Electrics

Well I finally plucked up courage and connected the battery today. All circuits worked OK except for two which kept blowing fuses. A bit of detective work sorted the first, the sidelight bulb was damaged and where the terminals pushed into the holder it was creating a short. The second I've not solved yet. On accessory power i.e. first position on the ignition, if I put everything on i.e heater, wipers, washer, sidelights and fog light and then flash the headlights, the bulb blows. It isn't a problem on the second position just the first. It suggests the fuse for the accessory circuit isn't rated high enough but I want to be sure before I mess with it. Either that or refrain from sitting there with my lights on, in the fog, with the engine off, heater on, washing the windscreen with the wipers going and flashing my headlights at passers by.

I'll try and post some pictures later in the week but the other achievements were fitting the side repeaters, fitting the windscreen washer jet and the windscreen wipers and finally fitting the windscreen centre stay which was a bit fiddly and necessitated cutting down an Allen key to fit.

I also fitted the front floor carpets and started painting the underfloor strengthening plates for the seatbelt harnesses.

One setback I had today concerns the wiper motor. When I originally fitted it I checked the park position and decided it was correct, result ! The more I thought about it and looked at other cars made me decide it was wrong after all so I had to take it out again, take it all apart and move the small plastic "ramp" inside which dictates which side it parks on. This wasn't too difficult but I did have a little trouble getting it all back together. Anyway, turns out I was right the first time, if you look at a cobra you'll notice the wipers park on the opposite side to a normal car, well that's true for my car anyway. So I had to take it out again, only this time, the dash under trays, wiring looms and carpet have all been added which made it a little more tricky. In addition, it turned out I had slightly damaged the end of the wiper motor shaft when I refitted the circlip and I couldn't now get the shaft out of the casing. I ended up having to drift it out with a punch which also pulled the press fit bearings out ! So a simple job which was right the first time took me all afternoon to put right... again, including getting grease all over my lovely new carpet :-(