From fuel faults to wiring woes
The first few months with any old car can be very frustrating, partly because it takes time to discover all of its frailties and foibles, but also because very often things start to go wrong when they are pushed back into service after what could be many years of relative inaction. That was certainly the case with the Reliant Robin because, having investigated a fuel supply issue last time around, I enjoyed several trips out in it without any apparent problems. Then one day I was about to set off when the day was still gloomy and was surprised at how little light the headlights were throwing onto the drive.
I'd not driven it at night yet, but I now realised that the headlights were not working on either dip or main beam, only on sidelights. So on that occasion I took the Acclaim instead, waiting until the weekend before investigating what might be wrong.
On any classic, your first suspect for dodgy electrics is always a poor earth or corroded connection. It is unlikely (but not impossible) that both headlight bulbs would have failed at the same time, so I needed to check the wiring circuit before the current was separated to feed each headlight, or perhaps they ran to a common earth point on the chassis that needed cleaning. After that, my attention would turn to the light switch itself.
I stuck my head up behind the front wing to see if I could trace the wiring, and to get in with a multimeter to see if current was reaching the lamps. As it turned out, the current was fine, but the plastic plug that secured the wires to the offside headlight bulb was so badly damaged that one of the wires had fallen out. Moving over to the nearside, that plastic plug
“A thump woke it up, but clearly that is not good enough”
was in slightly better shape, but still so badly deteriorated that it was held together with insulation tape. I found a couple of new plugs with cables already attached for under £5 delivered, and splicing those wires into the existing loom had both headlights shining brightly.
The same couldn't be said of the rear lights, because the nearside tail light was not playing ball either. A thump woke it up, but clearly that is not good enough and needed further investigation. There are no visible fixings for the light unit from the outside, but there is an access panel in the side of the rear load bay, behind the spare wheel which is strapped to the NSR wing. Access and visibility inside the wing itself are poor, though. Normally on a fibreglass car, your first suspect in cases like this would be the earth wiring, and to a certain degree on a conventional steel-bodied car too, but wiggling the bulb sockets and electric connection would sometimes make the light come on, suggesting that this was where the problem lay.
Getting the light unit out was tricky because access was so poor and I had to do everything by feel. Eventually I discovered that an 8mm deep socket would undo the nuts, although in truth instead of the nuts winding off the studs, they pulled those studs out of the plastic light unit. Eventually I had everything out and was able to examine it properly.
These fixing studs were unusual affairs, with a coarse self-tapping thread to cut into the plastic light unit together with a 10mm nut as part of the stud to help you wind it in. The stud then continued with an M5 thread through the body, to which the nuts attached. Unfortunately, one stud snapped when I undid it, which did not bode well for a simple solution.
The light unit itself has a single plug connection for all wires, and the current is then carried to where it needs to go by metal tracks to make a very robust circuit board. Taking out the bulbs and their holders showed that the area of contact between the tail light bulb holder and the circuit board was very dirty, so
I cleaned everything up with a small wire brush in a drill. One bulb was smeared with copper grease, suggesting this might have been a longrunning problem. I also found that the wiring connector was a poor fit in the socket, not really secured in position by the clip at all – with everything reassembled, I could rock the connector by hand to turn the lights on and off.
At this point I wondered about adding dabs of Araldite to build up the plastic connector so that the clip had something to grip. That did feel a little Heath Robinson, but what else could I try? I also had to find a replacement for that broken stud, though there too I was thinking of fitting a straight M5 stud and securing it into the plastic with Araldite or something similar. Then a quick internet search for the correct studs turned up a brand new pair of Robin rear lights for under £50 – apparently they also fit the Ford P100 (1986-1993) and some Ford Escorts. These came with a full set of new studs, and also with new foam light-to-body gaskets which I would also need. I must admit that I did ponder briefly whether it was worth paying £50 for complete new units, but figured that the time they could save me was worth the gamble. Now to fit them.