DeLorean Luggage Net Repair

I always liked the stock look of the luggage net behind the seats in the DeLorean pictures I have seen online. The net in my DeLorean was removed before I bought it, but I found it in a box of parts. I discovered that the bungee cord around the net was fraying terribly in multiple places which not only made it a terrible eye sore, but it didn't function very well either.

New old stock (NOS) net assemblies are for sale at DMC Houston, but I didn't really feel that these were worth nearly $50 for a new one. I went to local fabric stores and Home Depot, but none of them sold the bungee cord by the foot. I discovered an online company that does sell them by the foot at this website. I decided to go with the black 3/16" cord. I removed the old bungee cord from the net and it measured at about 7.5 feet. I decided to get 8 feet of new bungee cord to be safe and I would trim down any extra length.

It arrived a week later and I set the two cords side by side and cut the new cord to the exact length of the original. Here is a picture of the old, frayed cord laying next to the new bungee cord:



I then weaved the new cord into the net and hooked the two ends together using the supplied clamps.
Below is the image of the two connected ends:

 

As you can see, the original net was still in great condition, but it had an awful smell, like it had spent time in a house of a smoker. It was a really strong smell too and I didn't want to reinstall it into the DeLorean without getting rid of the smell first. Before I installed the new bungee cord, I first washed it by hand, and the brown soapy water that came off that net was very gross. I then sprayed it on two separate occasions with Febreeze to eliminate the odor. I then rinsed it thoroughly and dried it in a clothes dryer. It still has a very faint smell to it, but it is extremely better than it was when I found it.

Here is the net all put back together and almost ready for assembly. The original net has some black thread that attaches the net to the bungee cord in four places so that the net is always in the same relative place on the bungee cord. Be sure to replicate those attachment points using the black string of your choice, or else the net will not look right when reinstalled in the DeLorean.

The one thing I didn't realize was that the new cord has much less elasticity than the original bungee cord. The old one was made up of many thin, gray elastic strands, but the new one appears to just be one solid, white strand of an elastic material. This means that it is much harder to stretch the new material to fit correctly on the hooks on the back shelf. If I were to do this again, I wouldn't have trimmed any length off of the 8 foot bungee cord, and I recommend getting a bit more than that. I did make it work, but the cord is definitely tight.

I hope that it will loosen up over time, but I am leaving it in place for a very long time to allow it to stretch. Here is the old net with a new bungee cord installed in my car for the first time since I have owned it:

DeLorean Instrument Cluster Status Updates

After I replaced the trip reset shaft, replaced the burned out battery light with a new #161 incandescent bulb, and replaced all other instrument cluster lights with the appropriate LEDs, I reinstalled the binnacle in the car. I was pleased to see that the car charged correctly right on start up because of the new battery light, but I noticed a couple of side effects from some of the LEDs.

First, the door ajar light would still dimly glow for a long time after the doors were shut. After posting about this problem on the DMC forum, I discovered that the original lamp delay relay found here doesn't play well with LEDs. This relay is supposed to slowly dime the interior courtesy lights once the doors are shut. The solution was to remove the relay from the fuse compartment and the door ajar light now functions perfectly again.

Dealing with this issue has brought to my attention the fact that my interior courtesy lights do not function as they should, nor have they ever functioned properly since I've owned the DeLorean. They come on when I switch them to "always on," but never come on in any other setting when the doors are opened like they are supposed to. This is not a huge deal right now, but I will try and get them functioning correctly some time in the future.

I went for a test drive after reinstalling the binnacle and I felt like the speedometer wasn't showing that I was going the right speed. It felt like it was saying I was going a lot slower than what it felt like. To test this, I used my Garmin GPS and went for a drive. Before I took the binnacle apart the first time, the speedometer was always very close to what speed the Garmin said I was going, but on this trip, I discovered that my hunch was correct and that the speedometer was showing I was going about 3 to 5 miles an hour slower than I actually was traveling.

