In beginning of June, I managed to spend some time in garage.
Radiator.As radiator is quite rusty and I have small hopes that it’ll keep coolant, I took measures of it to see, if I could find a bit modern replacement. I remember spending lots of hours in internet searching it, but nowadays it’s hard to find parts by measure, most sellers deal with marques and models or by in worst case, by car’s registration number. I remember finding something suitable and now I hope I wrote it down, or saved it some somewhere, as currently I have no clue what it was
But I remeber comparing with original radiator, it was cheaper. I hope I'm not wrong, but I rmemeber price around 30 euros.
Electrics.I cleaned as much contacts and bulb holders I could find and tried how the electrics work. Before taking front subframe and engine out, I wanted to see, does all electrics work, so there wouldn’t be any surprises when putting it back together.
At the beginning, hazard and indicators didn’t work and low and main beams had their tricks too. About them a bit later.
Testing electrics included trying to turn engine over with starter too. As there was no fuel tank and fuel pump was broken too, then first couple attempts didn’t gave much results. I even filmed those attempts, just in case. But going ahead in future, I managed to get engine running for couple of seconds in June, so this was enough for me.
Under the dashboard cover.As I had issues with lights, I took off dashboard cover to see, what I could find under there. What I liked was not too much wiring and mostly it seemed visually pretty OK:
Even some original wiring labels:
I especially liked window heating system. You can see rectangular metal tube with lot of small holes in it, including screw holes. Through those bigger holes air was blown to front window
Dashboard cover have the same holes. How they work, I still will see.
What I didn’t like, were those fresh air tubes/hoses, that were already fallen apart on their location and when I took them out, they were of course even worse:
Low and main beam.As I remember, low beam worked, but turning on high beam, one light didn’t work. And trying with different bulbs gave every time different result, including one working and another glowing. That was a no-go in every meaning. I also found that last bulbs in those rusted headlights were 100/80 W. As reflectors were rusty, then most likely more powerful bulbs gave more light.
A bit fast forward to future I found that light switch and connector had some better days, as one pin have had pretty much heat:
Could have been because of those 100/80 W bulbs.
Going even more to the future, I disconnected the burnt connector and put on another connector and switch and headlight problems were solved. Positioning lights, low and high beam worked as they should. At least when I last tried them
Hazard and indicators.What I didn’t liked removing dashboard cover was this hazard light relay:
You may ask why, as in picture it seems in pretty good condition, although next to some rusted bolts (a hint). As I mentioned before, hazard and indicators didn’t work, so I decided to give this relay a closer look and see weren’t connectors oxidized. Pictures are taken a bit later, but result was this:
Trying to disconnect relay, it literally crumbled to pieces and dust of rust. So obviously hazards couldn’t work.
Why I was referring to this relay as hazard is, I found this label:
Around wires that were connected to this relay:
With some fast forwarding, including search in web and so on, as I didn’t find in local stores metal two pin relay, I bought plastic one:
Again fast forwarding from June I can say, that hazard lights work perfectly with this plastic relay and for now wires have proper connectors too and all is safe.
About indicators a bit later.
Heater.With dashboard cover off, I also found quite rusty heater:
As I had couple of heaters spare, including MPi’s with two speed:
I tried to fit those under the dash and in intended space in dashboard cover. Visually it is obvious, that MPi’s is bigger, but for my surprise old and new heaters had also different front-end measurements, if I explain it correctly. I mean old heater’s toggles and switch panel is much more out, than MPi’s. It seems I unfortunately didn’t make pictures of those trial fitments.
That meant, if I want to use MPi heater, I have to either cut dashboard cover, or refabricate toggles panel, or restore original heater and try to fit two speed MPi’s motor in it…
Search for parts.Most of the month I was busy with work and free moments not in garage I spent on search for Lucas L867 lenses, front headlights and frames, seats and other parts mentioned earlier.