[Mick O'Malley]

Yesterday, before I could thread the front section of the loom through the bulkhead, there were a couple of jobs that needed doing. The first was to bind the two wires which will go to the stop light switch as offering them to its location was one of the 'will it reach' questions I'll need to address.

The next was to make a suitable hole in the bulkhead. Taking the body off and plonking it on the grass with my ever willing son made this much easier. I decided to use the fuse box unit as an escutcheon as it has a neat jumbo grommeted hole. I made a cardboard template, taped it to the bulkhead next to the solenoid, felt tipped the outline onto the GRP, drilled 8mm corner holes and jigsawed them together. I drilled a 5mm locating hole in each long side of the fuse box, offered it up, drilled through the GRP and bolted it in, all done kneeling in the engine bay.

Now the the tricky bit. With the body back on the chassis I hung the dash and loom from the cave roof again. I could see that the tail of the rear section would need a couple more P clips so I cut, drilled and rivetted these in line with the others, at the same 16.5cm spacing. I knew I'd have to lie upside down in the driver's side footwell to thread everything through, and thought back to a couple of months ago when I last performed these gymnastics in the A352.

The pipe to the oil pressure gauge had started to leak at the block end so had to be replaced. The block end took about two minutes but fiddling about behind the dash with no elbow room was real trouble. My back took a good three days to recover from the insertion and extraction manoeuvres: I'm definitely not 21 any more!

With this in mind I lay a folded plastic groundsheet in place to provide slip as the GRP floor is quite grippy, donned head protection in the shape of a beanie, and wriggled into position. The wires behaved themselves at first but a snag presented itself: I'd neglected to remove the cable ties, these wouldn't fit through the grommet and I didn't have any tools with me, aaaaargh! Luckily I managed to worm my 'phone from my pocket and text my son who came to the rescue - his first words - "Are you stuck?" Once he'd passed me the necessary he took a picture of my undignified attitude. Chopping off the ties enabled the rest of the loom to be threaded through. I extricated myself, thankfully without lumbar trauma, and roughly lay the wires in position in the engine bay. The alternator; oil pressure sender and water temp. sender spades fitted fine, there's enough slack for the solenoid and horn connections, but the lights and indicator wires to the offside may need extending. I'd had enough by then so called it a day.



Regards, Mick

p.s. As a complete non-sequitur, whilst typing this BBC Breakfast TV ran an item regarding the new Concorde shed at Filton. I remember well many past visits to Castle Combe, where I'm headed tomorrow, when at around midday this iconic aircraft would pass high overhead on its way to New York. Happy Days!