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Since I through away the old wiring loom a lot of people have emailed me asking, “Is your brother really going to make a new one?” and I’ve answered, “yes .. well I hope so”. Well this update he just did that and whilst he sat there with a squillion bits of wire I pottered around the car doing bits I could do like nailing on the headlamps and rebuilding the petrol tank filler pipe etc. As Geoff did most of the thinking and clever stuff (and you could even see the cogs going round if you looked in his ear) I thought it would be only fair to let him tell you about it. So this is where I go for a quick cuppa. Geoff, over to you:
This month the last of the big jobs has been done, the electric’s. I took care of this as it was getting Elvis a bit lost. We started by getting all the things that were needed together to create the loom and planning where things would go and what was going to be added to the car, e.g. cut out switch and flashing alarm lights on the doors. Once all the planning was do I started by creating the head light harness. After holding it up so Elvis could take a picture he then asked me what the trick was to getting the large plug on the end of the cable though the small holes in the head light buckets. DOH - back to the drawing board and on take two we had a nice pair of head lamp harnesses. The next stage was to make the front harness to takes these to the main loom. Once done I then sorted through the back lights to get a good pair (thanks to Bob Neal for the lights) and proceeded to make the rear loom. For this I used seven core trailer cable as there is no tow-bar being fitted so will handle the power fine. The blue line which would normally be used for the fog lights was used for the fuel tank sender. After all this was done it was time to start the main loom. This took the most time due to the amount of wires in it and me trying not to forget anything. Once all was done we were ready to turn her over for the first time since we had her by the key. We put a battery on and Elvis turned the key….Nothing happened. After checking the wires and thinking maybe I have put the wire on the wrong side of the solenoid we tried again… still nothing happened. I said to Elvis that we may have a duff solenoid even though it’s new. Then while looking under the bonnet Elvis heard me cry Stupid Plastic Car! After asking me what was wrong I explained to him that the solenoid earths though its body to the ground, his car is made of plastic and the earth will not travel though this. So after sorting the problem out by putting an earth wire to it he tried again and hey presto the car turned over and over and over, Oh dear it won’t start. Wondering what to check first as we know the engine was running fine Sue said is there any petrol in it, good question! After Sue being kind went to the garage for us we tried again and this time she jumped to life. So the electrics are finished now with only a few small jobs on the electrics like connecting the heater and wipers to do.
OK, its me Elvis again and I think I just need to recap on the end of Geoff’s section on how it really really was. Once the solenoid test had been passed I turned the key and the engine happily turned over but would not fire. The battery we were using was pretty much dead and so I pulled my Rover up and a couple of jump leads helped to breathe life into the Reliant. We teased the engine by pouring a few capfuls of petrol down the carburettor and the engine would suddenly fire into life and die again. Whilst all this is happening, my girlfriend Sue is busy washing her car and she suddenly looks up and says, “I know I’m being incredibly blonde but is there petrol in it”. I look at Geoff and we titter, we are chaps and chaps know all about mechanical things because that’s what chaps do - tinker with engines and get mucky. Besides we were both convinced there was fuel in the tank, then Geoff said, “maybe there isn’t enough fuel in there and its sucking up air as well?”. Hmmmm it looks like it has no petrol in, so looking at Sue we had to admit that she was probably right. As my car was hooked up to the Reliant, Sue dashed off to the garage to get petrol and Geoff and I tried frantically to start the car before she got back. Just so we could say to Sue, “Its working now, it wasn’t petrol but the combobdulator wasn’t correlated with the hydro-tectronic synchroniser so we had to reconfigure the dryatic switch - its all very technical”. Alas the thing wouldn’t start and Sue brought back the petrol. The car guzzled the whole can as though it hadn’t drank for 20 years (though thinking about it - it hasn’t) and then I went into the car. I pretended to turn the key and made strange engine noises shouting “it still doesn’t start”, but I wasn’t convincing enough. I turned the key for real and the engine rolled over and over for a few seconds. I stopped. I turned the key again and the engine spluttered, cough and then burst into life. OK, you was right Sue ... there wasn’t any petrol in there. We revved the engine a little until she was warm and then just let it sit there, happily ticking away. The tick over was not perfect but then the engine was running with the air filter and the advance and retard pipe in place so no doubt these will make a little difference. Sadly we could not drive the car as a) it doesn’t have any pedals set up yet and b) it was hooked up to Rover. So a visit to the local car place is due to seek out a new battery and then the pedals (along with the seats) can all be installed and the first test drive undertaken. This is the bit I can not wait to do.
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