Ready to go

After various false starts with the instruments, the dash is now complete. It took 8 weeks to resolve a problem with the converted rev counter though. I had bought a matching pair of early Jaguar dials - speedo and rev counter and the latter was converted to electronic operation. After fitting the newly converted dial, it wouldn't work. I tried this and that and even the services of an auto electrician, but nothing persuaded it to work. I returned it to the supplier who informed me that there was nothing wrong with it and he sent it back with a charge for checking a non-faulty unit. Anyway, back in the car it went and still it didn't work. Back on to the by now very disinterested supplier. After some strong emails he finally admitted that he had supplied a positive earth model and not the negative earth one ordered. Eureka - the returned unit worked!

The finished dash does look the part now (I think).

And so to the MOT. I checked everything and all seemed OK two days before the test was due. On the morning of the test, the dipped beam headlamps had disappeared, only main beam was working. I checked all I could in the limited time available, but couldn't trace a fault. All I could do was to take it and know it would fail. Worse was to come as during the test it appeared that when the sidelights were on the indicators wouldn't work, and neither would the stop lights. I had only checked these separately, not together.

With my  failure notice I pootled off home and got the test meter out. For some reason the original, and apparently continuous, wire from the dip switch to the fuse box was carrying no current. In went a new wire, and voila - dipped headlights. And so to the rear lights. I reasoned that this could only be a poor earth so looked for somewhere to create a new earth point - not that easy on a car with a wooden body. However, there were two bolts in the rear of the car that hold the rear body mounts and connect to the chassis. This was ideal and sure enough, the lights were restored.

I had noticed that the tyres were perished around the walls so ordered and new set and had them fitted at my local garage. On collecting the car I was advised that one tyre had a rather larger valve hole in the rim than the diameter of the valve. They duly suggested that I should purchase some now rare valve support collars to resolve the problem but didn't think I would get a problem with the tyre - it was just to be sure. A search of Ebay yielded one for £23.18.! A small piece of plastic for £23 - he had to be joking, but he wasn't. A Google trawl finally produced some at £0.10 each so four were ordered - total £7 odd with postage. Much cheaper than Ebay, but..... Anyway, the garage couldn't fit the collar immediately so I thought I'd have it done at the same time as the MOT retest.

Along came the Bank Holiday Monday (Whitsun) and Jan and I decided to go to Woburn Abbey to a Classic Car Show. After 12 miles the car started weaving about and sure enough, the nearside rear tyre (with the suspect valve hole was completely flat. Who had removed the jack, soft headed hammer and other tools in the garage to sort the wiring? Yes - me. The RAC were duly called and after an hour's wait all was sorted, but by now it was too late to reach the show so we headed home. Bit of an anticlimax.

I checked the internet for suppliers of inner tubes with the correct wide-based valve and found just one company so ordered a pair of inner tubes for next day delivery. When they arrived they were the wrong ones - they both had the narrower valves. I tried to contact the supplier but couldn't make then see any sense so used the collars previously bought. What is it with car spares? On 50% of occasions, deliveries seem to be wrong.
 
Three days later and I had the MOT pass. Now to use the car, if the weather improves that is.

I've one more job in mind and that's to move the handbrake outside the car to give more leverage with a longer handle. The present handbrake passed the MOT test but is only just doing its job because the angle of leverage is wrong to get good braking effort. Still, with the MOT in place I can take my time on that.