TL/DR: Still no headlight wipers!
The ongoing troubleshooting with the electrics are all related to corrosion between terminals and switch contacts, and in some cases disintegration of the plastics – this is understandable after 33 years of neglect and I’m amazed it isn’t worse. In most cases, e.g. the door switches and interior lighting, I’ve been able to get things working by cleaning up the corrosion with a wire brush and sandpaper. For the interior lights there has been a subtle retromod: LED lights now provide much brighter illumination and should be less of a drain on the battery.
The indicator and wiper stalks, lighting switch and hazard warning switch are more problematic. Some of the terminals have quite severe corrosion and the plastic casings aren’t holding together anymore – resulting in entire circuits dropping out, arcing and alarmingly hot wires!
I had a go at cleaning up the hazard switch and indicator stalks but I don’t think they’re any better off and probably won’t put up with much when we’re on out on the open road. The hazard switch and stalks are nothing special – just generic BL components – so I’ve ordered replacements from Mini Spares in the UK, but I was able to save the lighting switch with some solder, dollops of hot glue and a bit of crimping. It now works perfectly and no longer doubles as an electric toaster… and for the first time both dashboard illumination lights come on!
Finally I hacked a mounting plate to allow both horns to be installed, for all that 2-tone goodness. It sounds great but more importantly it looks good too – very cheeky. A full demo will be included in the forthcoming walk-around video.
As for loose ends, the faulty indicator flasher was replaced and it works, intermittently. Most likely it’ll settle down when the stalks, hazard switch have been replaced. There’s also something not quite right about the ignition switch, so all of those things are conspiring to produce a lot of gremlins. Hopefully in Part 3 we’ll have all that buttoned up!
Projekt Agnetha 