It feels like ages ago or months maybe that I mentioned I had to fit the speedo sensor … well this evening it happened and as promised I’ve got a set of images to go with what we now have to do or at least it appears that way. By that I mean when I researched how to fit the daisy wheel for calibration of the speedo etc there is plenty of info out there and it looked rather straight forward … oh no wait, after speaking with pilgrim they now do a more accurate way of fixing the speedo sensor which as far as I can tell there’s no documentation on it yet. So after a few chats with them I had an idea of what I needed to do and tonight as I said set about doing it.
First things first you have to attach two very small magnets to the prop shaft, remember this is going to spinning at several thousand revs …. so I decided to drill a small pilot hole that I could sink the magnets into and fill it with some very strong metal adhesive. I ended up using a two part Evo-stick from B&Q which once mixed gives you a few minuets to work with until it goes off. So drill a small hole, fill with glue, carefully place and push the magnet into the hole. I then used a paint brush to ease the glue around the magnet and added a little bit more for good measure. You have to make sure they are 180 degrees apart so for this I just used the stubs on the prop shaft to set them apart. Seems easy enough.
The next step was to fit the little bracket to the diff and align it with the magnets making sure they were approximately 2-3mm away. Having the bracket in two parts works wonders and give you plenty of flexibility to adjust it where needed. All straight forward really. Align the bracket and fit the sensor making sure the position is correct.
Just make sure you connect the bracket with the sensor to the diff so any movement will be picked up together. After that was fitted I feed the wires through some small conduit, fitted to the inside of the tunnel and up through the grearnob hole, which will eventually be fitted to the dash wiring loom. Hopefully thats fairly straight forward for anyone else doing the same sort of approach.
While I was working on the car I thought I’d also get the windscreen wipers sorted, following the manual was straight forward, the only thing I did different was rather than use the mentioned measurement in the manual I measured it myself. Cut the pipe and used a pair of long nose pliers to flare the ends. I did try my flaring tool, but for some reason it didn’t work? but switching to the pilers quickly fixed the issue and it was all together in no time at all.
Nothing difficult there really and once the wiring is all sorted I’ll test it and hope it all works!
Next on the list was the rear lights, or to be more precise the reversing and fog light, I still have to add the reflectors but I currently don’t have those so they’ll have to wait. Now there are from what I can a few ways to do this and it all depends on what you want to do with your car in the end, some people fit them to the nudge bars for the IVA and then change then and remove the fog light etc, however I want my car ready and fit for function all the time so I plan on keeping them both. Now I will most likely change the style of lights because they are rather boxy and not that nice looking really, but otherwise they do the job.
I basically decided to fit them to the body, behind the nudge bar where they will be visible but not cause any problems. Then once through the IVA I’ll simple change them for a different type and fit them in the same position. I’m going to keep them both on the car so I can’t see the problem with it. Might change my mind in the future but for the time being and certainly while I have the car on the road for the first year I want to use it and not keep it in the garage, tinkering! Oh and I realise now after reading the instructions I have lights on the wrong side! I’ll swap the lenses over when I finish wiring them, they are only temporarily fitted for now.
So whats left I hear you say … well seeing as I was on a role, I thought I’d pre-fit the windscreen and see what it all looked like. I can’t fix the windscreen down yet because I don’t have the escutcheon plates, and I still have to make up a measurement guide so the soft top will eventually fit properly which is 870mm long, the manual explains all this really well, It was more a case of quickly positioning it to get an overall look.
So that’s it for now, well for today anyway, I’m going to look at polishing the front of the car tomorrow adjust the windscreen to the correct position and hopefully get the front nudge bar fitted, then if theres time I’ll might even look at the front grills … We’ll see how the time goes, until next time 🙂
Pilgrim Cobra (Sumo) Build 