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1951 Lanchester LD10 - Rear Wing Removal


vulgalour

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They've got the 3-rib L464-3 on eBay- someone in Michigan has a hoarde of them for $80 a pop, there's also someone doing cast resin replicas for $45 in Washington.

That isn't bad considering they suffer from Expensive Marque Tax (Rolls Royce etc).

Phil

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  • 4 weeks later...

There's less corrosion than expected on them, the trouble is the brass pins were both bent.  When we refit, we'll run a drill through the hinge holes to get them back to the proper shape in case there's corrosion and straighten or replace the pins.  I'll have to get a set of drifts/punches too since a screwdriver isn't the ideal tool for doing pins with.

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Looking good!  That looked like hard work running that lot in, but you've made the car much more usable.  It's pleasing to see the bootlid so intact after 70 years, I reckon that there was a trim of some description over the lock/latch mechanism, there are some small holes for some sort of fixing around the access panel, and loose items in the boot might find their way into the bootlid/jam the latch if it were left open.  That's just a theory, but perhaps a small sheet of painted ply was put over that hole...

It's probably too late now, but wire lube is handy for getting a loom into reluctant grommets and small access holes. 

https://www.screwfix.com/p/ideal-yellow-77-wire-cable-pulling-lubricant-950ml/44462  <-- 950ml will probably last you a few lifetimes

We use a similar thing at work, the stuff we use turns into a glue when dried (it's not a very strong glue, but it helps hold things in place).  A small dab of fresh lube will loosen things up if the wires need to be moved in the future. 

Keep up the good work!

 

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I'm not sure whether or not the lube would have helped.  With the wiring going through wood that would have absorbed any sort of fluid, and the wiring being cloth covered with no sort of finish over the cloth making it absorbant, it might have actually made it worse to use a lubricant.

However, now you mention the sheet of ply I wonder if there was a sheet of black millboard like the bits the boot interior hinges go through rather than ply since it would have probably blended in with everything else.  It wouldn't take much to damage millboard and have it fall off and be lost.  Someone has been into the bootlid before to put fresh wiring in it (and not very well done at that, it's not like the under-dash stuff) so perhaps they were the one that lost the trim panel that might have been there?

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21 hours ago, vulgalour said:

I'm not sure whether or not the lube would have helped.  With the wiring going through wood that would have absorbed any sort of fluid, and the wiring being cloth covered with no sort of finish over the cloth making it absorbant, it might have actually made it worse to use a lubricant.

Good point, I forgot that your loom was cloth covered pvc wire and that the Lanchester has a wooden frame.   That is one job you shouldn't need to do again though!

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We finally get the first new pieces of wiring into the Lanchester.  This is one of those jobs that is a lot easier in theory than in practice, especially when it's a job you're new to.  First job was to remove the boot lid.  Someone has had this off before, both hinge pins were only in half way so Pat and I assumed that they were the sort of hinges you had to knock the pins out of to get the boot lid off.  First one came out without too much hassle.  A skinny screwdriver and a hammer were all that were needed.  One brass pin removed, and looking just a little bit bent.  We'll tidy it up before reinstalling it.
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The second pin put up more of a fight.  So much so that after ten minutes of solid hammering, application of lubricant, changing of positions... it was clear it wasn't coming out easily.  Later on we learned the pin itself was actually bent.
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Of course, it was only after the pin being so stubborn about coming out that we were encouraged to look for hinge fixings and we found the two nuts that are sunk into the wooden frame.  Once those were unbolted, the boot came off no bother.
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As with many things on this car, the boot lock mechanism is a fairly basic thing.  Pat and I aren't sure whether or not there should be a trim over this area.  We'll likely make something out of black millboard or similar to match what's already used in the boot since it seems a bit strange to leave this area exposed and there are some vacant holes in the aluminium surround that are in about the right place for fixings that might hold a trim in place.
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The boot has been re-wired at some point, badly, and not in the same sort of materials as has been used at the front of the car.  Here we've already removed the wiring, but you can see the grommet it should pass through, and the puncture in the aluminium skin that needs dealing with.  The aluminium trim on the inside of the boot lid is held on with dozens of tiny once-chrome-plated flathead screws.
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Pat and I had spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what bits of the wiring loom went where.  The wiring diagram we have for the car seems accurate except for the colours.  The colours of the original loom don't match the new wiring loom, and neither looms match the diagram, so that really slowed us down on figuring out what went where.  Additionally, the modified sections don't match the old loom, the new loom, or the diagram.  To further confuse matters, the only help provided for the new loom is in the form of a colour key on the website of the company that provided it.  There's no indication of which physical section of the new loom is for which section of the car, ie: rear lights, engine bay, dashboard, etc.  So there was an awful lot of guesswork involved.  One clue was the plastic sleeving on the wiring since this is used in areas where the wiring is both exposed to the elements and in an area it's likely to chafe on metal.  Parts of the loom that are just plain cloth wrapped in the black and purple are usually (but not always) interior sections.  Here are the new and old sections of the rear lights wiring.
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To fit the new wiring, I thought it best to remove the intermediate boot floor.  In theory, this should just be a case of undoing some screws and lifting the board out.  The rubber mat had thankfully not been glued down and is likely not the original.
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There's a small hatch set into the main board, it wasn't clear what this was for at first since even though it's about the size of a battery, the battery lives under the rear seat.
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When you look through the hole you see two pressed steel plates with a rubber skirt, this is obviously a part of the floor that's removable for some reason and the rubber skirt is to keep the weather out.
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The fixings for the plates were missing and none of the fixings that came with the car were the right sort.  Anyway, what's underneath here then?

