Well, it's been ages since I updated you all on how work is progressing on my 19TRS auto. I've no real excuse, except I've been (rarely) too busy and (mostly) too lazy.
So, here goes:
4 weeks ago everything was going well. Typically for my life however, things began to go mammarically supine:
Headlight Protectors
First was when the postie delivered the headlight protectors I'd bought from Mallion for £20+P&P. I skipped down the stairs with glee to collect them from the postman, joyfully began removing the packaging to find.. you guessed it:
and
You can see the joy on my face, can't you?
To be fair to Barry he didn't ask me to pay for them once he'd seen how they arrived. But I was still gutted - it was clear that they'd been in really excellent condition before Postman Prat got hold of them. Although Barry had used bubblewrap and brown paper, I wish I'd had the foresight to check that he would stick them in a box - I'd happily have paid the extra postage.
So, let this serve as a warning to anyone selling/buying headlight protectors by post - USE A BOX!
Wheel Trims
Roverman kindly donated some wheel trims to smarten the steel wheels up. I plan to smooth Hammerite the wheels black, and repaint the trims to tidy them up. This should give a nice black line around the silver trim, and that'll do nicely.
Rear wing
As you may recall, this was severely rusted. A replacement panel is the obvious answer, but as this is a rolling restoration that will eventually need a full respray, and as the current budget is tight, Graham suggested that I let him have a go at repairing the damage as at least the car can be MOT'd and driven around for the time being. So I agreed:
Before:
After:
It looks really good. The rubber strip is missing and the adhesive makes it look much tattier in that photo than it does in real life. It'll do for now, that's for sure
Tailgate Glass
The tailgate glass was held in by only a strip of adhesive on the right-hand side about 8 inches long - it's quite amazing that it didn't fly off when my brother was hurtling down the motorway from Richard's and slam straight into the gorgeous silver Aston Martin DB9 that was behind him for quite a few minutes - try explaining that one on the insurance form!
It didn't take long to remove it, clean everything up and then Tiger Seal it back in. It's now nice and solid <vicar!> and appears to be watertight.
C-Post Panels
Originally my car had the plastic windows in the C posts, but the drivers-side one was all but hanging off, and was an obvious source of water ingression. Similarly to the tailgate glass, there was only a small patch of adhesive at the top corner, so I reasoned that something like a cheesewire-saw would do the job nicely. I didn't have one of those, however. I had Stanley blades, a flexible snap-blade craft knife, and a guitar string <insert G-string joke here>.
Work began ok, and progress was slow, but steady. I was just telling Graham how precious these plastic windows are because most of them are now crazed badly, whereas these were lovely and clear and undamaged when.... it snapped in two. The fscker laughed at me. I said some naughty words. I said more naughty words when Roverman just laughed at me when I asked if replacements were likely. Hmm. Solid C-posts it is then.
This is actually ok, as I much prefer the look of the car with the solid C posts, and that collection of lines and angles around that area always looks very Lamborghini Countach to me.
They also make the car (look) more secure, so it wasn't the disaster it could have been. A few emails later and a big box of bits (this time thankfully intact!) arrived from RxBx - thanks Richard! So, the work could begin.
First job was to carefully remove the passenger side plastic window in case someone needed it. That lasted all of about a minute before it decided to break like its brother. This was annoying, but speeded up the removal process, and after a bit of brute force and ignorance (we should adopt that as a stage name...) the panels were removed and ready to prep.
We started by removing all the old adhesive from the panels and the car - oh, and removals of large chunks of flesh and lots of blood too - no matter how much we warned each other to take care with the craft knife, we both ended up cutting ourselves - Graham sliced the tip of his index finger, and I managed a spectacular cut through the top of my left thumb and all the way down the entire nail near the edge. It bled. A lot. So, more naughty words, lots of cold water, dried with a towel, bound together with electrical tape and carried on working. When I got home I superglued it together (otherwise the cut nail would catch on everything) and it has healed so well you almost can't see it now.
Anyway, aside the DIY surgery, the job went well. Add a bit of prep, rust treatment, primer and white spray Graham had in his shed, attach the new interior trim panels et voila:
Of course it's not the right colour, but it's close enough to stop it looking too tatty, and when the rest of the bodywork is done G will get a can or 2 of the proper colour made up at our local suppliers, which will do until it's ready for a respray once replacement passenger-side doors have been sourced.
Spoiler
While the Tiger Seal was out, I removed the rear spoiler, cleaned everything, and then refitted using a good bead of Tiger Seal all the way round. I'm still not convinced I like it, but at least now it won't fall off!
LMH Leak
When I collected the car from Richard there was no sign of any hydraulic problems - no warning lights, car rose smoothly and quickly, and no green stuff underneath when we moved it. Same goes for the drive home - no sign of any trouble. I promised my long-suffering neighbour that it wouldn't cover her drive in any of that nasty green stuff like my CX did when that was parked there. I can only assume the BX overheard this, and took it as some kind of challenge
Sure enough, next morning there was a big wet patch under the engine bay. "I think it's water" I hopefully said. Nope. LHM. No sign of anything shooting out when the engine's running, and a too-slow-to-see drip when it's switched off, so it couldn't be anything high pressure. At first I hoped it was perhaps spilled LHM washing down with the rain from somewhere underbonnet, but it wasn't. A thorough investigation was called for - time to call in the Stig, err, Graham.
After some prodding he's tracked the leak down to a split in the octopus. If anyone has any photos that would help (or if they can point me towards the ones I may have missed on here) and/or tips then I'd be really grateful.
Drivers Headlight
While he was rooting about and getting LHM in the cuts from prepping for the C-post panels, I made myself useful and fitted the replacement headlight kindly donated by Electrokid on the
"buy now, pay me back later when you've got something useful that I need" scheme, which is a favourite of mine - especially during this time of fiscal malnourishment, so that's that sorted, although the sidelight bulb holder is a different type, and kept falling out until I modified it with blu-tak
Sunroof Drains
Following Mulley's how-to, I checked the sunroof drains, and they were both free-flowing. There was some rust in the sunroof tray however, so cleaned that up. The sunroof itself is quite rusty underneath, but solid. I'm going to wire brush it, rust treat it, and smooth black Hammerite it.
So where was the water coming from? Well I think it was from the leaky tailgate glass and the barely attached driver-side plastic window on the C-post. Under the rear seat was VERY wet, and I think the water had just run into the footwell from there. Now the tailgate glass and C-post trims are watertight things seem ok so far.
Electrical Bits
This is "my side of things" and while Graham was busy elsewhere I kept myself busy by cleaning all the dash panels, vents etc, and sorting out the interior electrics...
Heater Modification
My relay clicks fine as it was, so that was easy
Plip & Receiver
When Oscar advertised a working plip & receiver I snapped them up. Fitting took all of a minute, and it works fine. Infrared plips are never as good as RF ones, but once I've put new batteries in the plip (or should I say
when I remember to buy some new batteries to put in the plip) I'm sure it will be much improved. Either way it is nice to have it for completeness and originality.
ISO Harness For Stereo
First job was the installation of an ISO harness so the replacement stereo would not only plug in, but be fully connected in terms of ignition sensing (no accidentally leaving the stereo on to flatten the battery), dash illumination sensing (so the buttons light/display dims for night use) and all the speaker connections - including the new rear speakers. This didn't take long, and thanks to Mat Fenwick pointing out that both the illumination and ignition are ready for tapping at the LCD dash clock everything works and the wiring is simple.
Head Unit
Having the wiring there won't do any good unless there's something decent plugged into it. I wanted something that sounded good, but a modern "space invaders" head unit would look tacky and out of place. I've been a fan of Blaupunkt for a long time, and as the original head unit was most likely a Blaupunkt this was the way I wanted to go - indeed my CX has the top Blaupunkt system from 79-80, and my XM has the top Blaupunkt system from 1997-8 (as they're both top models - a Prestige and Exclusive respectively).
Of course in 1987 it would have been a cassette based unit, but I wanted CD. Blaupunkt did have CD players back then, but they were rare and hellishly expensive (and still are!), and the CD had to be loaded into a "cartridge" first. I decided to look a few years later, and picked up an early 1990's unit with original box, manual, connectors and 2 keycards on eBay for £10. With its inverse green and black LCD like the dash clock it fits in well aesthetically, and could
almost have been there forever:
The CD doesn't read discs (something for me to play around with when I have time and the right mood) but the radio sounds great, and my ipod will play fine through an FM transmitter. This is what I'd use anyway, and having the CD working is really only for completeness.
I
might change it later if something I like better comes along. The only reason being that it doesn't have RDS (though that was around before CDs..) and it is quite handy (traffic announcements, automatically switching to a stronger signal while you're travelling etc). That said I can live without it no problems.
Front Speakers
With the nice-sounding but poorly fitting Alpines transferred to Graham's Discovery, I used the Philips rear speakers from the XM as fronts in the BX. Mounted behind replacement grilles purchased from Oscar at the same time as the plip (and the radio 'flap', come to think of it..) they look MUCH better. Soundwise they're ok, but I'll replace them with something better eventually.
Rear Speakers
My car didn't come with either rear speakers or dash tweeters originally. I'm going to fit the dash tweeters from my XM when I replace the XM ones, which I'll be doing when I do all the wiring for the Blaupunkt stereo and satnav system - complete with amplifier, (subtle) subwoofer etc. - think quality rather than boom boom chav noises, but I had some barely used Blaupunkt speakers that I'd bought for the Niva that I sold on, and I found I had these left over. A bit of careful measuring and marking, and Graham's jigsaw-ing and they're nicely installed on the parcel shelf.
They're a little modern looking perhaps, but don't stick out like a sore thumb. All that remained was running cables nicely and neatly (which gave me the opportunity to remove and clean all the centre console) and the job is done. The overall sound in the car is much better than before, and once the tweeters are in the dash I reckon it'll be great. As I said before, the fronts are a bit weedy, but I'll not be in any rush as it's just me being picky.
Talking of parcel shelves (which we weren't...) one of my clips has broken:
If anyone's got one and they're going to Gaydon on Sunday could they please give it to Richard
Oh, and rear headrests, but I know that's a longshot
Anyway, after reading such a long posting you deserve a cuppa - I know I do after writing it
or take the safe option & blow 1st 
The wire should only EVER be red IMHO, especially considering that car is (almost always) -ve ground. Using a green wire for +ve is just asking for trouble. Sure, it is perfectly safe if you're the only one who works on the car - you know what it's for, but for someone unfamiliar with the vehicle, and who didn't take the battery out.... Anyway, rant over, and thankfully no harm done. 
