20 replies to this topic

[dklawson]

Is that the case style you used? The link opens up to what looks like a surface mount transistor in a TO-252 case. The style I use is the more traditional TO-220 (big transistor) case. Anyway, with leads carefully soldered to that chip, it should be possible to locate the stabilizer chip on the Nippon cluster, snip it off (leaving its leads behind) and solder the wire leads from the new chip to the old snipped leads.

Never having worked on the Nippon gauges I don't know what's involved. Sorry... I can only speculate if this would be possible. Others who've worked on the later gauges will have to comment on whether this would be worthwhile.

[Jupitus]

Is that the case style you used? The link opens up to what looks like a surface mount transistor in a TO-252 case. The style I use is the more traditional TO-220 (big transistor) case. Anyway, with leads carefully soldered to that chip, it should be possible to locate the stabilizer chip on the Nippon cluster, snip it off (leaving its leads behind) and solder the wire leads from the new chip to the old snipped leads.

Never having worked on the Nippon gauges I don't know what's involved. Sorry... I can only speculate if this would be possible. Others who've worked on the later gauges will have to comment on whether this would be worthwhile.

Yes sir. Very fiddly. My latest design has this soldered, encased in a small box, the wires secured to prevent the chip being pulled, the chip wrapped/padded and then the wires terminated with standard connectors. Any I make I test on my car to verify the output voltage. To give you a clue, I have binned 7 out of 10 chips due to not being happy with the design up until these recent attempts/refinements !

[dklawson]

I suspect if you could find the chip packaged in a TO-220 housing you'd find it a lot easier to work with, although, it would probably be bigger. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TO220 )

The 7810 series of chips in the TO-220 housing use the metal mounting tab as a ground/earth connection and this would allow you to solder wires to the legs and cover them with heat shrink to get a very compact package that could be mounted just about anywhere there's an available screw hole or small stud.

I know you had trouble finding the 7810 chips that I used. I just don't know U.K. vendors enough to recommend or locate them for you. The 7810 datasheet is at this U.K. reference web site:
http://www.datasheet...-datasheet.html
Perhaps they know where you can get the 7810 chips in a TO-220 package.

Ha! I remembered that one U.S. firm that has a U.K. equivalent/partner is Newark Electronics. They are somehow associated with Farnell. See:
http://uk.farnell.com
Key the following part number into the search feature on top of their home page: 9593829

[Mini_Rob_Cov]

Hey. Would like to say thanks to everyone for their help. It has been much apreciated.

Problems has been solved, turns out there was a couple of fuses missing from their white connectors at the back of the engine compartment, so fuel guage and side lights problems fixed

Just goes to prove, you should always check the fuses before spending £20 on a fuel guage sender unit you didn't need

Altho now, i do have a used fuel guage sender from a 94 mini 35 for sale. Would say maybe £10 ono

[taffy1967]

Nice one buddy and it's good to get there in the end.

[LilacLilly]

the speedo is slower as your gear box would have been on a car that was made and produced with smaller wheels than what are on it. I have the same problem with my fuel level, ive had a new guage, new wiring, new sender, new tank the lot and it still does it. If you know your mini well you will be able to work out about how many miles you can do before needing to top up!!