Electrics etc

When faced with a giant "Airfix" model of a car, where do you start? I stripped the TR7's shell over twenty years ago so reassembly was always going to be challenging.

My logic is something like this: 1. The electrics will be the most troublesome, so get them right first 2. Do some stuff which gives the car a visual boost, to make me feel good when the electrics don't work and 3. fit some engine bay stuff and then the engine and gearbox.

So, I started with putting in some sound deadening, which was really satisfying. The first new additions to the freshly painted shell! This job involved refitting the original sound deadening panels around the front bulkhead, which were in an ok (if a bit grotty) state. They are fitted with little square spire clips which you can't get anywhere now, but I found some in my shed and together with a can of spray glue. It looks nice.

As you can see in the above photo, a lot of other work was done too. This included the steering and brackets, pedal box, wiring loosely thrown in and the bracketry for the heater.

Working out where all of the wires go wasn't easy, as it would have helped if I had labelled the loom when I took it out. However it is fairly intuitive and I used the workshop manual to retrospectively label everything. I enjoyed that.

My friend Terry has helped me over these last few days and together we have solved all sorts of conundrums. The master cylinder and servo were added, together with the clutch master cylinder. The conundrum with the master cylinder wasn't a conundrum at all, really - the low brake pressure warning switch things had broken off, so I'll need to order one of those.

The boot is pretty much wired up, with new licence plate lights together with the NOS rear lamps. I told you that sometimes it is nice to just bolt stuff on which makes the car look like a car again.