Dendy's 480 Diary

[brinkie]

Ah, yes, tried the N/S as well, but our N/S is your O/S

[jifflemon]

given the ease to remove the nose cone, it's hardly worth the scraped knuckles....

(yet I still did the O/S without removing it!)

[brinkie]

That's what I figured. Only this car was in danger of losing the DRL lenses as well, had to be extremely careful taking them out, even when using a plastic tool the bits were coming off

[Jaster]

I always take the nosecone off, and am in agreement with Jeff regarding time taken vs. scraped knuckles. As you presumably noticed I have similar feelings about the fragility of the DRL lenses. Hopefully Joep will be able to sort me out with some replacements in the near future as the spare cluster I fitted is noticeably less faded than the other one and it looks wrong!

Took the headlight assembly out, found the gas strut doing nothing at all.

I'm fairly certain that every gas strut out there that hasn't been replaced is doing nothing at this point, and thus causing unnecessary wear and/or damage to the motor. Definitely one of the first jobs I'd do on a newly acquired car as a matter of course.

[dcwalker]

I always take the nosecone off, and am in agreement with Jeff regarding time taken vs. scraped knuckles. As you presumably noticed I have similar feelings about the fragility of the DRL lenses. Hopefully Joep will be able to sort me out with some replacements in the near future as the spare cluster I fitted is noticeably less faded than the other one and it looks wrong!

Happy to bring what are now my spare set of drl units in May if you want to try for a better match in the meantime...

Where is everyone sourcing replacement had struts for the lights?

David

[Jaster]

Thanks for the offer David - I actually have spares for both sides and really only bothered putting one on as it fell apart (or rather I broke it ) right before the MOT and I was in a rush, and we all know that temporary solutions are often the most permanent...

I've sent Joep a message so hopefully I'll get my main set back in action in the near future. I don't want to deprive anyone of what are becoming increasingly impossible to find spares if I can possibly help it!

There was a group buy on here last year for the struts (link), I got a few and they work fine. In theory they can be re-gassed if you can find somewhere willing to give it a go (SGS Engineering has been mentioned here in the past), and finally I think Skandix may have a few left, although I imagine their supply is finite.

[jifflemon]

Can confirm SGS engineering’s offerings are all good. Did suggest they actually add them to the catalog as they only list tailgate ones.

[brinkie]

I could hear the relay clicking rapidly as the passenger light tried vainly to lift itself out of the bonnet, so the first thing to do was to pull the relay out and re-flow the solder joints between the two boards, indicated here:

If reflowing of the solder joints doesn't work, and the relays itself are bust, I have found a replacement relay to be surprisingly cheap!
https://www.conrad.com/p/fic-fra2c-2-dc ... ver-504366

In my case, the contact of the relay was gone.


New relays in place.


Old relay in the background, new in front: