Fitted the two new drop links this afternoon and when doing the bounce test at the back corners, no clicks or rattles.
The old ones came off dead easy having soaked a couple of days. Ratchet rings make it so easy coming off and going back on, especially when needing to hold the bolt part steady with the allen key.
However before fitting the new ones to the car I compared their sticktion etc to the old ones I’d removed. I put the allen key in the hex hole to make it easy, and the old ones taken off and wiggled a bit don’t feel any different to what I put on. Odd.
Fitted the RX-8 variable intermittent wiper stalk to my NC3.75 - got a cheap one from eBay (2 weeks delivery from Lithuania!).
Really was an easy job, thanks to Geoff Walton for the original post:
Removed wiper arms and strut brace and sprayed satin Black, fitted clear side indicators with chrome bulbs, removed scratches on steering wheel leather with cherry blossom scuff cover and filled up my basket @Devin for service items and variable INT wipe
Made a big mistake on my mk1 had put the coil springs on the bloody wrong way round (front ones on back and back ones on front) Should really have known the long springs go on the back. So over the last couple of nights swapped them all round
and thanks to AK Automotive 4 wheel alignment it now handles a treat.
I finally got around to fitting an OBD2 connector on to the NOCO fused lead lead instead of the battery clamps. There is just enough wire between fuse-holder and OBD2 terminal if one carefully cuts the wire where it was originally spot welded to the clamp, and so can use the whole original length!
Pic of the connector bits after its one month journey from China, note that ground pins 4,5 are commoned on the connector pcb, and they also make almost two millimetres early compared with the rest of the pins (a good ESD safety point.)
My five year old “2.5W” Solar panel kit as supplied by Noco. However, when I first tested it back then, I measured less than 0.3Watt (10mA overcast to 30mA midday sun in UK winter). Today outside in the sun aiming it carefully for maximum, I got 100mA S/C current, no fear of boiling a battery with this one, but it may well offset the dark current quite well.
And the inside of the new connector applied to the newly re-purposed lead to allow the solar panel to charge the car from inside, now fitted with a hard-to-find 1A fuse instead of the original 10A. Pin 4 ground, pin 16 battery.
SWMBO wants to use this car tomorrow so this evening I cleaned the pollen off the windows, checked the battery had sufficient volts (12.55V) and went to pull out the OBD2 plug.
No go. What…?
The latch bar was gripping the immovable latch bulge on the socket. A small screwdriver allowed release, but I have now modded the plug so it does not have such a strong grip.
Following my front chassis legs repair I was advised to get the front wheel alignment checked, so when getting new front tyres I had the alignment checked, left was slightly out and the other was way out.