Ah yes, the fuel tank, or more specifically, the fuel sender.  This gives you easy access to the main fuel feed line that starts at the top of the tank and runs all the way down the chassis to the front of the car.  It also gives access to the only wire going to the fuel sender.  We know the fuel sender works so we didn't disturb any of this at the moment.
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We also found out where the occasional smell of fuel was coming from.  The large diameter hose that joins the filler neck in the wing to the filler neck of the tank has perished and split.  We'll be replacing that before the car hits the road proper.
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Next to remove the plywood board.  This is held down with quite a few bolts (or are these machine screws?) with cup washers.  They all came undone fairly easily.  The board required a good tug to get it free and once out it gave much better access to the boot floor proper.  The main obstacle to getting the plywood out easily is the millboard that the side hinges bolt to, something I can't remove because the fixings seem to have rusted solid and I can't get heat into them without damaging things.  A case of working around them for now.
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The awkward thing to remove where the bolts for the spare wheel stops.  These are two brackets that are shaped so that your spare wheel doesn't push too far back into the space.  My arms are only just long enough to reach to get a tool on the nut on the underside and use a screwdriver on the top side.
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All that finally out and we could get a proper look at what was waiting underneath.  Honestly, I was expecting quite a lot of rot and mess in here so I was very pleasantly surprised.
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The intermediate floor is held in by quite a crude angle iron frame that's welded to the car body.  I'm pretty certain this isn't a modification, I've seen plenty of cars of this era with the same sort of boot floor, I've just never seen the underlying structure.  The welding is not pretty, but then I get the impression with cars like these that what isn't seen doesn't matter, rather like a glorified kit car.
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I did find some suitable screws for the fuel tank cover plates.  These were a perfect fit on the thread length and pitch, and even on the button heads, and while crossheads probably aren't 'correct', they do the job.  They came from the spare door latches for the Princess.
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Then the floor could be tidied and more closely inspected.  Happily, all the areas we couldn't see before are really solid.  Aside from paint being worn away and effectively flash rusting there's absolutely nothing of concern back here.  Everything will be cleaned back, giving some rust treater, and then painted with some black enamel to keep it good before the boot area is reassembled in the future.
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Daylight could also be shone on the areas of concern Pat and I did know about.  Really, these are the worst bits (that we know of) on the car and because of how simple the shapes are and how good the access is, they held no concerns for me when it comes to repairing them.  In the future I shall chop out the rot, weld in (or possibly panel adhesive in) some fresh steel and this will all be sorted.  It's far enough away from the wooden framework to not cause me any concern and the steel is substantial enough on this car that I can't see it giving me too much grief.  I've welded a BX, so this should be no bother.
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Then the momentous occasion of fitting the very first section of brand new wiring.  Now, I will point out that when I did this job my welder was not working, otherwise I would have done the welding first.  I opted to fit this piece because it's very easy to remove if I have to and should give a really good morale boost given that it should be a nice easy item to complete.
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I spent a little bit of time with a file tidying up the screws that hold the P clips in place, a couple of the slots had got a little chipped when removing them.
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I then checked what grommets had been provided with the loom and found out there were only two very large ones.  I'd later learn these were for the bulkhead.  No grommets are provided to replace the four required in the boot.  This was one of the items that really annoyed me with this loom, they're so cheap it would have been nice just to have had a couple provided as a courtesy.  Instead, I had to go and get some since I had none in that were suitable.
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Then it was just a case of offering up the P clip behind the angle iron frame after threading them onto the wire, push the bolt through from the bumper side, and screw the nut on from the boot side.  Took no time at all to get this section installed.
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Pat was then free to help with the interior wiring instalation.  Initially I attempted the sensible thing of carefully pulling the new wiring through with the strings I'd carefully run when removing the old wiring.  It was tough going, the new loom didn't want to go through that easily, and then one of the strings broke.  It took a while before Pat and I finally figured out that the new loom won't actually pass through the guide holes in the frame of the car in the same way the old wiring came out.  I'll explain why that is later in this post.  What we ended up having to do instead was install the wiring in the cabin in a very strange way.

