I'm not sure is such a thing as a "15 minute" job:-)
Safety Fast!
Gordie Bird
'62 MGA
'67 MGBGT
I'll be driving for charity in the 2004 Michigan British Reliability Run!
Info & Secure credit card donations: http://www.mibrr.com
>
> Ach, my neck. So a simple headlight change took 90 minutes this am.
>
> I found my non-working headlight to be in two pieces-never saw
> the glass brake
> in the recepticle before. Anyway, it was straight-forward to
> remove the shiny
> RIM, outer exposing the RIM, inner (parts named according to the
> Moss Catalog),
> easy to remove the 3 screws of the RIM, inner, easy to remove the
> two broken
> pieces and then ...
>
> Replaced the bulb with a new one and turned on the lights to make sure the
> wiring was ok. Smoke started filtering through the sunlight.
> Oops. Quickly I
> flicked off the switch. The bulb looked fine; the wiring looked
> fine...figured
> I had put some fingerprints somewhere on the bulb and the grease
> smoldered. Ok,
> turned lights back on, no smoke(good), both headlights worked on
> normal, so I
> flicked the high beams...only darkness from the new bulb.
>
> Took the 3 screws off again and lo, the wiring had broken from
> one of the 3 sockets.
>
> So out came the soldering iron, an extension cord, and finding
> the solder took
> 10 minutes alone, the pleasures of stripping 28 year old wire ??,
> opening the
> connector to remove the old stub of a piece of wire, resoldering
> the connector,
> and the cool 72F degree morn was now 82F 50 minutes after I started.
>
> Reassembled, turned the lights on and they were fine. Turned the
> highs on and,
> Voila!, they both went on.
>
> But the damn bulb was wobbling between the two pieces of the
> inner rims. That
> was no good, so off came the Rim, inner again (yes, two different
> parts are
> called inner rims by Moss, an INNER RIM and RIM, inner). Tried
> another RIM,
> inner I had saved from a junker and it still wobbled, so I went
> back to the
> original RIM, inner, and noticed another of the 3 wires was about
> to break, so I
> stopped in my tracks and resoldered that connector.
>
> Taking pieces of engine gasket material (which I am hoping will not become
> inflamed from the heat of the bulb), I made some gasket shims to
> fix the bulb in
> place, rescrewed the RIM, inner to the INNER RIM, and lo, I now
> had 2 working
> headlamps. The temperature was now about 86F.
>
> The headlamps worked like the eyes of an amblyopian, so I took another 10
> minutes to reposition the lights. A simple bulb exchange to 90 minutes.
>
>
>
> What did Marlon say near the end of Apocalypse Now, "the horror,
> the horror." I
> would say, 'the pleasure???, the pleasure???'.
>
> Happy 4th you all and thanks, Mr. Brando.
>
> Bill Saidel
> 76B
> BMCSNJ
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