Dash it all.

Got the rest of the dash out yesterday and embarked on the rebuild of the new one. I removed and stripped down the old dash, and in doing so broke the small LED that lit Intertia Warning Light. This is attached to a small PCB with a resistor on it. I was very annoyed at this, mostly because these are unobtainable now. I know my car is not original, and I'm going to leave the preservation of original Chimaeras to others, but I did want to retain the warning lights. Because I broke that LED getting the dash out, I was very careful with the rest of them. However, I still couldn't get the MIL light out (this is to do with the fuel injection), but the rest, being on a large PCB attached by a bolt, came off easily. I ended up going to Car Builder Solutions for some LEDs to replace the ones that I'd broken/could not get out of the dash. I went for these ones. I ended up replacing the MIL light with one that says 'ECU' (which I think is more descriptive anyway) and I turned the handbrake one upside down so the it says 'i' for inertia (this is pretty well what TVR had done actually). They look fine to me, and because they're not in the main cluster of lights, it doesn't look odd and they're also hidden behind the steering wheel rim! I also changed the red LED alarm light for one of these because the rim of the original was black plastic and looked it, and I fancied a change from red. Overall it was a fairly straightforward affair, if not long winded. Doing this meant some time spent kind of upside down in the driver's footwell, reaching up and getting hands scraped by stuff you'd never usually see, so that was kind of a drag. An interesting (?) thing is that the nuts that hold the dash one (these are notorious in TVR dash changing circles) are sometimes changed by others doing this same job for wing nuts. I can't see that working out well. When I was doing mine up with a spanner, I could hear the dash top moving into position and tigtening against its neighbouring components. I would never have got sufficient leverage on a wing nut.

Anyway, time for a pic or two:



and a very similar one:



You can see that I also changed the pedals for Leven ones too. This was for a couple of reasons. The most important is that the Leven pedals are wider, which means that heel-and-toe is much easier, This is important as apparently downchanging without this matching of engine to gearbox revs can mean the rear wheels lock and there could be a resulting spin. This has happened to a couple of forum'ers. The other thing, clearly, is that they look nice and shiny, which is obviously the way forward. This activity also meant spending time upside down in the drivers footwell being an amateur contortionist. Anyway, here's a pic:



And here's one with the seat and carpet back in:



Aw feck. It looked better before:



Only joking. I think it's much improved. Even if you don't agree, at least the dash has no cracks in it, and it now houses a head unit that plays CDs and also music both from a USB key, or MP3 player.

Now the car looks so inviting, I really want to drive it, but there is a small fly in the ointment. While on one of my upsidedown in the drivers footwell forays, I broke the brake light switch. This is a 50p part, that predictably is sold for a fiver, and given I got on the computer at 4pm-ish, won't be here until Thursday at the earliest. I can't really drive with no brake lights, so I am now stymied. Pants.

One final thought is how much I actually like the colour. When it was in the garage covered in dust and general shit and corruption, I didn't really appreciate what a handsome colour it is and I did think about getting quotes to change it to perhaps Rolex Blue (which is close to purple actually), or Imperial Blue (which is much more bright). Now it's clean, I'm staying as is. Lots got sold in Starmist Blue (my colour) and there's a good reason for that - it's a cracking colour!