Bonnet reshaping

 After I'd cut the rear wheel studs and got everything sat straight, I decided to have a go at the bonnet. It still doesn't line up properly. Well, it doesn't line up properly for me! The trailing edge sits half an inch or so lower than the body. I had thought it just needed some padding, which is why I bought the extra foam strip. Turns out it needs a bit more than that.

What I've done is drill holes on the corners, one about three inches in from the top and one about three inches down, both sides. Then using a nut and bolt I was able to dial in good positioning for the corners. I could do with a bit more working space but actually it worked quite well. 

The bonnet sides now need to be curved to match the body sides. The middle part needs to come out, and the bottom needs to be pulled in. That will work well with the bonnet catches I have, I just need to make sure there are suitable fixing points all the way round. I'm not convinced foam is the best way to go, although it will stop the squeaking that currently happens when I roll it in and out of the garage! I think I'm back to 3D printed brackets, not as big and bulky as the ones I did before but probably more curved to allow the bonnet to drop into place. And they will reuse the holes I've made doing the bolt adjusters, so they should be very secure. 

What to do when you lose some wires...

 This weekend hasn't got off to a good start. I had hoped that with the sunny weather I'd get the wiring done, then potentially get the car running. Of course, something had to go wrong. 

That something turned out to be an absence of relays. As anyone who does car wiring knows, there are various circuits that are a little too high powered to run through the switch, and therefore need a relay in attendance to keep things from melting. Just going through the component locator on the wiring diagram, there is;

• A/C relay (not needed)
• Blower motor relay (not needed)
• Circuit opening relay (needed, page 2 C4)
• Cooling fan relay (needed, page 3 E10)
• Headlight relay (needed, page 4 D14)
• Horn relay (needed, page 5 C17)
• Main relay (needed, page 2 E4)
• Retractor relay (not needed)
• TNS relay (needed, page 4 E14)

So that's nine relays, of which I need six. 

• The circuit opening relay is not a standard one. It's got VIO and BLK for energising the relay, blu-red to the fuel tank unit, wht-red which is similar to the main relay, and lt grn which goes to the air flow meter for some reason? This sits on it's own and is already wired up, I remember doing this one yesterday for the fuel pump;

• The cooling fan relay is a regular 4 pin, with blk-wht and blk-grn to energise the relay, blk-red from the cooling fan fuse and yel off to the cooling fan motor. This is inside the fuse box, you can just see the yellow wire exiting stage left;

• The headlight relay is a regular 4 pin, red-blu and blu-yel to energise the relay, red-blu to the headlight switch and wht-blk also to the headlight switch. This is gone, I can't see any sign of it.
• The horn relay is a regular 4 pin, grn-org and wht-grn to energise the relay, wht-grn to the stop fuse and grn-red to the horn. For some reason I still have this one, it was on it's own and I think it must have been kept as part of the horn circuit;

• The main relay is a regular 4 pin, blk-wht and blak to energise the relay, wht-red off to various points on the engine and wht-grn to the injector fuse. I say this is a 'regular' relay, it's a bit beefy compared to the ones above. This also lives in the fuse box and is the largest box in there;

• The TNS relay is a regular 4 pin, lt-grn and wht-red to energise the relay, wht-red from the btn fuse and wht-blu to the tail fuse. And this is gone, it'll be with the headlight relay no doubt but no idea where either of them are.

So this leaves me with a decision to make. Overall I'm going to go visit AliExpress and buy a small relay board for the missing relays. But that's now a third box on my ever decreasing electrical platform;

Even this screenshot is missing the circuit opening relay and indicator flasher, so there is precious little space left. However, the box on the bottom is just a fuse box, it does nothing clever. I am wondering whether I should buy a combined relay/fuse box, and do away with the unit at the bottom. It shouldn't be too bad to rewire, the unit I'm considering from AliExpress comes prewired so I just need to buzz them out and make sure I still have wires going where I need them. 

That fuse box is made up of 17 holes, of which 7 are already empty. From the remainder I need;

• 15A engine
• 10A tail
• 10A meter
• 10A stop
• 10A Hazard

There's also a 15A Fog fuse that I'd like to move out of the larger unit. I can't take anything else out of there because they're all the larger fuses (30A to 80A) and I'm not trusting an AliExpress special to carry that sort of current! 

So that's six fuses needed, I might add a couple spares just in case. For the above relays I have Cooling, Headlight, Horn and TNS to add/replace, all 4 pin. Again I might add one or two spare slots. 

(Five minutes later). So it looks like the prewired ones are no good, they went cheap and put common rails on the fuses and relays. So for the various combinations needed for the car, a common rail is not an option. Shame really, the one I found has six relays and 10 fuses which would have been perfect. I do have one that will work well though, 4 relay and six fuses. It'll be compact, and no spare slots, but that's probably a good thing. Once it arrives I'll get it in place for the fuses, then carry on with the relays. Then hopefully that's the electrics finally done.

In other news, I trimmed the studs on the passenger side rear hub yesterday, so now that wheel sits flush on the spacer. I need to do drivers side shortly, then that's another job ticked off. I could try fitting the rear calipers and the handbrake cables, that may be an easy-ish job to do.