That meant making a concerted effort to get the old girl running again. I decided against redoing the wiring at this moment in time, I can and will do it at a later date. I'd rather get the car working before worrying about all the prettiness. What I had originally thought was a strange headlight split on the wiring loom turned out to be a separate feed to a switch on the column shroud (a switch that's never done anything and I'd never really figured out) to operate the fan, really common giffer mod to the Princess and to any car with overheating issues. It will be removed but for now the wire has been re-routed in front of the radiator along the stock wiring loom rather than around the back of the engine bay where it doesn't really fit.
Removed the flat disc horn and refitted the two snails, which have been tested and found to be working. That gets rid of some clutter in front of the battery too. I've got a twin-tone air horn and an Oogah horn, one of which I'll likely fit instead in the future as they're a good bit louder than the snails and the Oogah horn certainly makes other drivers/pedestrians pay attention (or at least it did when I had it in my old Mk2 Polo)
The starter motor turned out quite well and bolted up fairly easily. Alignment was not difficult and it tidies up a previously ugly and grimy part of the engine. Once the oil filler tube is blanked off and the wiring rewrapped this area will look much improved, it's a bit cluttered at the moment.
After this it was a case of bolting the battery tray, expansion bottle bracket, coil bracket (which had to be straightened so it fit better), coil, distributor, expansion bottle and a minor reroute of various bits of wiring to make everything tidy before attempting to fire up the car.
It really is a messy engine bay, there are areas I can improve things, just going to require a bit of effort. First fire attempt wasn't that successful, it was definitely a timing issues as spark and fuel were getting through. I had remembered the bad fuel from before and the loose bolts so we went through all that again and then rechecked the timing to find I'd set the static timing correctly but not the ignition timing, once that was done the car fired up on the first turn of the key.
MUCH HAPPINESS.
Then we turned it off because the thermostat cap was chucking water out all over the belts and alternator. I'll get a new cap and then run the car up to temperature before retorquing the head bolts. This means I can now drive the car in and out of the unit for doing things like welding and brakes and that makes life a LOT easier.
