Elan S4 rebuild - my story chapter 2

[pharriso]

Words of the day........GROUND WIRES. No matter how well you think you have provided enough grounds, think again!
..........
Those darn relays for lights and horn were tough to trace back but we persevered and finally got it figured out. Or so we thought. There were two wires left in the headlight area of the loom that didn't go anywhere and they weren't on the schematic. A black wire with red trace that had a female spade connector and a black wire with ring connector.

We got everything working except the headlights and the instrument lighting. No matter what wires we traced and tested we could not get those lights to function. Drew and I decided to run a bunch of temporary ground wires and guess what? Everything worked! That black wire with red trace in the engine bay......once grounded the relays worked.

Glen, the black with red tracer is the ground for the relays & per my wiring diagram runs through one of the micro-switches on the vacuum switch to ground. Maybe your new harness has it integrated, as I mentioned when we met Lotus just added a loose wire back to the vacuum switch.

Making good progress

[gjz30075]

Great job, Glen. You showed one pic of the wires on the back of a switch, for documentation. Is it safe
to assume you have many more pics, somewhere, if one of us were to ask?

[Certified Lotus]

Phil, it wasn't until the end of the day that I realized the black wire with red tracer was built into the loom. I have ordered the proper color coded wire to install separately and was going to do that next. It's just didn't register that the wire in the loom was already there as you had mentioned it wasn't part of the loom. im still a bit perplexed about the whole thing, but wanted to sleep on it before going back to understand.

Greg, I am photographing each and every switch for a complete record of the wire code to switch terminal location. Will finish before the dash gets bolted back in. I want to confirm every operation before I do so to insure accuracy. The photos will be available for anyone to use.

[Certified Lotus]

Chilly morning on Saturday. Low 30 degrees F outside. Fired up the propane heater early and in about an hour the garage is a nice toasty 80 degrees. T-Shirt weather! Drew is always happy to walk into my warm garage with music playing in the background and a plan for the day.

We have been tackling the wiring for the last couple of weekends and today we promised ourselves we would get it all resolved with the outcome to be able to attach the dash back in position and start re-assembling the interior the next week.

The list of need to accomplish was; get the hazard flashers to work, get the turn signals to work in conjunction with the hazard flashers operation properly (this is a major problem, we can get both to work separately but not when they are both connected), wire the thermostat relay for the electric fan for the radiator, install the NOS windshield wiper arms and insure they park on the left & connect the horn.

As we started tracing what we had worked on a couple of weeks ago, we remembered the door courtesy light switch on the left door had a broken connection. R&D only had the plunger switch, not the spade connector that the wiring harness connects to. We found the old connection piece still in the spade plug on the old harness, pulled it out and set up a small jig on the work bench to silver braze the two pieces. Good as new!

Brazing the courtesy light switch

The finished connector goes on this plunger switch

I had mentioned we were having problems with the turn signals and the hazard flasher. We could get either to operate properly when the wiring was connected to the individual switches, but we couldn't get both to function if both were wired. It drove us crazy not being able to figure it out. After hours of retesting and rewiring the relays and tracing everything out multiple times Drew and I were looking at the wiring diagram for the 100th time when it dawned on both of us the 6 pole hazard switch mounted on the dash (it is not a stock item on the S4, the PO installed it in the new dash he had made) didn't have a jumper connecting the right and left side of the switch so the right and left side lights would work together. DUH! I quickly made a spade connector jumper, hooked it up and presto........everything worked!

Green wire jumper solution on hazard switch

As we went thru every electrical switch operation Drew didn't like it that the high beam green indicator light wasn't very bright. He took the speedo out of the dash and completely disassembled it finding a piece of rubber gasket over the plastic lens inside. He cleaned everything up, reassembled, reinstalled and tested. Nice bright high beam light. Its great having a friend who is very much into the details. I told Drew he was the only guy I know who I would not worry about what he was doing when I all of a sudden found him taking the speedo out of the dash and taking it apart. That is trust!

Speedo repair, high beam lens

Everything back together again and one more test of every switch and circuit. Everything except the horn is now connected and functioning properly.

Testing all the electrical circuits for proper function

The wiring of the thermostat control for the radiator fan was next. The PO had wires installed but they didn't seem to make sense. We cut the wires from the fan motor and ran temporary jumpers from fan motor to thermo switch when we realized that we would not get the fan to work without the thermo switch getting hot and closing the circuit. Out came the switch, heated it up and tested it with our meter to see what temp it opened and closed. We read the owners manual to find out there is a small adjustment screw inside the thermo switch. Our bench test with heat gun wasn't giving us an accurate enough temp reading so we moved to the kitchen and boiled a small pot of water with the thermometer in it. Adjusted the thermo switch so it closed the circuit at 180 degree F and opened at 140 degrees F. Reinstalled the thermo switch in the radiator and ran the wire to the fuse box on the firewall. I will install an inline fuse on this wire just to be safe.

Thermo switch testing for Radiator

The wiper arm install. I was lucky enough to find a pair of NOS wiper arms from one source and bought a new pair of correct wiper blades from R&D Enterprises. This car didn't come with arms or blades so I had no idea which way they parked. I had created a post on this subject with the response being the majority of the cars have the blades parked on the same side as the steering wheel. Installed the arms, pointed then up in the air (so I wouldn't bend them in case they didn't park properly) and turned on the wiper motor. Amazingly they park in the right direction. Its about time something went according to plan

NOS wiper arms for S4

Wiper arms parked in proper location

Good day of major accomplishments! Next week is reassembly of dash and the detail of tucking all the wiring nicely. I wonder what I'm in store for next..........

