Lights

Spent this afternoon wiring up the front headlights and indicators. I've gone for the 4-way waterproof connectors from polevolt in common with others, which provide a really neat solution to connecting everything up but does involve cutting off the existing connections, cutting the wiring to length and crimping on your own spade terminals. What makes it particularly tricky is that most of it has to be done under the wheelarch working with relativley short lengthes of wire. I also took the opportunity to run all the cables through protective sheathing, sealing the ends with heat shrink. This is probably all overkill but it has made a very neat job and I quite enjoyed doing it !

I decided to secure the connectors with p-clips but had some trouble with the sizes. When tightened down, the P-clips (25mm) seemed a little tight and distorted the polevolt connectors, squashing them out of shape and negating the sealing properties and the benefits of them being waterproof. I think it's just a case of cutting the rubber band of the p-clip back a little but for now, they are temporarily mounted until I can sort something out.

I've also finished painting the isoflex liquid rubber under the arches. I've gone for two coats at the moment but may add another at a later date.

Just keep moving forward...

A few pictures just to show where I'm up to. there no major steps forward here, just small jobs being ticked off the list, but as the title suggests I'm trying to keep the momentum and keep moving forward.

Here you can see that both of the wiper spindles have been fitted

I've started to paint stonechip under the front arches and in common with a few other builds I've been following I've used Isoflex liquid rubber which is intended as a roofing product but leaves a rubberised coating which should cut down on the spider web type of cracking often caused by stones flying up under the arches from the tyres. This is after the second coat and as you can see is still drying. This has to be the least enjoyable part of the build so far and is arm acheing, sticky, smelly and new T-shirt ruining.... ! (The lights and indicators have been removed for this part of the build and will probably only go back on now once the body has been polished.)

I've also fitted the heater for the last time after buying silicon rubber hose to fit over the outlets. The two outlets are at right angles to each other meaning you need one straight hose for the outlet which exist horizontally and one with a 90 degree bend in it for the outlet which exists vertically. Rather than buy two, I bough one 90 bend hose with extra long legs and simply cut one leg short using the off cut as the straight section for the other. Both of these will need cutting to length so I've left them long for now.

You can also see the battery studs which extend from with the wheel arch cavity containing the heater through into the engine bay to provide convenient power take off.

Here you can see the relay block and fuse box mounted along with the hot air outlet for the heater and the windscreen support bar which extends across the cockpit behind the dashboard. It all gets a bit tight in this area so I'm glad to have that part out of the way. If you use the Vectra column, before mounting the relay block there is a small modification to the wiring required which I strongly recommend you carry out first.

The last photo shows the dashboard temporarily held in place prior to marking out for the guages