Hood

December 27, 2015 -

  I put together the hood hinges and mounted the hood today. Yesterday I put in the 8 of the shorter rubber bumpers to hold the hood off the body. I used screws and nuts there so they can be removed for paint. The hood hinges took some extra washers from the diagrams in the directions because with just one they were very loose. I needed help holding the hood while I riveted it to the hinge. Thanks Michele! I probably should have done the riveting off the car and attached bolts cause you end up having to widen a rivet hole while someone is holding it. (Sorry Michele.) At this point the piston struts do a nice job of lifting the hood but when it's down flat the front is up a little. I think I need some fine tuning of the hinges to get it to sit flat.

  Note from the last blog post, I did get a new flasher at the local auto parts store for $6 and it works although it flashes a little faster than the factory five one which is fine I think. For some reason now the turn signals aren't working.... so that's something to track down next. (Subsequent note; turns out the turn signals work just fine. The key needs to be in the ON position for them to work. This is the same position that has the fuel pump running. All the other lights seem to work in other key positions so I'm not sure why it's this way but I guess you don't need turn signals if the car isn't on, whereas you might need hazards.)

Headlights

December 6, 2015 -

  I have finally moved into the new house and gotten most things where I want them so there's no excuse to not be working on the car now.  I had been stuck for so long on the headlights not working I was shirking from going back and debugging it. I spent a little time on the phone with Factory Five and they gave me some great pointers.  First they made me realize that what I had thought was the headlight high beam switch was the hazard switch and that when I flipped it and my turn signals got brighter it was the second filament in the turn signals coming on and not flashing. They said swap the hazard and turn signal flashers and viola, my hazards flashed and my turn signals didn't work. So they're sending me one more working flasher. The flashers are the shiny cylinders in the fuse box.

Next, the headlights won't work at all unless there is a high beam switch installed. The switch is up or down and one position completes a circuit with the brown high beam wire and high beam indicator (blue dash light) and the other position completes a circuit with the red low beam wire. I didn't even have a hole in the dash for this switch! So since I had already laid other switches out uniformly and this would clearly be a one off if it were anywhere within reach I decided to put it inside the wheel.  It isn't in the way of my hands and I can switch it by extending a finger from the wheel without taking my hand off the wheel which I thought was nice.