I must not have put the needle on the speedometer in the exact position it was in before I took it apart. I removed the binnacle and put the needle to where it should have been. A test drive showed that the speedometer is now much closer, especially at speeds under 55, and then only off by 1 mile and hour at higher speeds. That is an acceptable variation for me. Here's a picture I snapped while I was working on adjusting the speedometer needle:

 

One other issue I discovered while converting the instrument cluster lights over to LEDs was that the parking brake light started acting strangely. The light worked correctly if the car was running or if the key was set to the "On" position, but once the key was set to the "Off" position, the parking brake light would stay dimly lit if the handbrake was not engaged. It would go off immediately if I pulled up on the handbrake, but it would come back on very dimly if the brake was not engaged.

I noticed that the previous owner had some wires coming off of the handbrake that were somehow tied into the car's alarm system. It was likely causing a small draw on that circuit, causing the LED to light up. The incandescent light must not have received enough juice to cause it to light up at all, but since the LED requires less juice to light up, it brought this issue to light.

Since I didn't feel like diving any more into the car's electronics, I simply replaced the brake light LED with the working incandescent bulb that was in there previously. Putting it all back together revealed that the light worked properly again with no glowing when the car was off. Maybe I'll dig into this in the future, but I'm not going to worry about this for now, especially since the car's battery disconnect switch is engaged whenever I'm not driving the car regularly. 

DeLorean Trip Odometer Repair and LED Dashboard Lights

It's always a good feeling to come home and see a parts package for the DeLorean waiting for me. Ever since I have owned my DeLorean, the trip odometer reset shaft has been sheered off right behind the plastic as seen here in a "before" photo:

 

Well I decided to finally fix this once I discovered that the battery light in the dash was also burned out. In my DeLorean, the alternator wouldn't charge the car until it got up to about 2500 RPMs after it was started because that light was burned out. It is an integral part of the charging system in these cars. I also had ordered some LEDs for the dashboard lights that I had yet to install and this was a great opportunity to do that too.

In order to remove the binnacle, you have to lay on your back so your head is by the gas pedal so you can remove all of the nuts holding the binnacle to the dashboard. Since I am 6 1/2 feet tall, I decided to remove the driver's seat completely to give me room to work and lay down:

 

I won't give detailed instructions on the removal process since there are plenty of write-ups on that elsewhere on the web. I will say that it's much easier to remove all the connections on the back (speedo cable, electric connections) than it is to put them back together. This is what it looks like after the binnacle has been removed:



To work on the binnacle, I laid a towel on a table and went to work. This is what the back of the binnacle looks like:

 

To replace the trip reset shaft, I just followed the provided instructions and completed the job without any problems. I also replaced the battery light with a #161 incandescent bulb from Autozone and replaced the other lights with LEDs from Super Bright LEDS. I decided to use WLED-WH5 "warm white" lights for the backlight of the instrument cluster because I didn't want the blue hue that the other color appeared to have. For a complete list of lights that I used, you can visit this blog for a comprehensive list with before and after pictures as well.

In the middle of the job of replacing the trip reset shaft, things looked a little hairy:

 

Everything went back together fine and the initial test found that everything works and looks great. I still haven't bolted everything back down in the car, but I'll take care of that this weekend. This is what the final product looks like with the new trip reset shaft:

Car Show & Parade

The evening before the 4th of July, my home town hosts a local car show. Last year I was unable to bring the DeLorean because it was in the middle of being repaired, so this was the first time that I had the opportunity to bring it to the show in the town where I grew up. I had been looking forward to this car show ever since last year. It was a much smaller show than others that I had attended so far this year, but that was just fine.

The problem with having a car show in July 3rd is the heat. It was definitely a hot day, but it was still loads of fun having people I had known for a long time be able to see the DeLorean for the first time. This was definitely the first time a DeLorean had attended the local show. At the very end of the show, some kids of our friends wanted to sit in the car, so we took off all of the "Do Not Touch" signs and let them have a seat:

 

As you can see in the photo above, we brought our miniature DeLorean model and some hot wheels and had them on display in the car. We ended up giving a couple of the hot wheels to those kids. I snapped a couple of other photos before we left the show:

 



 

The next morning, we drove back out to my home town to be in the local 4th of July parade. We stuck a couple of flags in the rear, in the intake and antenna vents, and drove with the doors up while we threw candy to the kids. It was such a blast.

My parents still live in my home town and they took some pictures when we drove by, as well as provided us with some nice cold water:

 
 
 
 
 
 

My nephew even rode along for about 10 feet and got to throw out some candy: