Wiper arms

Finally, the rain couldn't hold off any longer and I had to put the car away in the garage, ironically, this reminded me I needed to fit the windscreen wipers. These were relatively straight forward but the arms had to be tweaked a little in the vice to get the bend right so the blades sat square with the bottom of the screen. The arms were adjustable for length and once set so they reached the top of the screen as they swept, a small locking tab is twisted to hold them at that length.

Indoor picture I'm afraid

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 :-(

Wiper Motor Park

I made up a mini loom with the right connections to get some power to the wiper motor to test the park direction. Pleased to say the motor ran smoothly and the wipers parked in the right direction. I was able to test slow, fast and off/park... quite exciting really !

Wiper Motor

Fitted the wiper motor and wiper spindles this week. The spindles have been on before when I originally drilled the holes for them but I'm now finding that bits are starting to go and stay on. I'd planned right at the outset to trial fit everything first and then put them away until needed, well it's approaching that time... finally !


The motor itself is easy to fit, just a rubber lined strap and a couple of bolts see it secured into place. A little more tricky is the bundy tube which the drive cable runs through and goes to each wiper spindle. I decided to bend the bundy tube to roughly match the curvature of the body in this area and cut it to length afterwards. I'm glad I did as now that it's all bolted up, everything seems fairly neat without any sharp bends which should lead to smooth running.


Of course it hasn't been tested yet and I could live to regret these words. The other issue yet to face is which way the wiper blades will park when the motor is switched off. There's a small plastic ramp inside the motor which dictates whether the wipers park on the left or right. Which way round the spindles are fitted also has a bearing on this, i.e. with the cable passing over the top or underneath the drive wheel. Although the motor came with a small note showing which way round the ramp was installed, I couldn't relate it to which way round I've installed the spindles so this will have to be determined by trial and error. I'm not the first to face this and looking at pictures on other's build sites it doesn't seem too difficult to change the ramp round, I just need to work out how to get some power to the motor to determine which way round mine will work.