Lagonda Rapiers

4 minute(s) of a 484 minute read

 I barely looked out the door today It was too blxxdy cold and not a day to be standing around on a cold wet concrete floor. I have finally got rid of the  Chilblains from under my heels and under the instep of my feet. If you have never had them, you certainly do not want them.

11-4-2017

Having well and truly recovered from the dreaded chilblains I decided that I should give the Rapier some well deserved TLC, this started with a wash & polish although I must confess I still have to properly clean the wheels. Part of this process was to give the car a general once over. To my dismay I found that the fog/driving lights at the front of the car were not working. Having checked and found all the fuses intact I just had to look a little further.

It did not take too long to discover that the wire attached to one side of the dashboard switch had become disconnected. Of course when I went to reconnect it I discovered that after a great many years of faithful service that this particular wire had finally given up hanging on under the grub screw intended to hold it in place. If fact the wire must have always been a particularly tight fit. After two or three unsuccessful attempts to re-connect it  I decided that the only way I could make it reach the required terminal was to add another two or three inches to its length. After poking around in my box of (new) electrical fittings I found a matching pair of Crimp-on Spade connectors. Looking a little further I found a short piece of the required wire which was even the correct colour. "Easy- peasy" I can hear you saying but then you have probably never worked at the back (business side) of a Rapier Dashboard.  That and with luck on your side you are not about to turn 81.  Enough of all that, with my head wedged between the gear change and the foot pedals and my feet over the passenger's seat back I could manage to work the lead-light into a position where it would not be constantly falling down and I could get a stubby screw-driver in close enought to undo and re-tighten the grub screw. 

Remarkably in under an hour I have everythinghooked-up and the lights working again. This may sound a little obsessive as the last time we were driving in fog was almost three years ago in the French Pyrenees. None the less I have this "thing" that when I say "every thing works except the driver" I really mean that every piece of equipment on or in the car is in good working condition. The one other exception is the Smiths 2 inch Dashboard 8 day clock. It would work but I do not wind it up because the "tick" is so loud you can hear it inside our house with the Rapier outside in the car-port. I must say that when wound-up it does keep quite good time. When I first rebuilt the car I had put an electric clock out of a Modern car in it. There was just one problem, I have a battery master switch which I turn off when parking the car either over night of for an extended period which meant every time I went to drive the car I had to re-set the time. It was only after three or four years of searching that I found the correct clock complete with Lagonda across the clock's face.

The Fog/Driving light switch is the one one the dash above the starter button & inbetween the amp-meter and the petrol gauge. If you have sufficiently good imagination you can visualise how accessible the back of this switch is. Observant people will have also noticed the extra piece I had to insert to make up the difference of the diameter of the electric clock and the mechanical 8 day. Oh - yes, the fog/driving lights do have amber globes for driving in France.