Dave's la(te)st buggy build...

A bit more today. as indicated above I only opened the shop for the morning, and spent the afternoon in the garage...

I started by giving the sidebars a third coat of Yella paint



And then finished the snorkel off... if you look closely you'll just about see the black breather tube going up behind the snorkel mounting bracket...



And it then disappears through the underside of the snorkel head into this brass fitting...

(You can also just about see that I had to take a wide 'chisel' woodworking drill bit to make a recess as the plastic was so thick!)



And then inside the snorkel head is a breather port for all the linked breathers (rear axle, front axle, gearbox, transfer box and the charcoal filter in the driver's side - as mentioned earlier)



This breather - that blue silicon hose goes into another nylon breather tube that joins all the others in the engine bay...



I then started fixing a little problem I'd noticed after finishing the "bent" box-section front wing tops... the bonnet wouldn't shut fully It would latch onto the safety notch before the bonnet is pushed down to fully close, but it wouldn't... the reworked bonnet hit the wing tops first So I took the latch off to slot the mounting holes BUT (of course!) one of the bolts snapped first So I ended up drilling holes above the two existing bolt locations and putting riv-nuts into them... sorted! The bonnet shuts nicely now



And to finish off the front... as I'd "de-badged" the middle bonnet grill insert, I put a small new Suzuki badge on the opposite side of the winch rope's donut fairlead to balance the front out

A bit more today...

This made me laugh... as I was putting my boots on to go out to the garage, the Labradors thought they were getting a walk so sat on the stairs waiting for me... alas it was persisting it down... Sorry guys!



That's Buddy at the bottom of the stairs and Milo at the top... although we should have called in Gromit!

Anyway...

I started by reattaching the newly painted (three coats of JCB Yellow) JimnyBits sidebars...



New fastenings all round... metric fine 12mm and 10mm nuts with oversize washers for the bodymounts either side under the (half) doors, and some new M12s to bolt the sidebars to the chassis brackets, with spring washers...



In front of the doors



Behind the doors



The big chassis bracket



Looking good, and very yellow! Shame to scratch them?!



Nice lines too... blue body meets black underseal meets yellow side protection bars



I then reassembled everything on the transmission tunnel, but had to pop out for some big fat self tappers to replace the rusty ones around the transfer stick... no point painting the frame that holds the boot down and refitting rusty old screws is there? New self tappers fitted in the two trims around the gearstick and the handbrake too... and treated them with some secret magic cleaner first...

I was then going to refit the seats... BUT... what about the wiring? I'd only have to take the seats back out again to get to it, so mught as well do that first?!...



Ten-way connection box on the floor, and twelve wires in the wiring loom on the nearside...

I cut the loom off leaving plenty to route into the connection box and then started fathoming out all the wires, turning things on one by one... I managed to find...

A common earth that branched into a few other earths
Rear Lights
Brake 1
Brake 2
Reverse
Nearside Indicator
Offside Indicator
Foglight(s)
And a fatter white wire that is permanent live? Not switched on the ignition?

And three further wires which I could not identify... So I had a bit of a Google and emailed Martin the font of all Jimny knowledge, and between these two excellent resources (THANKS Martin!) I managed to work out that they'll be...

Rear Wiper (even though it's a soft-top donor, the loom is probably common)
Rear Windows demister (ditto)
Rear Door courtesy light switch
Rear Door Central Locking?

Although there is a smaller loom on the offside -



To these two plugs, which I would assume (yes, I should have written it down two years ago!) would go into the rear door, as it's hinged on that side...

But, I have all the wires I need... so I'll wire them into that big ten-way connector box soon, and then extend to the back lights too...

Also, yesterday, I ordered myself...



A "replica" (i.e. cheap!) Suzuki biker leather jacket, to keep me warm, dry and stop the bushes battering and scratching me! It also matches the colour of the buggy of course, and is generic Suzuki, i.e. not "GXR-S" model or "Rizla" Racing Team, etc... So that's where my Christmas money went!

Nice touch that jacket

Usual fast and efficient service from Vehicle Wiring Products...

Cable - 7 core, 3 core and 2 core
Heat-shrink
Relay for flashing main beam and the LED bar
Cable mounting tabs

Guess what I’m doing tomorrow then...?

Can you shed a bit more light for us?

Are you repairing the house vacuum

What a waste of a morning!

I got up early, I shot to Booker Cash & Carry and was there just after they opened, I got all the bits we were short of for the shop, and shot back home again, dumped the stock in the shop, I'll put it out on Monday...

By then the wife and our eldest daughter were up and took our two Labradors for a good long walk...

Meanwhile, I disappeared into the garage...



I found the SJ back lights for the buggy, you can see they are new Maritu ones sourced from JimnyBits around 18 months ago, and some light guards I got off a chap on eBay... Bah! But I can only find one box of bulbs...

So I turned the garage upside down, searching every shelf and every nook and cranny, tidying up as I went, and finding stuff I forgot I'd got...

In the end I found various bulb kits in my old Jimny spares box, and hoped I could match enough to make a set for the other side...

So I opened the box to check, and...



ARRRGGGHHH!!! There's two sets in the one box!!

Excellent timing though, I'd just got so annoyed I went back in the house to make a cuppa, annoyed but giggling to myself how stupid I'd been... when the wife got home and started making me a full breakfast, so I nipped upstairs to write this, will have my brekkie, and start the day all over again, having wasted most of the morning searching for bulbs that were under my nose all the time... If only I'd opened that one box of bulbs!!!

C'est la Vie!

Lambert wrote: If you're using 7 core you must have bought a trailer and are turning the boogy into a trailer queen behind the gv!

Ahh, yes, but no, but... 7 cores...

1) Rear Lights
2) Brakes
3) Reverse
4) Nearside Indicator
5) Offside Indicator
6) Foglight
7) Earth

You still think I make this up as I go along?

Ok, that list lead to...



A diagram of the junction box showing what was going where...



A few hours later... I fed the loom through a big heat-shrink tube, and then cut each wire to length, took the sheath off the end of each wire, twisted it, bent it back on itself and then screwed each cable into it's corresponding place in the junction box... And then attached the loom to the "wading wall" with some self-tappered ty-wrap clips...

Step two...



I drilled through the side of the rear nearside roof clip mounting...

And fished around with a length of mig welding wire for literally an hour until I managed...



To get it out of the soft-top's hoop pillar... Having stripped the seatbelt out again to get into the pillar... ho-hum!



I then used the MIG fishing wire to pull the 3-core cable through...



That will provide power to the hi-level LED brake light and a couple of internal worklights under the soft-top's hoop...



I could then finish the internal wiring in the junction box... and then tidy up all the cables so that they are hidden out of the way behind the roll-bar's X tubes..

The 7-core cable runs out the top of the "wading-wall" and was going to run along the top edhe of the mesh panel in the rear nearsde wheel arch, but the ground anchor's handle / shaft was a bit in the way, so...



It runs down...



... and along the bottom edge instead, and then...



... into the back of the nearside light..

From there it will be wired into the nearside light, and then along to the other / offside light, and down into the foglight as well...

Probably Wednesday now then... as everything took longer than expected today You get days like that though... it took ages to fish the MIG wire down the pillar!!!

New Year, and a bit of a milestone reached...

With the internal section of the rear wiring complete, I was able to bolt the passenger bucket seat back in place this afternoon...





I just need to tidy up (coil, wrap and hide) the wiring on the driver's side before bolting my own seat back in too!

A job for Wednesday it would seem, as tomorrow I'm back in hospital having needles poked into my eyes, so I'll be out of action for most of the day!