Ford Mk 2 Parts Microfiche Scans including RS2/Mex

[Craig m]

Was there not a lad selling Cd’s of this on here a few years ago, Brian, Banishit I think was his name, think he had a Yellow RS2000 at one point in Ireland.

[Glenn Wallace]

Was there not a lad selling Cd’s of this on here a few years ago, Brian, Banishit I think was his name, think he had a Yellow RS2000 at one point in Ireland.

The CDs I have seen on eBay were the original 1975 catalog before the RS2000/Mex were released. (Mine is from escortrs.co.uk)

But there may be others?

My fiche is from 1989 so should contain everything Mk 2 for pretty much all of Europe. My printed quick reference is from 1980.

[dasadrew]

Was there not a lad selling Cd’s of this on here a few years ago, Brian, Banishit I think was his name, think he had a Yellow RS2000 at one point in Ireland.

I got a CD with all sorts on it - but I think it was from the Jedi Master Dave! We're going back about 15 years though!


Drew


Ah yes banishit. Great guy, great contributor and great green RS2000!

[dasadrew]

A few months ago I got a microfiche of the gearbox stuff. Unfortunately due to Covid I can't nip into the company to sit on one of their old microfiche readers and print out page-by-page.

[Miniliteman]

A few months ago I got a microfiche of the gearbox stuff. Unfortunately due to Covid I can't nip into the company to sit on one of their old microfiche readers and print out page-by-page.

I got all the old Ford microfiches and a reader but how do you make printouts of these?

[dasadrew]

I used to run the production of an old Helicopter type and all the documentation was on microfiche. To take the instructions to the aircraft, they had to be printed out. It was like the big viewing boxes at the Ford dealer, but was connected to a simple A4 printer. The prints, however, are not simple A4 size, and have to be cut and pasted etc. to make them readable in a sensible form.


I searched t'Internet and found plenty of readers, but none with a printer. I wrote to a couple of print shops but never got a reply. When Covid lifts, I might be able to get an old colleague to let me (now pensioner) in to use the machine, but my military security clearance has lapsed, so I'm not too hopeful.


I tried scanning them with a photo resolution printer but that was useless. Maybe cut the microfiche and use an old slide projector to beam it on to a wall and take photos?



Drew

[Glenn Wallace]

I already have the digitising process in hand.... secret sauce!!!

Progress update, I am about 80% complete of the Escort 75 fiche.
383 pages so far. Massive effort.

I have identified 5 pages that need re-digitising and there's about 15 on the intro column that don't have frame borders so I have to go figure out how to make that look seamless.

I liked the great site with the scans of the Quick Ref manual but they are not high enough resolution to be of print quality. I have a plan to digitise my quick ref manual and replace that portion of the fiche. Fortunately many of the diagrams repeat over multiple pages on the fiche.

For the OHV/OHC engine fiche, I don't have a relevant quick ref guide so we may be stuck with the fiche versions of the diagrams.

I don't yet have any navigation wired up. The PDF is around 200MB in size.
There's no OCR (searchable text) in the PDF. The text was not of enough quality that the OCR engine could recognise it.

[Glenn Wallace]

The process right now is in several steps:

1. Capture a series of pages from the fiche. The focus is very sensitive and my process has evolved considerably, so the later pages are a little better. Because I plan on replacing the diagrams with quick ref diagrams, I am not too concerned as long as the text is legible. When I am not setting focus, this can be quite quick.... but I check focus every 5 or 6 pages.

2. Process the pages. The image is inverted so white is black etc, then the image is stretched to give good contrast (white paper, black text and diagrams), sharpened, and then an extra pass over the diagrams to stretch as much detail as possible. There is a limit to how good this can get based on the resolution of the originals.... massive magnification required as each page is quite tiny. Then the image must be rotated/cropped to best match the page borders in the fiche. This step takes roughly 5 minutes per page but I am getting quicker.

3. Stack them into a PDF. I've used a numbering convention that roughly matches the fiche organization, and bookmarks are automatically created which will help build an index. e.g. A03.10.07 is section A03, subsection 10, and page 7 of that "column" in the fiche. This may change later but it working for now.

[Glenn Wallace]

A few months ago I got a microfiche of the gearbox stuff. Unfortunately due to Covid I can't nip into the company to sit on one of their old microfiche readers and print out page-by-page.

Let's connect over PM, might be nice to scan this one too.

[gt40steve]

Glenn,

I'm in awe of your patience & determination. Well done !

Regards Steve

[Glenn Wallace]

Updates:

All of the Escort 75 fiche is scanned, including some reshoots of a couple of pages that were a bit wobbly on focus. 486 pages total. I have processed 438 of those pages. Moving on to scan the OHV/OHC fiche.

I set up a website using an online PDF viewer. It requires a login, and shows a watermark of your email address on each page.

Another advantage is that as I fix issues, I don't have to email a 250MB PDF to you.

The web plugin doesn't support a table of contents, but I plan to link the diagrams on the fiche table of contents (eg Front Brakes) to the appropriate page. I can't really do that until I compile the final cleaned up pages into the PDF, as re-adding any pages breaks the links.

So right now, a lot of scrolling to find stuff.

Looking for a couple of people to try it out (Drew's been AWOL?)

Please PM me your email address and I give you the URL and credentials.
First three punters only. Please be prepared to give feedback.

[dasadrew]

Hi Glenn,


got your eMails ok. House-building at the moment and, all of a sudden, winter ended and the tradesmen are all hanging on decisions for electric and plumbing positions!


Tried to contact a couple of companies for a scan of the gearbox microfiche but no luck here, so it might be on its way to you when our American guests return in 3 weeks. I'd also put the blue-book page scans in colour at hi-res on an SD card. Should I dissect the green gearbox pic book too and scan it?


I think I may also have an engine microfiche. Discovering stuff every few days as we start to pack things for the big house move.


I'll get back to your eMail during the next couple of days when SWMBO is in home office and doesn't see that I'm doing non-house things on the PC!


Drew

[Glenn Wallace]

Yes please on gearbox book