You have to start in the middle.  The hole for the original wiring in the headlining needed to be opened out a bit, then the wiring for the passenger side semaphore could be fed through first, blindly finding the guide holes in the frame, until you reach the metal section just behind and above the B pillar.  There's a hole that runs diagonally down and forwards through the wooden frame that allows the wires to then emerge above the semaphore.
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You then have to feed the entire rest of the loom that runs all the way into the boot, through the small hole where the interior light lives.  This is a chore.  One spur will follow the same sort of route to the semaphore on the driver's side as it did on the passenger's side.  The other long run then has to be fed through the guide holes in the roof frame, which is metal, all the way over the top of the rear door and behind the trim panel alongside the rear seat.  Pat did this, I'd lost my patience with burning my hand on the roof (it was a very hot day when we did this job).
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Feeding the section down through the gap between the body and the seat was very difficult, it took us a very long time.  It would definitely have been easier to do this with the seat, headlining, and trim removed.  However, since we want to keep as much of the original materials as possible, removing the headlining was too risky.  If we damaged it we would likely have to replace the whole thing and while I have the skill to do that, it was something we wanted to avoid.  This was the price we paid for that.  With all of that run, I treated myself to installing the cleaned interior light (more on that in a future update), ready to be wired up later.
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Getting the wiring through the tiny gap and guide hole in the frame hidden down the side of the seat took Pat and I more time than we care to think about.  It was a deeply unpleasant job.  Once done, the wiring then just needs to be run behind the millboard trim that the side hinges bolt into and it's done.
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Amazingly, the headlining didn't stretch or tear, it's remarkably robust despite appearances. That meant I could tack it back into place using the same fine tacks Pat and I used when putting the door cards back together.  It felt a bit weird nailing interior into the wooden frame of the car, but that's how it was done so that's how we're redoing it.  There's another trim that goes over the top of this that needs longer tacks, a job for another update.
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So why was it so hard to run the wiring?  This is down to the new loom itself.  The original wiring is constructed so that it's the wire, a cloth braid, and then a varnish of some sort to act as insulation.  The new wiring is the wire, a plastic coating, and then a decorative braid.  As a result, the new wiring ends up fractionally thicker for each wire.  That's not a problem until you get to the junctions and spurs where the wire is wrapped.  The new wiring is less flexible and bulkier and because the decorative braid is raw, it grabs the wooden parts of the frame that it goes through where the old varnished wiring would slide smoothly.  As a result, you can't pass sections of the new wiring through the old guide holes without opening them up a bit, something that's easy enough to do if the car is stripped down to bare bones, but impossible when you're working around interior trim as we are.  It's another courtesy item that would have been nice to be warned of with the kit since it does mean this new wiring isn't actually OEM replacement.  I shouldn't have to modify the structure of my car to fit something that's supposed to be like-for-like.
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Speaking of like-for-like replacement that isn't, no spare bullet connectors are provided, that's something you have to buy extra.  At least one bullet connector has become partially detached during the process of installation and in a couple of places there aren't bullet connectors where there should be.  The semaphores require one bullet connector each that isn't there, and the rear lights are the same.  While the three connections on the rear lights only require one bullet connector, it seems remiss that it isn't on the loom.  I didn't have any in stock, couldn't order any for the same day, so I didn't get the rear lights connected up, sadly.
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What I could do was install the new grommets I bought in an actual shop (the novelty) so at least the wiring could be kept nice and safe, ready to be connected properly later.  The old grommets were pretty dead.
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So far our experience with the re-wiring has not been a fun one.  I'm very glad we didn't also decide to make the wiring ourselves, it would have been a nightmare.  The loom we bought is very nice, it's just annoying that there's a lack of practical courtesy with a few small items included like various grommets and spare connectors, especially for the price.  The total lack of any labelling on the components is also annoying.  Some of this is because it's the first time Pat and I have tackled a job like this, some of it is because it seems to be industry standard to cut these corners.  Personally, I'd like to see the company do better, especially since they're selling to the DIY market as well as to the restoration trade.

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  • 1 month later...

Quite a long update this one, just to warn you in advance.  Lots of images to illustrate what was being done.  Hopefully this will help if you're working on a LD10 or anything of similar vintage since this car is apparently fairly conventionally wired for its age and construction type.

