Quick tart up at the back, fuel guage fix

The fuel guage has been reading past full since the mot. I'd assumed there were crossed wires. Not so though! It turns out that a dash earth was touching the gauge, giving it a permanently false high reading! Bit if electrical tape and it was fixed and working. And now I know I need more fuel.

Meanwhile, I set to work with a wire brush, sandpaper and some hammerite.
Should keep the crossmember happy for a while. Just need to get the underside blasted and waxoyled.



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MOT results

Wonky went for it's mot on Friday, picked up from me on thursday. Before it left I went round the car tightening up the suspension, the shock mounts and u bolts as well as finally spreading the split pins. I found one stripped u bolt and replaced it. That it took 20 minutes is a symptom of practice only!

I did a short, highly naughty test drive up my road to check the condition of everything. The brakes were pulling the car to one side. No time to correct it though. I assumed it'd fail in it
But I was more worried about getting two or three sheets of fails and advisories.

At 11am, the garage texted me.

Wonky had failed on the brake imbalance and a weak handbrake, but nothing else! Not even an advisory!

I'm pretty pleased, 12 months work has clearly paid off :)
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One day to go...

Dan the auto sparky came back yesterday and for the price of his fuel and a beer, he's fixed the burnout + the cause (an earth wire ring terminal was shorting against the voltage regulator when the dash was pushed in).

He's added an extra, heavy duty, earth from the dash to the earth point within engine bay and properly insulated the earth ring terminal from the autosparks loom. He's also wired and tested the tow plug. And the wipers are parking. I have had to replace my indicator stalk though, as it was properly and completely knackered. It wouldn't switch high/lo beam at all. Easyish job fortunately.

My dash is now fully rebuilt. Steering wheel on. Everything works. I'm chuffed to bits.

Jobs to do:
Bolt the last seat back up.
Re-attach a mudguard
Refill the box with EP90.

It might well be a long night!

Quick workshop tour!

As you can see, no room for a four post lift, which is sad.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel

But there's a haze of Lucas wiring smoke making it that bit harder to see.


I spent this afternoon/evening migrating the indicator and fusebox wires through to the column aperture, and rebuilding the dash.

I did a quick systems check after plugging everything in and found a few problems.

1. Wiper/washer switch wired incorrectly. Fixed, but the wipers still aren't "parking"?

2. Indicator lights not functioning

3. Dash illumination not functioning

It turns out that 2/3 are caused by the lack of any dash earth at all. Seems the sparky thought the instruments earthed through the loom. He's coming back to amend it, and to replace the instrument earth link that burned out during my systems check.

MOT is booked for Thursday, giving me three evenings, and one afternoon to rebuild the rear seating area (all got stripped out during the rewire), re-attach a mudguard and refill the boxes with ep90.

I'm wired!

Dan spent another 6 hours wiring today with the end result being that Wonky now works. And not just that, but it's wired better than it has been for many many years. No splices. Properly wired radio. No 70 amp relays in odd places.

That's the upside. Downside is that Dan is an auto electrician, not a land rover mechanic. So he's wired up the fusebox through the dash apeture. Which means I'm going to have to unplug it all, jiggle and hope that I'm not as inept as I think I am whilst I plug it all back in again. Sigh.


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Astounding progress!

What a difference a day makes. Dan the auto sparkie turned up at 1pm today and by 2 we had the chassis loom in place. By 3, the engine loom was in. The rest of the wiring however was a problem. 88" petrol diagram? No... 109" v8 stage 1 diagram? No... 1982 90" diagram? No.

For some reason I have two flasher relays. No wiring diagram covers it. There's just a whole bunch of stuff in there which came out of Solihull but isn't in any diagram written. Typical land rover. Bodged from top to bottom.

Anyway, dan reckons there's only an hour of work left. God knows what his bill is going to be but if the result is a working truck, it's worth it. There's just no way I could have done this on my own.


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