Not a great deal done today as its Lynne's last day on holiday and she wanted a little of my time and as she commented she got a whole 1hr 45mins. Still not too bad, I managed to squeeze in a trip to the tinsmiths to have some stainless for the rear indicators cut, a trip to Bills autoparts for some side light/indicator lamps, pick up my suit from the dry cleaners and squeeze in lunch. How can she say I spend all of my time playing on the car.
While I was waiting for a delivery to finish of the dash I carried on with the lighting, I had sorted out the headlight wiring the other day and time now for the sidelights. The amber lights on the wing edges needed a little work as one of them had no earth attached and relied on being wired to one of the bolt connections, so out with the soldering iron. I had to remove the rubber sleeve to get at the outer part of the lamp but it soldered on Ok and I just slid the sleeve back on, other than that it was just a polish of the chrome and new gaskets made, I fitted the new lamps then tested.
The wing sidelights had a braided exposed copper earth, so I cut close to the top and soldered new wire to it and slipped on a heat shrink sleeve.
The top one is done.
The Warning lights for the dash arrived from CBS Online and I set about positioning them on the dash, I had spent a little time cleaning up the edges of the veneer with the drum sander and gave it its first sanding, I need to buy a bottle of sanding sealer to try and fix the grain before the lacquer.
I ordered the small chrome lamps which need a 12mm hole drilled.
I used a bit of masking and marked of the holes to be drilled, this was the tricky part as if I made a mistake it was back to the drawing board.
I used blanking grommets to replace the lamps and laid out a pattern, then I fitted a 12mm bit to my plunge router closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I was worried about the veneer splitting if I had used a flat bit drill and new it wouldn't with the router bit doing around 12,000 rpm but a bit more difficult to set up perfectly.
A little out of alignment on the bottom two but a little filling will sort that out.
Back in the garage after lunch and started fitting the side indicators, the original attachment bolts had no nuts and are only around 3mm and I ain't got nothing that small so I drilled out both the lamp base and the wing to take 5mm and bolted both lamps on.
Next up was the part I have been both looking forward to and a little afraid of doing and that is drilling through the wing and getting it right first time. I had stupidly siliconed the lamp to the base yesterday without marking the position of the base on the wing, silly boy. So it was a little bit of memory, measuring and guess work to get it in the correct position and it ain't half bad. I covered the area with masking tape and marked in 50mm from the edge of the wing and marked the hole directly centre with the centre of the side indicator. This was the lining up area I used when I bent the base, so fingers crossed I drilled the hole and fitted the light and I guess luck was on my side as it was pretty good.
I lined it up as best I could with the wing and put a small felt tip pen mark at the centre rear point to re-position and took it of again, then breathed a big sigh of relief.
I put double sided black foam tape on the bottom and trimmed around the edges then very carefully lined it up and stuck it down, I have also bolted it down just in case although this stuff does not come off easily.
I thought I would give them a little test.
Nice and bright.
Even brighter, I shall link this up to the front sidelight and onto the headlight sidelight when I buy the halogen upgrade.
Next up was the headlight.
These headlight are very close to the side of the car, when I originally bought it the passenger side headlight had been rubbing against the body and had worn through the chrome and rusted against the body, so before fitting I got the wax out and gave it a good buffing where the headlight is closest to the body as no way to reach it when fitted. I slackened the underside bracket to line up the holes and fit the headlight into position and tightened up. I am still waiting for the new chrome rims but these should be arriving from SVC tomorrow. I shall learn the basics of setting up headlights so that it is as near as possible for the MOT and the garage won't have to mess about with it much.
Well thats one side complete, Lynn's back at work tomorrow so hopefully I shall have the next few days to myself and will get stuck in and finish the front and hopefully start on the electrics.
Even looks good from the back.
See ya Paul
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