Pat and I had spent some time figuring out what wires went were.  Some of it was more obvious than others and, had we been working with a car that was a clean slate, I imagine this whole process would have gone much smoother.  Easiest item was the wiper motor wires.  The grommet disintegrated which is why it's not there at the moment.
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Much of working out the dashboard portion of the loom was a case of laying it down and seeing where the wires lined up with things.  Because almost nothing on our car was original in this area and we had no references to work from to tell us what went where, it was a case of applying the logic of wiring colours and lengths.  Once we had the wiper motor figured out, the oil pressure sender made most sense next.
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Normally it looks like this runs through the P clip next to the fuel filter.  The filter is a later addition and not original and to slacken off the P clip to feed the wire through you need to remove the filter since that's the only way to get to the bolt for the clip.  Removing the filter is a two person job, or a one person job if you've got longer arms than I do.
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I haven't connected anything yet because this was the first dry run of putting the wires through.  I wanted to know routing was correct before committing to fixing things in place.  Next up was the coil wires and this one is a little confusing.  There's a yellow and a white, which seems correct for coil, and the length is good too.  However, on our car it had one wire to the loom from the coil, and another from the coil to the distributor.  The new loom you can't do that unless you're supposed to split the white wire so that it can run loom-coil-distributor.  I didn't know (and still don't yet), so I just left the wires loose for now.
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I then got some fresh grommets (these weren't provided with the new wiring) to put in the bulkhead where the new wires were going through.
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Then it was time to try and figure out how the wiring in the engine bay linked up to the wiring in the car.  There's no split at the bulkhead, so all of the wires in this section of the harness has to be fed through the relevant holes in the correct way.  I didn't know what that was.  I'd looked at as many photographs as I could find of other LD10s and that wasn't many.  I trawled YouTube to try and find any videos showing this part of the engine bay and again, barely any information at all.  So I was flying a bit blind on this one.  I already knew the new loom was likely to be difficult to thread through the original holes purely because of the extra bulk it would have, but I didn't know how it physically routed.  I guessed that because the bulk of the wiring junctions was on the inside of the car it probably made most sense to thread the harness through from inside the car into the engine bay.  That way, in theory, I'd have the lowest chance of damaging the new harness.  This would prove to be incorrect.

I began my journey by threading some of the harness through the top left hole in the bulkhead, and some through the hole that the temperature sender capillary tube and the speedo cable went through, facilitating the removal of the temperature sender (this still hasn't been refitted due to fragility, it's stored safe in the house out of harm's way).  This was because I thought some of the wiring made sense to go through there because of how the new harness lined up with the bulkhead holes.  This was incorrect.  I also learned that the provided grommets were very difficult to thread onto the harness, however you went about it.
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The more items I then tried to line up, the less this seemed to be the correct route so I had another go, putting the bulkier junction through the top left hole this time.  This was also incorrect, but only partially.
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There was a lot of head scratching and then, finally, I found a reference image from an Australian auction.  It was a tiny blurry little thumbnail but it showed a car with original wiring intact and routed as per factory.  This meant I could see that pretty much all the wiring went through only the top left hole of the bulkhead.  What took me a while after that to figure out is that you have to feed the whole harness from the engine side, through the top left hole, and into the car.  This is the only way to get all of the wiring where it belongs.  It's still not that easy since it's a cumbersome thing that wants to snag on everything, but had I known that from the start it would have saved me a lot of time.
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The reason you thread the wiring through that way is so that the junction to the next section sits about in line with the top of the steering column.  There are two runs of wiring that go along the steering column, one that goes through the inside of it for the indicator switch and horn, and another that is held to the outside of the column that goes from the bulkhead down to the chassis.  The big mass of wires with no connectors go to the voltage regulator (it's going to be fun working out exactly which of those goes where, I'm sure), and when you're inside the car, the wiring should sit up near the top of the bulkhead held in place with P clips.  As long term viewers will remember, the wiring the car came to us with was loosely draped over the heater.

The wiring that runs down the steering column exits the car through a hole in the inner wing at the steering box.  A pair of yellow wires spur off up to the horns, and the rest of the wiring is for the lights.
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This wiring then runs under the front of the car before just the spur for the horns comes back in through a hole in the passenger inner wing.
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On the other side of the passenger wing (wheel side, rather than engine side), the wiring goes through a box section to keep it secure.  One branch goes up through the top of the box section along the wing support rail.  There's a P clip in the top of the brace the holds down the wiring.  One wire goes to the sidelight, the other two go to the headlight.
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When we got the car, the mix of original and modified wiring was cable tied to the underside of the radiator support.  I suspect there's supposed to be three P clips where those bolts and big washers are to hold it in place instead.
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With all that routed, I could take a step back and a bit of a think about where I was at with it.  This area was looking more like it should, and even though things aren't connected yet, it looked a lot tidier than when it arrived.  I felt like I stood a chance to work through this logically now at least.
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For the lights at the front, the single red wire goes to the sidelights, pushes up through the centre of the bolt that holds it to the wing and out into the light unit.  We've got to get the new dual function LEDs for in here, and figure out what we're doing about how we earth them properly since reinstated the old repair of a thick twisted copper wire isn't really that reliable.
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For the headlights, it's a yellow and a green wire.
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Going from the box section on the inner wing on the driver's side, you can follow the wiring back from the lights, through the inner wing, and into the engine bay.
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It then branches up to the steering column to join the dashboard section of harness.  There's a spur off for the dynamo and starter motor, and then there's a branch that goes down into a closed box section of the chassis.  You can see a random blue-ish wire here from a previous re-wire.
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I now had as much of the front as I could figure out the next thing to do was to head to the back of the car again.  The only thing in the middle of the car was the brake switch wiring but to get to that I'd have to remove the wiring that runs along the drivers side chassis rail.  I couldn't do that until I'd disconnected the fuel tank and figured out how the wiring joined up to that and the wiring for the lights in the boot.  With the rear wheel off and the car on an axle stand it's pretty easy to see everything you need to get to.

