the inner plate cover. 

So time to have it removed, easy job. They used some sealing as well for the gasket. So that has been cleaned off as well. 

I had ordered a new rubber gasket as well. This costed € 20,85 including shipping.

As for this valve cover, previously there was oil in the sparkplug area. This was no longer present. As said, this was potentially due to a loose spark plug. I did not spot any cracks in the cover or whatsoever. In any case, the valve cover is now being swapped for another one.

So time to put everything back together. Throughout the week I had already cleaned the engine bay a little more since the paint contained quite a bit of dirt. Small section example:

But now with the upgraded valve cover it looks pretty well. Not perfect but good enough for me as it will not become a show car in any case. So total round this time costed about € 80,-

Minor enhancement details

Something I spotted already long time ago, the fuel filler cap turned out to be a Honda cap! Apparently it is compatible ...

 So time to replace it with an original Italian cap:

This tiny screw and cover was missing in the right corner below the front window. I think its part of the complete paravane cover

So I had sourced that as well

Another thing I noticed was a loose hose in front of the car. So I checked my ohter Lancia and noticed it was suppose to be connected to coolant reservoir. But mine had a fixed cap without overflow:

So I had that replaced as well with the hose now properly in place. I also cleaned the reservoir, it looks so much nicer now with the clean fluid visible.

The drivers dooropening gripholder had one rusty screw and one screw missing but since it's visible it had also the rubber covers missing.

So added one screw and the required covers for both, looks so much nicer now

That's it for now.

New airfilter and a little cleaning and spraying

 in order to have the airfilter replaced I bought this special tool: click-r plier. In factr I bought a small set of pliers for hose clamps via Temu. The whole set costs just as much if I had purchse one plier locally:

In the past I had damaged these clamps so often and ended up buying normal screw hose clamps. So time to invest in this tool:

Removing the hose clamps now went easy and I could remove the first "airbox":

The screws of the actual airfilter housing was a different story, they were stuck and I didn't want to molest the rusty screws

So I had to take out the whole housing. The airfilterhouse was mounted with two rusty bars:

With much patience and fiddling I managed to get the airfilterhouse out

All the wiring harness was toast, rubbers broken off and the hard plastic covers crumbled:

In any case, I'm glad I took it out as I could now correctly apply force to the screws

Two screws came out normally. Two others required firm force using a grip plyer:

Both came out but they took the inner thread out as well, sigh:

And this is what came out of it:

Time for cleaning and replacement and putting it all together again

And wanted to sand and spray the rusty bar on the airfilter house. One screw came off, but the other one snapped off and I didn't want to take the risk to snap the 3rd scew as well, so I left it.

I had the other two mounting bars sanded and sprayed though. This looks so much nicer now

I also made a little cleaning effort on the airhoses and airbox as the entire engine bay is very dirty. So I also removed some decals and cleaned the front top bar. To bad these rusty screws are so visible. On this photo you will see I also made an attempt on the valve cover. More on that next time.