A Rear View

We spend some time on the boring stuff...

...like sorting out the rear view. The view out of the rear window, that is, not anything else....I only chose that as a title to raise the Google hit rate. That's a joke, in case somebody gets "precious" about it. When I typed it into the computer at work to look for some amusing picture to go along with it, the results might've got me sacked if The Management had walked in.

This has been a long-standing job which has eventually come around with the onset of winter and all sorts of crud on the back window which I can't see through. My original thought was that I'd just "give the glass a bit of a wipe" as necessary, but the aerodynamics of the Defender makes this ineffective - the window gets "clarted up" - as they say around here - in minutes if the weather is bad. And this is Scotland, in the Highlands, and not the 2 days in Summer when it isn't. Bad. So we need a rear wash-wipe that works. A previous post has covered the prep work for this upgrade, which amounts to gathering all the bits and doing the research to work out what wires go where.

So. Should be an easy job, right?

I really wish I hadn't said that.

Getting the required parts together took a while since I tried to group them all into one order to save on the postage costs. After everything had - at long last - arrived, it would seem a simple job to connect all the bits and get wiping and washing at the rear end. 

Hah!

Wash wasn't a problem. At least, not compared to Wipe.

After dismantling most of the interior trim I managed to find the end of the washer hose that I'd "thoughtfully" laid in place earlier. Only I couldn't get my fingers or anything else into the space behind the Alu-Cab trim to pull it out. This meant that I had to remove the trim panel and, of course, I had a screw that was held in place by a "spun" rivnut. See previous post on this. It wouldn't come out in the conventional way so had to be cut. I'd anticipated that, one day, I'd have to do this but at this stage it was just another imbuggerance to progress. Having got the panel off I was able to grip the back of one of the nuts and get the remains of the screw out.

I took the opportunity now - before I forgot - to get all the nuts cinched up using the bolt/nut/washer method. Far more effective than the hand squeezer. In fact I think that Alu-Cab probably used one of those during assembly and, quite frankly, I think they're a bad tool. The nuts are often set slightly out-of-true due to the leverage the operator can't help using when squeezing the tool, and this means getting the screw to start "straight" can be difficult. There's often some resistance to overcome on the screw even when the nut sets properly, so if it's not properly aligned then it's too easy to force the screw across the thread. It'll go in a few mils, then jam...and that little bit of extra force now spins the nut, jams the screw and you're stuffed!

Then there was the problem of where to put the jet. I want it almost in the centre of the panel over the door, obviously, but the Alu-Cab brace is double skinned at this point so there's no easy way to get the hose into the right place and connected except by drilling a rather large hole in the skin either inside or out. As I wasn't prepared to do that, I had to drill a 6mm hole right through it and run the hose along the surface. This could have been done on the outside but it'd be vulnerable and probably freeze, so I think I've got the best compromise. 

When I'm sure it works I'll put a plastic cover over it, probably a bit of electrical conduit painted black.

The place that it needs to be mounted isn't very "tall" either, and could get in the way of lifting the roof since the nozzle assembly is quite big. 
 

Mounted slightly off-centre because of the locator for the rear awning pole.

I mounted it as low and as far out of the way as possible, bearing in mind the top of the door has to clear it. If I did the job again I'd drill the hole about 5mm higher but I was worried about getting too close to the top edge on the inside and not having enough room for some kind of cover. As it is, there's only a couple of mil clearance. If it's turned slightly sideways it protrudes far enough allow the water to be directed to the right places. In future I might experiment with a smaller nozzle/jet assembly from some other vehicle. This might allow the hose to pass inside the cavity but there needs to be enough room for it to turn the corner. The hose spigot on the Defender nozzle is too long to allow this. Or drill another hole....

With the switch pre-wired - there's no way I'd be able to read the numbers on it if it was in the dash - I removed the radio, switch panel, gauge pod, 12v sockets, GPS mount, Ipod connection and accessory switch box...pauses for breath...before being able to remove the MUD console and cut a hole in it for the Carling switch mount. I then had to grope about in the rat's nest of wiring to find the wires for the switch I hoped would already be in place. They were, but two of them had been "commandeered" by the PO to power other things, like 12v sockets. 

I couldn't just disconnect these wires until I knew what they'd been doing so this needed a bit of sorting out before I could re-assemble it all, which caused me another problem. I hate electricity. I don't understand it well enough to be sure of what I'm doing. I have to be very methodical, label everything and move slowly, so it takes ages to do anything. It actually took 3 days to sort out this mess as I was working by torchlight a lot of the time, lying on my side in a very uncomfortable position and constantly losing track of what I was supposed to be doing. By the end of it, some things worked but others that had been fine before I started, now didn't. For example, the rev counter worked as expected until I turned the lights on, then it stopped. In the end I got so frustrated I made a new earth point and ran everything to that. All works now. For the moment.

Leaving everything hanging off or out of the dash, I went to the back and connected the wiper motor. Switch on...not a lot happened. Nothing, in fact. Checked the wiring again for the Nth time, nothing obviously wrong there. Back to the dash, check the switch wiring again, same result. Go away for 24 hours, return rested and refreshed to have another go. Same outcome. Retire to the laptop and the LR forums for help. Now, given that the 2 parts of the system that are brand new, just out of the box, are the wiper motor and the switch you wouldn't expect that there'd be anything wrong with one of them, right?

So what's missing from this picture? No prizes.

Wrong. To cut this long story short, the new motor has a fault. Took me 2 days to work that out by elimination and on-line advice....Grumpy of Grampian, or what? And this was the motor that took 2 weeks to be delivered. Harrumph! This one will be going back and I've ordered another, second-hand, genuine motor from a breaker. Avid LR renovators won't be surprised to read that the busted one came with a blue-label box. I had a look at some reviews, and I'm not the first to suffer this problem with this item. I'm also getting a bit fed up with stuff that's "BNIB" but "NFG"!

 So, yet another job is put on hold. To fill the time - this is getting to be a bit repetitive, right? - I had a bit of an experiment with a rear step that we'd had lying around since Daphne's days. The rear step attached to the towball works well enough, but to have it set at the right height for towing the trailer means it's too high for comfort as a step. We get around this by using a Wolf box as a "hop-up" but this is clumsy and an unnecessary extra "step" to get in the back. Sorry.
So, a bit of work with some (more) bits from the scrap pile and we have this:

It needs to be folded up when not in use or I'm almost guaranteed to reverse into something and bend it, but this solves the problem and reduces the height of the junk heap at the same time. Bonus!

This set-up compromises the departure angle, but we can set the ball higher now for off-road driving and still have a useable step. It doesn't matter if the bottom of the towing bracket digs in - it's a plough.

Also, while sorting out the wiring for the wiper I tried to get a replacement rubber tube that feeds the loom from the cab to the door. Silly money non-starter there, but a bit of digging around turned up a bit that I took from Sue's long-departed Ford Fiesta before it was scrapped...must be 15 years ago...which, with a bit of surgery, does the job just fine. I need to find something to cover the door end of it...a sliced up tennis ball, perhaps?

So now we wait for the return of Wallas and the Wiper Motor. Could be a catchy title for something? Suggestions?