Dakar Rebuild - part 11

Finishing touches

24-25/06/06

I'd like to fit a pair of Aero catches, however the budget can't quite stretch to those just yet - I'd rather spend £5 now and perhaps get those a few months down the line. Anyhow, catches are fitted and the bonnet now stays shut.

I've re-engineered the set of lights that were attached to the roof, modifying the mounting bar so that it fits into the space in the centre of the bull bar. It's a bit of a squeeze, but five of the six lights are now fitted and working. From my old stage lighting days, they're arranged so they converge at a point about five meters in front of the vehicle, which gives a spread that matches the beam width of each lamp as you get further away, making a continuous flat bar of light.

Seeing as I had plenty of spare braided earthing straps left over from various projects, I've run one from the block to the bull bar as grounding was intermittent before.

I've also placed an order with Demon Tweeks for a pair of 5¾" reflectors to replace the tarnished Cibie originals. The existing lamp housings are servicable, so £66 gets a pair of reflectors rather than £150 or so for the complete assemblies.

The spare wheel holder has been scrubbed down - all the powder coating had flaked off due to water ingress - and painted once again with everything-proof paint. As with everything on the build so far, all the bolts were replaced with stainless ones.

Now that's done, I could glue the carpet down over the fuel tank cover. It's quite amazing how much better the whole thing looks now! What's even more entertaining is that the doors in the cover panel are now all but invisible!

27/06/06

I finally got around to making that call today and after providing rough dimensions and a chat with the extremely cheerful guy on the other end of the phone, I have an appointment booked for this Saturday and a price of £85 + VAT (including fitting), which I thought was extremely reasonable. We'll see how it goes!

28/06/06

No matter - to the workshop! Armed with a hammer, a suitably large bolt as a drift and an anvil (!), I set about modifying a pair of the existing Oscar bezels. Conveniently, they have a folded lip around the edge into which the old Oscar lenses fit. When suitably beaten, they flatten out quite nicely to make a 5½" diameter hole into which the new lenses fit quite snugly. It looks a little rough-and-ready, but they're secure and will do in the short term until I can afford to spend the money and buy a replacement set of complete lamp assemblies.

I also tripped over the side runners and frowned at the dent in one of them. Dad spotted me frowning at these and, unperturbed, simply instructed me to buy a bag of coke for his forge :-) We'll have a go at sorting it this weekend...

In going through the MOT requriements, I also spotted that vehicles after 1990 are also required to have side marker turn signals. My Dakar's never had these (and it doesn't seem to have caused problems with the MOT test before now, but I figured I'd better go by the book. A pair of E-marked LED side repeaters has been ordered from eBay for £8 and will be fitted this weekend if they turn up.

01/07/06

Now that the screen's in I can fiddle with the wipers to get the sweep done exactly. This is harder than it first appears, and so I resorted to a tape measure, notepad and GCSE physics to work the sweep out properly. It turned out I had to shorten the driver's side linkage by about 10mm (I'm now very pleased I made the linkage adjustable!) and nudge the driver's arm around by a couple of splines so that the start of the sweep was quicker in order to clear the passenger-side wiper.

I've fitted another Merc spare - this time the wiper blade - on to the driver's side so that it reaches the top of the screen, hence the need to have the sweep pattern spot on as the wipers now overlap quite considerably when parked. The result though is a wiper that reaches within 15mm of the top driver's side corner of the screen :-)

I've also punched a couple of holes in the bonnet and pressed the old Merc washers in. They're quite low-profile and do the job nicely. The washer tank was filled for the first time and the jets adjusted. The 'washer low' light then extinguished which took me by surprise the next time I started it up, not knowing exactly what was missing on the dash!

Had a new rear number plate made up as well as the existing one was pretty chewed. Also took the opportunity to fit a proper pair of numberplate lights as the existing one was always frowned at by the MOT testers.

02/07/06

I then cut out and bent to shape a pair of trim panels for the sides of the dash from a sheet of copper we had knocking around in the barn (!). These will be covered with vinyl that my Uncle has graciously provided.

Those little details aside, it's now ready for its MOT! This has been arranged for this week, so fingers crossed :-)

08-09/07/06

I adjusted the off-side steering bump stop (with a lump hammer - the bolt had been bent out and consequently wouldn't undo) so as to stop the near-side wheel fouling on the radius arm when on full lock and then drained and refilled the front and rear axels for good luck. I also drained the front swivels and refilled them with the one-shot swivel grease that I've had knocking around for years and never got around to doing. I found that a lump of garden hose with some gaffer tape wrapped around the end makes a nice seal against the swivel fill hole, ensuring you can empty the housings of EP90 without dieing of old age by blowing it out of the drain hole. Anyone vaguely amused by any form of toilet humour will appreciate the noise it makes...

I've also fitted the air filter obtained from eBay - it's a direct fit to the air flow meter and sits nicely in the void under the near-side wheel arch. Simply moving the intake here appears to have dropped intake temperatures considerably, however I'm still going to punch a hole in the front of the wing or attach a scoop to the top of it to allow fresh air to be drawn in, possibly with a little 8" fan on a thermostat to keep things cool when wedged in traffic.

Three fire extinguishers have been fitted - a pair of little 600g handhelds, one to each side of the passenger compartment; and a much larger one in one of the lockers at the back. They were all freebies, so I figured I may as well make use of them as they're all still in date.

I've done a final level check of everything and then gone through the MOT checklist for the third time - I'm becoming paranoid now :-) I'm going to force myself to stop fiddling now and just wait for it to be MOTd...

10/07/06