Does anyone have any experience with the electric headlamp kit sold by Paul Matty. Shows what appears to be a Miata headlamp motor, brackets, linkages and a electronic box. Good?? Bad?? Comments appreciated.
Mike Summers
Does anyone have any experience with the electric headlamp kit sold by Paul Matty. Shows what appears to be a Miata headlamp motor, brackets, linkages and a electronic box. Good?? Bad?? Comments appreciated.
Mike Summers
I imagine that it the same as the Spyder unit. It’s fine and easy to fit. David
Spyder supply their kit to Matty. It’s a good well engineered solution and extremely well designed (by myself )
+1
A very good addition with the bonus it gets rid of a lot of vac pipe clutter and shuts down the induction issue when these pipes give trouble…
Mine slotted in exactly as it ‘said on the tin’ (the fact that some asshxxx po decided to force metrc bolts into the bobbin hinges of the pods cannot be blamed on Spyder )
Agreed, and well done !
I have mine, waiting to get the time to fit it
Alan
If you are still reading this, did you not write an article on this conversion somewhere in the Forums ?
I can’t remember doing an article but I did contribute and took note of a lot of other ideas before settling on the design. Early issues I had included the headlight pods flopping around on their downward travel causing them to come down too quickly with a bit of a thump and a bounce, another member (Dougal) utilised one of the existing pod springs to provide damping, this was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me and with the addition of a motor speed controller I had a reliable system that worked well. One of my regular trips to Spyder resulted in them refabricating the failsafe balance bars to suit the MX5/Miata motors along with the brackets and linkage needed to form the kit they sell these days as a full package, they also made a variation to suit the Elan as well as the +2.
timely post for me this…
i have me engine out which has been rebuilt… so i have a nice empty engine bay right now…
how long would it take to bolt the conversion in…
im also looking to tidy up masses or wireing in there at same time… any inspirational pics are very welcome
Is this the same kit that Kelvedon sell too? Got one of theirs a couple of years ago but never completed the install due to other things going on but will before too much longer.
Yes it’s the same kit, they even use the same photo of the components.
As for ease of fitting or time taken to fit, all I would say is that it’s “straightforward” and that the instructions supplied are easy to follow. Allow a good morning or afternoon and it should be job done.
Yeah, I’m not worried about it. Just need to get off my lazy bum and do some GRP-repairs inside the nose before resuming the installation. There’s a big crack near where the motor is to mount, so I’d like to get the floor back to full strength first.
One question- is the spring supposed to be included? My kit didn’t have one and nobody at Kelvedon could answer that question.
It’s assumed that you are replacing an existing vacuum pod system with the electric system, therefore you will already have springs, one of which can be re-used. They state that you can order a spring separately if you don’t have one.
Thanks. My Plus 2 springs are different, hence the question.
This electric headlamp kit is the next on my list for my new (to me) Zetec-engined Plus 2 and I’ll likely take it to Spydercars for the install…
I used the Spyder kit as I was missing one vacuum unit from the boxes the car was in and the one I did have was rusted badly,plus being an early car with the non fail-safe hadlights it was a no-brainer to go electric. The Spyder kit is comprehensive and works extremly well, cannot recommend enough. It also means I can simplify the wiring. When I installed it I drilled out all the bobbins and used 6mm shanked bolts. These are much more robust and are coated in grease to act as bearings. This provides much better pod action and reduces the amount of power the motor needs to activate the lift. The spring is essential, you only need one, I fitted mine the opposite end of the shaft from the motor. I found it was essential to get the pods syncronised and operating smoothly before starting to fit the motor, also keep your fingers out of the way when testing it! You need to set the speed controller to the slowest setting you can without stalling, This stops the pods slamming into the bodywork, I also added extra GRP across the edge of the body at the top of the headlight opening, the GRP is very thin here and I found lots of stress cracks when the pods under vacuum had slammed up. This was before the shell went for painting, the painter dug all these out and tissued them so hopefully this will not re-occur. Bob
Can someone with more electrical knowledge provide an eBay link or similar for a suitable speed controller? Thinking it should be easy to add to my existing setup to slow the motor speed down a bit. I see several listings on eBay for 2A and 3A pulse width modulated controllers, but not sure if I am on the right track? I wonder if the ‘black box’ that I saw in some donor car wiring diagrams included this sort of controller?
Also thinking the wiring for the controller should be pretty straightforward as the motor only turns in one direction. Is the speed controller placed in line with the main motor power and seeing full motor load, or perhaps wired to a make and break relay trigger so it hardly sees any load?
Here is where I am at in my search…
ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R … =0&_sop=15
Interestingly, mine have developed a minor issue lately where the lights are not retracting right now. Pretty sure I will find a wire knocked off during some recent fiddling about under the dash. Other than this recent development the pod motor setup has worked well for years, although I agree they do go a bit fast and I do have a small crack at top corner of the refit side pod aperture.
Thx
Stu
The speed controller goes in on the power supply to the motor + and -. I have studied the wiring diagrams a bit for these type motors and most have 5 wires, the one I got out of the junk yard has 6. The extra wires are for turning relays on and off establishing the up and down position of the motor. The black box you refer to may have the up position and down position relays inside it as well as the speed controller.
I purchased an expensive speed controller with reverse before I had the actual motor in hand and understood how it worked.
Stu, you are on the right track with the ones in the link. Mine came off of Amazon, but same idea. I made sure min had a high current capacity because I was guessing. not sure if 2-3 amps is enough for this type of motor. I can run a test to see if mine draws les than 5 amps.
I have a hand sketch wiring diagram I made while bench testing my motor which I can upload if anyone is interested.
Darek
I’m sure I must be missing something but with the exception of not being able to do a “quick flash”, and let’s face it the vacuum systems are not particularity good at that task, would a short 12v linear actuator not be a practical alternative that could easily be configured to operate precisely with a couple of micro switch limit switches?
Something akin to
amazon.com/ECO-LLC-Stroke-A … 219&sr=8-3
Yes that has been done. See here …viewtopic.php?f=36&t=36805&start=
PWM controllers are the way to go, but aim to give yourself plenty of headroom with the current rating. From the perspective of the controller, a motor is a horrible inductive load, with high current draw on startup. I would allow at least 3x the steady state current draw, perhaps more if I could find it. Some of the controllers you linked to are rated at 10A which might be a good place to start.
A keen enthusiast could adapt the controller to slow the motor as it approached the stop, either by using a microswitch or a timer, but it would involve work, and is of course something else to go wrong.