To the left in this shot is the fuel tank, I pointing at the chassis crosstube the wiring goes around (more on this in a moment, to the right of my hand is what I believe is the rear brake rod actuator, and ahead of that is off course the differential and rear axle.
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Where I'm pointing now is the fuel tank sender, which works so we shan't be disturbing it, and that needs to be disconnected.  Happily, there's an access hatch in the boot for this very purpose.  It does seem a little odd that the sender is on the opposite side of the tank to the main wiring, but perhaps there's a sensible reason for it being nearer the filler neck?
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I wanted to know how the wiring actually ran to the bullet connecters that were tucked into the corner of the boot, pulled out under the car here since everything was being unthreaded.  This part of the wiring is original, so this is what Lanchester installed back in 1951.  It's very brittle and stiff for the most part.
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I'd had some confusion with the new harness in that there was a very long run of wiring that contained three wires with bullet connectors on the ends.  From the colours, it looked related to the lighting.  However, to my knowledge up until this point, I thought there was only one run of wiring down the chassis and I already had that accounted for.  Now I was at the point I was dismantling things, I could see what that wiring was for.  The old wiring runs inside the chassis rail, and then loops over the crossmember that runs between the fuel tank and the axle.  It has a plastic-y sheath over it where it sits outside the chassis, so it's not immediately apparent that it's wiring.
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What I didn't know is there's a second run of wiring that loops underneath the same crossmember, also with a  plastic-y sheath covering it.  This does a good job of keeping the bulkiness to a minimum and makes for a very tidy routing given the design of the chassis.
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The other thing I hadn't realised when trying to find the wiring previously is that because I'd been looking in the wrong place, I hadn't seen the two runs of wiring that are clamped to the inside of the chassis rail.  There are a few braces along the length of the chassis that have sort of leaf shaped holes in them that guide the wiring, and clamps at intervals that keep it in place.  It's all very dark under there.
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That figured out, I could remove the fuel sender wire.  There's an access hatch for this in the boot covered by a pair of pressed steel plates with a rubber gasket that go around the filler neck.  If the intermediate wooden floor is still installed, there's a hatch cut in that too that you can remove.
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The wire has an eyelet on the end and is simply slid over a threaded shaft and secured with a nut.  Once it's removed, I tied some string on to it so I could unthread it.  I found that the wire is held to the rear cross tube with two large metal band clips and the centre rear bracket for the fuel tank.
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Then it's a case of finding any tools that fit the Imperial fixings to undo them.  I only had two spanners the correct size, and fortunately the right shape too.  I was quite surprised at how easily the nut and bolt came undone, I fully expected them to be rusted solid.
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With the wire unthreaded and the string taking its place I could then figure out what was going on with the rest of the wiring at the end of the chassis.  I also learned at this point that the fuel tank had to come out because otherwise you can't actually move any of the wiring.  It's not that the fuel tank is pressing on the wiring, just that there simply isn't enough space to get in with your hands to move the wiring out of the chassis.
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That meant disconnecting the rotten filler neck connecting hose, something that will be easy and sensible to replace.  That also gives us access to the worst of the rust on the back end which is just this simple bit of fabrication needed to the inner arch.  Duct tape over the filler neck to prevent dirt going in the tank since I can't put the cap on with that being attached to the other part of the filler neck.
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The tank is held into the car with one bolt in the middle at the back through the rear chassis crossmember, and two going through the chassis crossmember the wiring loops around.  Again, the other bolts came undone surprisingly easily and the tank was then ready to remove.
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Or so I thought.  I found out very quickly that the exhaust needs to be disconnected to allow the tank to drop out.  I was time conscious when I did this job, not least because it kept suddenly raining very heavily without warning, so I just moved the tank aside and later I'll drop the exhaust so the tank can be removed and repainted properly.  At least I could get to the wiring and start figuring out how that came out.  There was a nut and bolt going through the end of the chassis which I'm still not entirely sure of the purpose for.  There appeared to be a wire going to it, and there's a stub of what might be an auxilliary light under the car in this sort of area, but no switch or wiring for it anywhere in the car.
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There was a lot of fiddly and dirty work attaching strings and persuading decades old wiring and dirt to let go and come free.  I wore eye protection throughout this job because I like my eyes and don't have a spare set.  I should have also put something over my ears to stop rust and dirt going in them, it was one of those jobs.  Eventually I had the wiring out and I had to remove the brittle old plastic-y sheathing that kept bunching up and jamming the wiring as I was trying to remove it from the chassis.
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It's not very easy to unthread the wiring from the back of the chassis because all you have for access are these little holes.  Even with the wiring clips unbolted in the open section of the chassis, it was still slow going.  Because I also had to pull the string through, I had to be careful not to snag things, and because I was dodging the sudden downpours and trying to keep the camera safe, it was a bit of a chore to do.
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The wiring is held to the chassis with B clips (that's what shape they are, like a P but two bumps) located under each of the bodymount/outriggers.  It's a nut and bolt rather than a captive nut, so they are a bit fiddly to remove.  Once you've removed the clips, you then have to make sure as you pull the wire out it doesn't get jammed in the narrow part of the vertical guide holes (not the same as those circular holes in a previous photo) in the chassis, and even more careful of the string which is hard to keep out of the narrowest pinch point.
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Eventually, I'd freed the wiring as far as the B pillar, I had strings run to preserve the wiring route, and was ready to work my way forward for the last bit of the old wiring removal.  That will have to wait for a future update, this one is quite long enough.

