Wiring: FINISHED

After god knows how many hours and how many feet of new wire, rebuild kits, the electrical system is finished! I finally got the wiper motor fixed after a $40 new brush plate, hours of modifying said brush plate, and more struggle it finally works. The heater fan works, the radiator fan works, the lights work, the back up switch work. If I'm honest I'm not 100% sure all the stuff in the gauges work but that will be an issue with the gauge not the wiring.

I've added an aftermarket radio to go in the hole the previous owner chopped through the dash. Wired up the spots for the speakers. So pictures of the beauty of my wiring to follow.

Wiper Motor Rebuild:

old plate on the table (top mounted brushes)

new brush plate installed, had to use longer screws than stock due to spacers

So the issue as it turns out with the wiper motor was with the old brush plate. Finding a new replacement was a pain in the ass because while Lucas (Lord of Darkness) put similar wiper motors in just about every single European developed car of the late 60's and 70's. Emphasize on "similar" as in not the same. So I bought a $40 new brush-plate for a Hillman Avenger. Which of course didn't fit right out of the box, so I spent close to 2 hours hacking it up with a Dremel tool. It then fit but the new plate has the brushes mounted in the middle instead of the top. So the new brushes were grounding out on the case, so after I added 2 nylon spacing washers to each screw, add power and the motor worked like a dream... or whatever it is Lucas parts work like.

Washer Motor Rebuild

The wiper motor doesn't work. So apart it comes.

Taken all apart

Base magnets are rusty as can be

Rotor is OK but the brass contact plates at the top are corroded. Common known problem so 600 grit sandpaper is the solution.

Cleaned out the old grease and the rust from the body

all the washers, C clips, and screws from the assembly

The brush plate. The #1 problem with these old Lucas motors. I'm going to get a new brush plate cause the springs have nearly rusted in half.

Here are where the studs for the plug pop in

Putting things back

Washers and clips almost all go here on the outside

All put back together. Even with the relay isn't working properly. Brush plate still needs replacement so it may be the issue.

EDIT: Relay wasn't working, so I got a new one, this didn't fix the problem. I could hear the relay energizing (clicking) but the motor wouldn't come on. So I replaced the brush-plate, that's in a later post.

Wiring

What with the whole wiring harness ripped out of the car it was time to put all new wires in. That's been the current undertaking for the past month or so.

Everything that was in the car electronically that I've replaced.

Spark plugs, ignition coil, distributor cap, distributor rotor, and spark plugs leads.

Random transformer that was wired in parallel with the distributor. It seems dingus was 

trying to use it as a ballast resistor, which of course isn't needed with the aftermarket ignition system. 

One of dingus' quality splicing jobs, this one was next to the starter 

 It looks like one of these wires burned up, and then instead of replacing it he just spliced in a new one.

The set of  headlight relays, working on the inter-relay connections. 

Soldered on the quick disconnect trailer connector

Labeled and finished connector

Set of relays installed

From further out

All the wires are in heat shrink, makes it look better. 

See? You can barely see the wires.

Electrical Components

With the engine now running pretty reliably -it still is idling weird and doing weird things, but that comes down to carb tuning, which I'm crap at- I need to go about fixing the systems that make the car drivable on the road... you know, legally. That means working headlights, blinkers, windshield wipers, and in the winter I'd like a heater.

So the easiest solution was to remove all the electrical components from the bodywork and bring them into the garage to bench test.

Once All the lights (which in the case of the headlights was a colossal pain in the arse) are out I set out testing them on the battery. Both headlamps work, both auxiliary lights work, and a single blinker worked. So I've got a blinker, and all four indicators to repair. I'm thinking therefore of replacing the blinkers and indicators with LED bulbs. We'll see how that goes but in the meantime I'm cleaning up all the components to be nice and shiny when they're all put back together.

It's still a little pitted, but that's honestly only noticeable when there's a flash, normally I can see my face in the chrome, which is a HELL of a lot better than it was.