It will have been said many times by many people but for those whose brains occasionally go awol heres a tip when working on the inside of the car up under the bulkhead. This might be when doing some work on the wiper rack, or heater vents or the like. ALWAYs make sure you block the access to the inner inner wing on the right or left hand side of the car. Things can and do fall down the gap between the inner part of the inner wing and may well be lost for ever to rattle around ad infinitum!
My goof today was to lose the end part of the wiper rack - what made it worse was the fact that initially, and without realising it, the end part had just fallen onto the ridge on the top of the inner wing panel. My groping around knocked it off and down to the bottom it went
Tomorrow I will attempt a rescue using a magnetic catch from a cupboard tied to a length of string. Hopefully I can lower this in and pick it up but if not I'll be spending some more money on line shortly
Oh yes. I was working on a very rotten traveller once. Out of the bottom of that black-hole appeared a permanent marker, a thimble, several fuses, and a lot of pre-decimalisation change!
Well, my magnet on the end of a length of electrical cable worked - I now have my wiper rack end back - yippee! not so yippee is the fact that, having now reassembled the whole thing and mounted all the wiper spindles etc. I now find that i have put the captive nut, that fits into the end of the wiper motor gear, on the wrong way round So I now have to dismantle the whole thing, withdraw the cable and turn the little blighter round - doh!
I lost a socket down there on one Minor saloon more than 10 years ago - most dangerous time is when a glovebox liner is removed, then anything goes! (it usually goes rattle clunk..)
On my 71 pick-up I had this area apart (bottom of A-post, inner step etc..) for repairs
I found a previously lost chewing gum packet & assorted nut shells and debrid. The mice had nicked the chewing gum from the dash and hidden it away! Fortunately they did leave half for later so I was happy with that (not).
anyway back to the previous story I was doing the A-post bottom on my saloon, so decided to open up the inner inner wing bottom section just to re-aquire my socket.. only to realise that it was a different saloon that it had fallen into
Ray. MMOC#47368. Forum moderator.
Jan 06: The Minor SII Africa adventure: http://www.minor-detour.com
Oct 06: back from Dresden with my Trabant 601 Kombi
Jan 07: back from a month thru North Africa (via Timbuktu) in a S3 Landy
June 07 - back from Zwickau Trabi Treffen
Aug 07 & Aug 08 - back from the Lands End to Orkney in 71 pickup
Sept 2010 - finally gave up breaking down in a SII Landy...
where to break down next?
2013... managed to seize my 1275 just by driving it round the block
Snap on do an electromagnet with a long flexible end about 10 mm dia. I bought one years ago when working on Locos. Very useful, I still use it occasionly.
A roll over jig works well to retrieve things, unless you think that turning the car upsidedown and shaking it is a bit extreme...
cheers
Iain
Fairmile Restorations.
'49 MM, '53 convertible, '55 van, and a '64 van.
Marina p.u., '56 Morris Isis Traveller, a '59 Morris JB van, a'66 J4 van, a '54 Land Rover, Land Rover 130, Renault 5, '36Railton, '35 Hudson, a Mk1 Transit and a Sherpa Camper...
A car can be restored at any time, but is only original once!
