1977 343

[foggyjames]

I know a few with spares!

cheers

James

[MCHUDD]

Hi Sion.
Car looks brilliant mate. What about a set of chrome inserts for those wheels
Cheers Mark.

[Hell Driver]

I know a fellow with more of those lights than I've had hot dinners

Would that be me!

I'm sure I can russle up good pair of good lenses, Reflectors are more of an issue though. It's easy enough to swap lenses only, if the reflectors on yours are OK then you need to keep them anyway.

The search for A1 reflectors is the main reason for my extensive headlamp collection!
I will be making a lot of lenses (and some reflectors probably) available for sale at a future date. I don't want to swamp the market though!!!!! Like the German man with the paintings, I'll trickle a few out to 'pay the bills'

If we ever find someone to re-plate them, I have a good half dozen or more pairs which could be made as good as new.

[macplaxton]

Would that be me!

Aye.

[S10NPH]

Thanks for all the posts - how excited do we get about headlamps!

Anyway, the headlamps are a bit of a saga. I bought at last year's BKV a pair of headlamps from RJ - I assume they are RHD, because the glass matches all my British ones, and the Dutch ones on the car have a different pattern.

When trying to fit them to the car, I discovered that 77MY cars don't have a nice tidy multi-plug, but are just hard-wired to a colourful loom. Therefore, I decided just to swap over the glass. I did that successfully, but the reflector is a different matter, as the ones on the car are in amazing condition, and my replacements are very dodgy. Does anyone know if LHD and RHD reflectors are different? I can't see any difference at all, so I'm planning to see if a garage can just adjust the headlamps to the correct pattern.

Before you say, I have tried to do it myself using the basic guidelines in the Haynes, but I simply can't do it, as I can't see to adjust in the dark, and the security light keeps coming on preventing me from seeing where the beam goes!!

[Hell Driver]

As far as I can see the reflectors are the same left to right and I cant see them being different from LHD to RHD. As you say, angle adjustment may be required.

The small plastic bits that fix the adjusters to the reflector get VERY brittle with age and will snap with the slightest pressure if they are at all damaged by sunlight.

I tried an experiment with a couple of my sets of lights (worst condition ones) . Total dismantlement resulted in 2 out of three on each light breaking. The plan is to salvage enough to get enough good ones to make a good light out of the all the parts to go with the one brand new light I got from the chap in (Whitby 2 years ago ).

[macplaxton]

The parts books list lots of different reflectors, lenses and the like. Everything is annotated either for left-hand or right-hand traffic.

So maybe there is a subtle difference?

[SteveP]

I know there are definitely different part numbers for Mk3 reflectors for LHD/RHD so I'd imagine it'd be the same for the earlier cars.

[CBA]

V5C arrived in the post today, so TUJ 247R is born

0g/km co2?? I take it it's running pretty rich?

[Hell Driver]

The Mk3 reflectors are made in an outer square shape and are also non symetrical which makes them OS/NS and RHD/LHD specific. The Mk1s "appear" to be perfectly circular and identical.

I would need to look again at them to be sure though as I'm saying this from memory!

As the windscreen wipers and vario selector position indicators were not right for the UK I would be suprised if anything else which didn't have to be was changed for the UK. Headlamp lenses and rear foglight (the early cars had one side plated with shiny silver inside) had to be done.

I'm sure RJ can shed some light on this (pun intended )

[macplaxton]

Some early headlamps are for 410 bulbs and some H4. Check the exact orientation of the bulb holder as I think they are skewed slightly in one direction or another.

[baron_matt]

Are the reflectors metal or plastic?

I can put you in touch with someone who can advise on re-silvering lamps if this is something you want to progress.

[SteveP]

Are the reflectors metal or plastic?

I can put you in touch with someone who can advise on re-silvering lamps if this is something you want to progress.

There's definitely demand for this from other people, even if Sion has sorted it so would be useful to know!

[S10NPH]

I will defer carrying on with the lights discussion for another day when I have another go at seeing whether the LHD reflectors ones are actually any different to RHD ones. I can see that they are different part numbers but comparing them roughly to the ones on BHX they look identical. One day I will thoroughly investigate. In any case, the ones on the car are in fantastic condition, and hopefully therefore can be adjusted properly to display an RHD beam pattern.

I had the opportunity to inspect the variomatic belts a few weeks ago, here are some pictures. They are not Roflex ones, which explains why it's so much quieter than Bjorn the '85 which has extremely noisy belts. The pulleys looks in good condition apart from a scab of rust on one of the primaries which is visible in one of the pictures. I'm no expert in belt condition, but they don't appear cracked or damaged as far as I can tell.






I also had some fun replacing dashboard bulbs to see if the lighting improved. I can safely say that it has not, and the instrument cluster lighting truly is appalling. Luckily, I don't use the speedometer and instead rely on the speed reading on my sat nav. The temp gauge has also decided only to work sporadically.





I've been driving the car a bit more now since the carb has been properly tuned, and I'm getting used to driving it. I haven't managed to kill my passenger yet by forgetting it's LHD! The lack of a tachometric relay makes the driving experience much more difficult than in my other vario, but eventually you get the feel of it and adjust your throttle behaviour accordingly - what you have to do doesn't feel quite normal, but hey, that's why I like it.

I am now awaiting imminent delivery of some hubcap studs so that I can finally fit the correct hubcaps!

[macplaxton]

You'll have to find some other yellowy instrument panel wotsits, or have a go a vacuum forming them.