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I've been struggling to work out the wiring on the Lanchester for some time.  The biggest stumbling block has been the lack of colour code key for the wiring and while I'm aware of two diagrams out there, the one in colour uses a different colour key to both the usual BS-AU7 and the colours used in the Lanchester.  The one in black and white, even when viewed at the largest size, is impossible to read all of the numbers on so the colour key is almost useless as a result.  With that in mind, I decided to employ my skills as an artist to see just what I could do about it.  I just needed that moment where I saw the information and it suddenly made sense because up until now, I felt like I was hitting my head against a wall.

This is the image I started with.
a98fad15e675.jpg

 

The important thing on this diagram is that the colours I can see the code for do match what's on the new wiring harness and I could see enough different colours that I was moderately confident this would give me a better starting point.

After all of the above work, I also went through and retraced every wire, all of the outlines for the icons, and all of the numbers.  I started with the numbers that were easy and left the harder ones to help eliminate problems.  I also referenced my now vast photo and video archive on the wiring job and that helped me see what colours were where in the car which, in turn, helped me figure out the most likely candidates for the bits of the diagram I just couldn't read at all.  Eventually, I ended up with something immensely more legible than I started with.
582ee4d2e0d4.jpg

 

After I'd done all that I went through again with colour and made myself a colour wiring diagram showing everything at a quick glance.  This copy I kept at full size and a PNG file.  Suddenly a whole lot of the wiring in the car made sense.  I'm not as far off track as I feared I was.  Here's a JPG file which is much smaller to illustrate the point.
623d8ad211ec.jpg

 

This takes a lot of the guesswork I was having to do out.  It's fundamentally the correct diagram for the car, all of the elements it should have are there.  The items that are different are the passlight and the inspection lamp sockets that our car doesn't have, and the wiring for the rear lights is slightly different and looks more like you'd expect for the older style unit on the back of a Briggs car.  However, because of the snap connectors marked for the rear lights, the wiring that differs there is only different from that point back and that's already wired up since I had original wiring to compare to there.

Hopefully this will get me past the current stumbling block since now I stand a far better chance of getting everything connected again.  Looking through the videos and photos it at least seems like I have all the colours accounted for now.

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There will be a proper update in the future.  I can happily report that the work on the diagram above paid dividends today and I have almost every wire in the engine bay connected.  I also got the stator tube out so I can sort out the wiring in that and repair the horn push that I messed up.

I have the dashboard, horns, and brake switch to connect now.  It was a lot of work to get as far as I did, and I hope I never have to do anything with the dynamo wiring again since access to that is appalling.

Some thinking is needed on the indicators solution too.  The wiring isn't an issue except for the fact we can't physically thread both the sidelight and flasher wiring into the sidelight housing for the combination bulbs we wanted to use in there.  It's entirely possible there's a simple solution to this and I'm just a bit too tired from all the work done on the rest of the job today to see it.

I need to get a few more bullet connectors, bullets, and wiring to finish off the harness completely.  No new wiring is provided for the stator tube and it seems silly not to replace that if we're doing the rest.  I also need a clamp or block of some sort to go on the bulkhead as per the original set up to keep the wiring harness secure since that item is missing on our car.  I'm also not entirely happy with the battery lead that goes to the starter because it just sort of flops around under the car and has obviously been touching the exhaust in the past so that will need replacing and properly securing somehow.

Big hurdle cleared on this job today at least, so I'm happy about that.  Apologies for the lack of photos, you'll get those when I've edited the video in the future.

