Wheel Arches/Lights

I’ve thoroughly cleaned the s/h wheelarch spats. they’re the matt black type that have gone “glittery” with age. This is my favourite type. Theyre all in good condition, except for some surface scuffs which may come out with “Back to Black” or Autoglym plastic colour restorer.

I was hoping to fit the front lights after deciding how to set up the bulb replacement. I have halogen lights, but unlike a defender, the SIII requires the whole lamp to be removed from the front of the wing to get access to the rear of the reflector. With Defender lamp surrounds, this also requires removal of the indicator and sidelight to remove the lamp surround. I have 2 plans:

a) use a tank cutter on the lamp surrounds to enlarge the sidelight/indicator appertures so that the plasic will sit around the smaller lights rather than behind them, and drill 2 small holes to allow the use of 4 fixing screws like Series surrounds. this would be like very early 90/110 surrounds. I went to start this mod, but on opening the sealed bags for the (2 yr old) brand new surrounds, I found that they look terrible – poor definition of form, odd texture and exceptionally poor fit. I’m sure the Britpart label is just coincidence…

b) get another pair of plasic headlight bowls with the open back and fit the lights using these. The cut bowls from the old pair would then slip over the rear rims of the new fittings, retained with small self tappers. this would allow bulb replacement from under the wing. As I found that one of the old bowls has a knackered adjuster and needs replacing anyay, I think I may do it this way.

I have sprayed the inside of the front sidelights and indicators black (for the smoked look) and sorted out the wiring for the TD5 wing repeaters. they have a very small plug which seems very difficult to buy for the harness, and I wasn’t going to pay £45+ for a Defender’s sub harness just to chop 2 connectors off it, so I soldered wires directly to the pins inside the repeater plug face, and at the other end soldered them to a small stripped section of the main indicator light wires 2″ away from the light unit. Some heat shrink and loom tape and i now have water and dirtproof front indicator wiring.

So, tomorrow I need to place an order with VWP for the headlight bowls and various sundries, and an order with Rogers for new genuine headlight surrounds. I also need to get a new heater intake grille for the left wing top, as the bottoms of 2 of the screw appertures broke away, allowing the grille to lift up at those points.