[john.p.clegg]

Glen
That piece of gasket over the green light lens wasn't there to stop the speedo illumination light from illuminating the green light was it?

John

[pharriso]

Put those defroster vents in before you bolt the dash down!!

[Certified Lotus]

Glen
That piece of gasket over the green light lens wasn't there to stop the speedo illumination light from illuminating the green light was it?

John

John, the plastic tube housing for the light had a tan rubber gasket material in it to make the fitting snug. The gasket material had stretched and was covering almost all the green lens so only a small corner was uncovered. It was clearly a problem of someone installing incorrectly. The correction should be right. Will know when I drive it at night

[Certified Lotus]

Put those defroster vents in before you bolt the dash down!!

Thanks Phil, made a note !

[gjz30075]

The wiper arm install. I was lucky enough to find a pair of NOS wiper arms from one source and bought a new pair of correct wiper blades from R&D Enterprises. This car didn't come with arms or blades so I had no idea which way they parked. I had created a post on this subject with the response being the majority of the cars have the blades parked on the same side as the steering wheel. Installed the arms, pointed then up in the air (so I wouldn't bend them in case they didn't park properly) and turned on the wiper motor. Amazingly they park in the right direction. Its about time something went according to plan

....

Glen, I know you had another post about this but I don't think the 'kinked' arm was mentioned. My 'kinked'
arm goes on the passenger side which, in this configuration, allows the blade to be parallel to the bottom of
the windscreen. Sorry if this was already mentioned.

[Certified Lotus]

Greg, both wiper arms are "kinked". One is 5 degrees and the other 10 degrees. I tried both in left and right positions. The way they are mounted seemed the best fit. Am I wrong in my assumption?

[gjz30075]

Glen, my 10 degree one is on the pass. side, but it sounds like you have it figured out.

[Certified Lotus]

Greg, we are the same

[Certified Lotus]

Glad I'm not in a rush rebuilding this S4. I've mentioned before that Drew and I work well together because we are both meticulous about the work we do on cars. That is great for the finished result but really slows down the completion of projects. Never the less, we are not willing to compromise on "doing it right" so time takes its toll.

We had planned on having the dash completely re-installed in the car this weekend. Well, that was the plan.

Drew worked under the interior of the car in the steering column area moving all the wiring into the right places and making sure everything was bundled correctly. He also wired tied the wiring behind the dash once we re-confirmed everything was working properly. The alligator clip wiring in the photo are a number of temporary grounds until we get the dash bolted back in.

Wiring harness location under dash

wire tie dash harness

While Drew was inside the car, I was completing the wiring in the engine bay. I ran an extra wire from the relays to the dash for the headlight micro switch (just in case I needed it) and ran the wire from the radiator thermostat switch to the fuse box. All terminals are soldered and have either clear rubber sleeves over them or shrink wrapped. I also installed an inline fuse for this circuit just to be safe. All new wiring run from engine bay to firewall or inside the car was run through shrink wrap and heated to form a tight seal. Then bundled next to the original wire harness and wire tied.

Next came the installation of the radiator overflow bracket and bottle.

Engine Bay wiring

Install radiator overflow bottle

Almost completed engine bay

We only have two circuits that still aren't functioning. The horn, which we will finalize when the steering rack in re-installed and the micro switch for flashing the lights. I had voted on waiting until everything was completed to tackle the micro switch as it seems to be more complicated than it should be (meaning we cant get it to work) and Drew wanted to figure it out. He really tried (I worked on other things) but to no avail could he get that damn micro switch to work. We have Phil's great wiring diagram, but somewhere we are missing something that isn't connected right. What it is.......is a mystery. Drew and finally agreed to back burner this project. Phil, we may need you to come back to my garage to help us out. Free beer if you come!

We re-installed the crash pad and the crash pad vents along with the flex tubing. Drew noticed the metal vents had screw washer marks on the paint and suggested we strip the metal vents and repaint. I stalled as I knew this would slow down the dash reinstall, but agreed it didn't look good and we went about stripping the paint and then repainting. Except the paint kept flowing and couldn't get a good finish. After the second time repainting we decided we needed to media blast it and start with new paint. A project for sometime during the week.

Crash Pad re-installed

Before we finished for the day, we thought it might be nice to see if the bonnet actually fit on the car. When I bought this car the bonnet wasn't on it. The PO had purchased a new bonnet from the UK, had it shipped over and then painted to match the car. As the engine was changed to a Sprint version with Webers, the original bonnet with the bulge was not longer the right style. We carefully placed the bonnet in location and looked carefully at the gaps. It looks like it will fit perfectly! The color of the bonnet seemed off from the rest of the car, but until we have the car outside in daylight to look more closely I'm not going to worry about it.

Bonnet back on car!

Next week we will have repainted vents for the crash pad, the proper screws holding them in and the dash re-installed in the car. At least that is the plan

[pharriso]

"Drew and finally agreed to back burner this project. Phil, we may need you to come back to my garage to help us out. Free beer if you come! "

No problem, I'll bring the frog next time...

[Certified Lotus]

Great! All we need is a warm day with dry roads!