Front body electrics

 Woohoo, we had some dry weather! Well, drier weather, it was still a bit grim. But at least I was able to get the front body out and plan the electrics. This was side repeaters, front indicators, front side lights and headlight wiring. First job was to get a reference on the side and drill a marker hole for the repeaters;

I levelled the body on the ground, then measured a distance up from the ground on both sides. Then matched a similar distance from the front arch (the rear edge of the body is all over the place but not unexpected), then drilled a hole.

The wiring wasn't long enough to deal with the side repeaters, so I borrowed a couple of lengths from the wiper motor. While the main colour is blue rather than green, the trace colour is white and black the same as the normal colour. Along with a black for ground, that was the two runs cut, terminated and taped into place (obviously they'll be fixed inside rather than stay on the outside!!

The next step was to continue those two lines to the front indicators and on to the main connector. At the same time I brought the headlight wiring down to the main connector. When it was all taped up it looked like this;

This is when I realised I didn't have spare wires for the side lights, and to be honest I had no clue what colour it needed to be! Even checking the wiring diagram I wasn't sure, so I'm going to have to track it down. Oh, and I think I'm short of a length of earth wire, a section long enough to get from left to right. I'm sure I have some spare wire so it isn't an issue, I do just need to make sure it's enough to host the headlight as there's a fair bit of juice going through those headlights. 

The holes also need to be enlarged. This is as far as my stepped drill went, I had to get a larger drill bit from Amazon to finish. It's only a cheap drill bit as it needs to drill maybe eight holes in total.

Then again, I did have a thought about mounting. The lights have three fixing holes, remarkably close to the main hole in the middle. I'm not convinced using self tappers or even nuts and bolts will provide a suitable fixing for the lights. What I'm tempted to do is make rear plates, a triangular bit of metal (probably aluminium) that sits behind the lights and gives them a stronger fixing to screw or bolt into. I have spare material and wouldn't take much to knock something up. 

The next job will be the rear, and then I need to get the wiring from the connector back to the various locations it needs to live in. Fuse box and steering column are the main ones for the headlights and side lights, indicators go back to the flasher relay and fuse box. Neither should be much trouble as long as I have enough wire.