Small but enjoyable progress continues amidst a busy work schedule and weekends.
Ahead of our jubilee street party I taped the left side wiring loom.. then looked at the hodgepodge at the back again and ordered some nice ratcheting pliers + crimp connectors.
Yesterday we had an outing to the Auto Italia day at Prescott hill climb, sadly without the beta although the family wagon with its sliding doors and isofix is easier for carting the toddler about. Couple of montecarlos, but no other betas there. Plenty of fulvias, and I had a good chance to assess if their side repeaters would do for a beta, but sadly I don't think they will as the wing curvature on the fulvia has the bases deeper at the front, whereas on the beta they are more even.
Fantastic 037, first time I've ever seen one in person
Tanc Barret had a stand there.. so I collared him to establish whether their skills extend to Betas. A nice chat for sure, and maybe when I get to more detailed jobs but right now for my car to visit him I think it'd cost me an arm and a leg. Maybe once I've ticked off the small jobs I can do.
This afternoon, I finally got a few hours to spend on the car. Given the choice of tackling the ugly but working rear wiring loom, I instead went for trying to tidy up the face of the car that had been hastily thrown together and was annoying me. I thought I'd start with headlight surrounds + grille. Now it sounds ridiculous, but I hadn't actually opened the bonnet till now since getting it home, so it was somewhat of a surprise to discover that the bonnet stay was not fitted. Nevermind tackling the face of the car then, off it was to the box of bits to recover all the bits. Well, nearly all the bits..
One of these appears to have gone walkies. Anyone got one spare? also, did I imagine that someone had remade the bonnet stay bits? mine are functional and starting to look less untidy after some dremel time today, but my memory swears blind there's easier options.
After discovering the missing bit stopping play on the bonnet, it was instead tackle the squiffy bumper and replace the indicators. Frustratingly, first thing I see getting under there to tackle that is that the stays between the chassis cross member and the front valance have been chopped off, and just left there in a twisted mess. Not hugely important for sure, but just very unprofessional - the original accident damaged valance was replaced before painting. I took them off and added some steel to my shopping list to fabricate some new ones. I also noticed that the cross member is not perfect, it'll do for a little while but I can see the whole subframe coming out and the engine getting more of a go over too in the not too distant future.
Back to the bumper.. thankfully the rest of it was less of a sob story.
Car in rally mode with the bumper off
I now have a nice matching pair of indicators on the bumper, and the poor bumper alignment looks to have been the result of another parking shunt - the off side bumper bracket was rather bent. Figuring I can't make it any worse I subjected it to a vice and some brute force, with surprisingly successful results, so I'm going to refit and see how it looks on the car.
Whilst I had my can't make it any worse shoes on, and figuring I'd get the bumpers tidied and re-chromed at some point, I went after a large dent in the chrome with a cloth and a set of mole grips, and again to my amazement, managed to make it 90% better without even leaving any jaw marks on it.
I would probably have managed to get the bumper back together but I figured having the bumper off the car would make it a lot easier to fit the new numberplates, sadly my pile of numberplate fixings has gone awry, so another item for the shopping list - along with some polishing mob bits and some autosol.. may as well do all I can for the bumpers now eh!
Overall a positive afternoon despite the frustrations along the way.