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16 hours ago, vulgalour said:

I've been struggling to work out the wiring on the Lanchester for some time.  The biggest stumbling block has been the lack of colour code key for the wiring and while I'm aware of two diagrams out there, the one in colour uses a different colour key to both the usual BS-AU7 and the colours used in the Lanchester.  The one in black and white, even when viewed at the largest size, is impossible to read all of the numbers on so the colour key is almost useless as a result.  With that in mind, I decided to employ my skills as an artist to see just what I could do about it.  I just needed that moment where I saw the information and it suddenly made sense because up until now, I felt like I was hitting my head against a wall.

This is the image I started with.
a98fad15e675.jpg

 

The important thing on this diagram is that the colours I can see the code for do match what's on the new wiring harness and I could see enough different colours that I was moderately confident this would give me a better starting point.

After all of the above work, I also went through and retraced every wire, all of the outlines for the icons, and all of the numbers.  I started with the numbers that were easy and left the harder ones to help eliminate problems.  I also referenced my now vast photo and video archive on the wiring job and that helped me see what colours were where in the car which, in turn, helped me figure out the most likely candidates for the bits of the diagram I just couldn't read at all.  Eventually, I ended up with something immensely more legible than I started with.
582ee4d2e0d4.jpg

 

After I'd done all that I went through again with colour and made myself a colour wiring diagram showing everything at a quick glance.  This copy I kept at full size and a PNG file.  Suddenly a whole lot of the wiring in the car made sense.  I'm not as far off track as I feared I was.  Here's a JPG file which is much smaller to illustrate the point.
623d8ad211ec.jpg

 

This takes a lot of the guesswork I was having to do out.  It's fundamentally the correct diagram for the car, all of the elements it should have are there.  The items that are different are the passlight and the inspection lamp sockets that our car doesn't have, and the wiring for the rear lights is slightly different and looks more like you'd expect for the older style unit on the back of a Briggs car.  However, because of the snap connectors marked for the rear lights, the wiring that differs there is only different from that point back and that's already wired up since I had original wiring to compare to there.

Hopefully this will get me past the current stumbling block since now I stand a far better chance of getting everything connected again.  Looking through the videos and photos it at least seems like I have all the colours accounted for now.

Excellent stuff there @vulgalour. I iz  impresseded.

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Another no-picture update here for you today since I made some serious progress today on this job.

Engine bay

  •  1 black earth wire to bolt down to the correct place, either inner wing or carburettor bolt seems likely
  • 2 purple/black wires to identify.  One is for horn, the other is for wipers, and the battery died in my multimeter and I didn't have anything else usable for a continuity test.  As soon as I know which is for the wiper/horn, I can connect these up
  • 1 grey wire for power outlet.  This is non-original, just need to figure out which socket on the voltage regulator block is going to be most sensible
  • Horn wiring needs connecting too.  The wiring in the harness is slightly different to the diagram, same colours, just a different layout on the car.  It may be that the wire that goes from the horn to the harness isn't provided, there's a lot like this on the harness.

Rear

  • A few more bullet connector sleeve things to buy.  Not enough were supplied with the new harness, I've had to put in half a dozen so far to join bits up.
  • Bootlid/number plate light wiring I think is the mystery black/white wire.  It's long enough and has a protective sheath and there's an empty socket in a double bullet connector that supplies the sidelights.  To me, it makes most sense to have a wire running from here the the number plate light since that would be on with the sidelights.  Why the wire provided wasn't red like the other sidelight wiring I don't know, so I'll be changing that out for red so it's cohesive.

Dashboard

  • Bulb holders provided for ignition and oil lights are incorrect.  I need to remove the new bulb holders and wire in the original ones, this will also mean the bulb holders actually stay in the instrument panel.  The new harness has an eyelet on the end of the ignition and oil light wires which should screw down to a tang on the bulb holder, there's then another wire from the bulb holders to the rest of the loom for completing the circuit.  The new bulb holders are missing the tang completely and there's no way of connecting up the oil and ignition wires otherwise.
  • For the time clock there is the wire from ignition to main harness, but the wire from ignition to clock is not supplied.
  • Ignition/light switch is the only other item left to wire up.  My hands got so cold I literally couldn't feel what I was doing and it being so fiddly with tiny brass screws I left this job today for fear of losing things.

Stator tube

  • New wiring for this is not included in the harness.  I need four lengths of wire about 2 metres long in the relevant colours.  Easy enough to sort that one out at least.  Once that's done, I can reassemble the horn push and semaphore control.

Brakes

  • I need to remove, clean up, and reinstall the brake light switch.  This is one item that didn't work when we got the car and it's probably dirty contacts because of where the brake switch sits under the car.  Bit more involved a job than I wanted to get into today.

Other

  • I have a mystery yellow/black wire with a sheath that suggests it should be on the outside of the car.  It's on the passenger side and doesn't reach anything present on the car as far as I can see.  The diagram suggests it might be for the inspection lamp which our car either never had, or just didn't have when it came to us.  It would reach the inner wing or bonnet underside, so it might just be that we need to stick an inspection light/socket in the engine bay to tidy that one away.

