[Enright]

Yesterday I dived headlong into my ATC conversion project. Unfortunately I wasn't feeling very well and got steadily worse throughout the day, to the point where I had to give up and go to bed to try to shake off a sudden bout of the lurgy. This was a real issue because I'd only got 1 day off work and the car had to be driveable to get me there and back today.

The morning was spent removing the dash. To do this all of the armrest, centre console, instrument binnacle, glovebox and lower trim had to come out. The steering column even had to be dropped to give better access and allow the dash to be freed. That’s about the point that I took pics 1 & 2.

Then the central air distribution box had to be removed, as the replacement has lots of servos and sensors on it. This meant getting the big steel frame out of the way from around the steering column, and disconnecting the heater matrix from iinside the engine bay. At this point, as can be seen in pics 3 & 4, Rudi decided to lend a helping paw!

With the central airbox removed Rudi retired to my seat for a rest (pic 5), leaving me to fight the new air distribution box into place and to start reconnecting everything. It was nice to think at this point that I was beyond half way and it was now all about reassembly. I’d previously spent time removing a wiring loom from another vehicle and stripping all the bits out of it that I didn’t need, leaving just the ones I did. But it still looked pretty nasty (pic 6).

I connected up as much of the new loom as I could, then because I was feeling so ropey I went inside and didn’t surface for about 3 hours, leaving the car immobile. To get it running again all I had to do was bolt the steering column back in place, reconnect the upper wiring loom and replace the instrument cluster.

The biggest fright came at testing time when I flicked the ignition on - I got a lot of warning tones and lights, hazards flashing and central locking clicking! It turned out that when I’d removed the steel frame around the steering column, I’d managed to activate the plunger attached to it that senses if the entire vehicle has been flipped upside down – so my ECU thought that the car was on its roof! Having worked out what had gone wrong and reset the plunger to correct it, and with a running (if somewhat cold) car, I went back to bed.

This morning was greeted with a groan as I saw the frost outside – it was going to be a cold 22 miles to work! Fortunately, installing heated seats was an earlier successful project and they really came in handy today. The car currently appears as can be seen in the last picture. A lot is still to be wired in or fixed back on - during one spirited getaway from a set of lights this morning there was a sudden clonk as the instrument binnacle toppled towards me, falling over onto the steering column shroud and temporarily hiding everything!

To finish now, I just need to tap my new loom into the appropriate places in the original one, test the system and refit all of the missing bits of trim.

More pics to follow when it's all done...