A Good Session in the Garage

Having done a lot of driving recently with little or no maintenance being done, culminating in total indicator failure again yesterday, I decided it was time to buckle down and spend some time fixing her.  Luckily the weather was nice and the temperature reasonably high.

First quick fix was to replace the flasher unit with my spare one.  Indicators then worked perfectly, so obviously the old flasher unit had been doused in water once too often. 

Major job was fixing the reversing lights so for the first time ever, I had the car up on ramps at the back and axle stands at the front allowing me to crawl underneath with no problem.   So I inspected everything I could see, and it all looks really good.

I can now see how to access the fuel filter, and replacing the petrol pipe will be fairly easy, although it looked perfectly fine and I haven't has a petrol smell recently with using her on a regular basis so I will leave that for now.

So first task was to find the reversing light.  Turned out to be obvious from underneath and the reason for the failure was also obvious as one of the wires has snapped off.   

Unfortunately it used a very small spade connector rather than the normal ones I have.  Luckily I managed a temporary fix by soldering the wire to the existing spade.  I will get some replacement connectors and do a proper fix next time the car is up on the ramp, as well as making the 12v feed ignition controlled rather than direct off the battery (Leaving her in reverse gear parked on a hill drains the battery at the moment).

 While I was under the car I decided to fit a guard over the handbrake mechanism.  As you can see from this photo it is totally exposed, and if I ever get around to replacing the exhaust mounting, it would be vulnerable to grounding.

So I riveted a small, shaped,  stainless steel plate over it, so that will hit the road before the handbrake mechanism.








So a really good session, although I need to figure out a better way of lifting the car onto ramps as it took 3 stages with the jack to get the wheels high enough up.   And for the first time in months, all the lights work.  Although one of the headlights appears to be brighter then the other, so will have to investigate that.