 

After the wiring is finished, the list looks like this:

  • Radiator and heater test/repair
  • Fit new engine mount
  • Flush block coolant
  • Change all oils
  • Fit rebuilt water pump
  • Fit new belts
  • Fit new hoses
  • Rebuild and refit boot lid
  • Adjust and service brakes
  • Remove, recondition, and refit fuel tank
  • Repair/replace exhaust system
  • Grease all grease points
  • Fit new front and rear window seals
  • Welding

There may be a few other items to go on the list I've not remembered here, it won't be a lot, it's not a complicated car.

 

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Another brief update for you with this one.

The dashboard is fully wired up, it was not a joyful experience, but it is done.

The new bulb holders didn't stay put in the instrument panel, and the upper bulb holders were wired in a way that wasn't that easy to make use of, so I fitted the original bulb holders instead which are known to be good and stay in place and that made wiring things up a lot easier.   When I first started the job I wouldn't have been confident enough to do that, but now I understand better what I'm looking at, it made sense and the hardest bit was battling with my cheap soldering iron.  That means the new harness has the old bulb holders on it now.

On the plus side of rewiring the bulb holders, it gave me a redundant piece of wiring that I could then use for the time clock, so that's wired up and ready to go now and I really hope it does, I know these sorts of clocks don't always work sadly.

I have a shopping list for hopefully all the connectors I need now, including sizes, and a shopping list for all the wiring I need that isn't provided with the new harness.  Once I've got those I can get the lights, horns, wiper motor switch, and brake light switch properly connected.

I only have two wires I don't know the purpose of.  One is a yellow-black with a plastic sheath and there's nothing electrical in the area it goes to that isn't already connected.  The other is the long length of black-white that also has a plastic sheath that doesn't correlate with anything in the car or on the diagram.  The plastic sheath suggests these should be on the outside of the car, or the underside.  However, since all the things on the car are now connected appropriately and these wires are left over, I'm really not sure what they're for.  For now I'll just finish connecting everything, make sure everything works, and if those wires are still left over then I'll just not fit the black-white (it has no terminals on it, and is separate to the main harness), and I'll make sure the end of the yellow-black is capped off so it's not going to be a fire hazard or similar.  The yellow-black could be for an inspection lamp, I've seen one photo of a Lanchester with one fitted, and it was in about the same place this wire goes to.

As a happy little bonus, next to the washer jet push there's two screw holes in the underside of the dashboard which are perfectly placed to hold a bracket for the power socket.  I've also got a bunch of old cigarette lighters a neighbour gave me and I'm hoping one is a similar design to the washer jet push so that it doesn't stand out as much as the modern rubbery looking one.

Now just a case of waiting on parts arriving so I can finish the job.

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2 hours ago, vulgalour said:

On the plus side of rewiring the bulb holders, it gave me a redundant piece of wiring that I could then use for the time clock, so that's wired up and ready to go now and I really hope it does, I know these sorts of clocks don't always work sadly.

Buy Repair Kit - CLOCKS 4 CLASSICS

 

Did mine years ago,  you wouldn't know it was there unless you opened the clock up.

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It's not that bad a job really, this one has been bad because of what I've been up against.  If you're starting with factory or factory style wiring and replacing with the same, it's actually going to be pretty easy.  It's when you don't have a colour code, diagram, or reference that it gets difficult.  Hopefully your Austins (assuming it's those) are slightly better supported when it comes to information, had we gone for a Somerset instead of this Lanchester I reckon we'd've had an easier time of it.

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It’s my A55 Mk1 that needs rewiring. I bought the loom from Autosparks years ago (circa 2012 at a guess) and promptly installed it on the back seat where it remains, in its bag.

The wiring was totally shot on this car, an absolute death trap of knackered original and bodged additions with scotch locks everywhere. I’ve already ripped a lot of it out, it was too poor to use most for reference anyway.

The main thing that’s concerning me is that the dashboard has been modified. It now has a turn key ignition switch in place of the original ignition/light switch and various toggle switches on an extra panel where the lights etc have been moved to. Obviously the loom is for a standard one. I think I may have to put it all back to standard which isn’t the end of the world, but it’s quirky and a bit different, plus it’s obviously been like that most of its life.

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The method I found worked best was to ignore anything I didn't understand and just focus on the bits that you couldn't get wrong.  Some parts of the wiring can only go to one particular area physically, some parts use a colour that no other part does, so these are your easy bits to start with.

I found it incredibly frustrating to try and figure out what everything did in an area before letting myself move on to another area.  Just identifying all the bits that made sense reduced the options for the bits that didn't.  Laying the wiring out next to the car can help a lot too because you can figure out the physical route a bit easier and that in itself can make it easier to spot where things should connect.

Don't worry about actually connecting wires up until you're confident of routing and what wires go where.

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