So last week my driver's side sidelight/indicator lens fell off.
On the 850 as standard this is held onto the car by 2 methods. Firstly, a big hooked spring attaches it to a plastic nubbin just inside the engine bay. Second, by being clipped to the bulb assembly, which itself is of course wired in.
My car had taken a knock in this area in the past, and the lens unit was a little deformed, the tough plastic behind it disturbingly torn, and the bulb unit no long clipped to the lens unit because the clips were broken. But no worries, because it sat there fine and the big hooked spring kept everything in place.
Until suddenly it didn't. On a big motorway junction roundabout.
Worse, I didn't realise. As soon as I did (not the first time I got out of the car, or when getting in again, but the second time I got out) I drove back to the scene, parked up and went looking for the bits. Found two big chunks. Almost all the clear and orange plastic was missing, the result of being run over a few times.
The sidelight bulb wasn't working, but the indicator was. They were still dangling from their wiring. I figured the sidelight would be the bulb or the connector, and put it out of my mind for the time being. It's very easy to swap bulbs out of this unit.
I immediately hatched a plan to put the unit back together. FYI, a unit from a breaker is a tenner, but with the MOT fast approaching and various things leaking quite a lot I don't want to spend unnecessary funds if a bad fail is immanent.
Plus I seem to find bodging fun.
Plan 1 involved exterior sealant (since I have an open tube to use up) and superglue, but it quickly became apparent that plastic that has been squashed a lot needs a lot of strong connectors to hold it together again. Glue wouldn't hold it at all, and I suspected I'd need a vice to let the sealant cure, and then it would immediately fail.
Plan 2 was briefly trialled. Little brackets and screws. But all the screws were massive and it started to look like Frankenstein's Monster inside. The brackets were pants in terms of rigidity, and hard to whittle away to fit in the spaces allowed.
Plan 3 involved cable ties to such an extent that I used up all my stock of cheapo cable ties. Using my smallest drill bit I carefully drilled holes in each side of the required join, and cabletied it together, cutting off the excess with scissors. As the job went on I got considerably less careful. It didn't seem to matter.
Thatchers there, my helping hand
With the two chunks made whole again I turned my attention to making the indicator flash orange. The bulb is a P21W, of which there are orange versions available. But I didn't have one, so that wasn't an option. I needed to cover the bulb with something orange.
I figured I'd glue together whatever orange I found into the bottom of a plastic bottle, which I'd then jam into the lens opening to cover the bulb, and seal using sealant, or glue, or more cable ties.
Bunged the bottle in, thought it looked pretty good. A bit like those ironman HID projectors you can get. If you squint a lot.
The main difficulty I experienced here was actually laying hands on ANY orange plastic. Surely, I thought, there's got to be a cleaning product somewhere with an orange lid. Nope. OK, the old standby - sweet wrappers. Don't have any. Alright, what about Tango et al? No dice - the liquid is what's orange. Medicine bottle? Bit dark, and don't have one in any case. Paint? Not got any. Markers? Yeah, but I can't imagine them being good enough.
I searched the whole house, which to be fair isn't very big. Then I hit the orange plastic jackpot in the form of a CD jewel case protecting one of my wife's terrible CDs... Fountain of Wayne or something. Repurposed Wayne's jacket by breaking it into bits.
For the record, jewel cases don't break into usable chunks very well. It's something they do quite badly. Good for that interview question: What's your biggest weakness?
Did my best with gorilla glue in the bottom of the bottle, and was relatively pleased with the coverage. But when it cured I found there was so much white opaque stuff (what is that stuff?) all over everything that it ruined the effect.
I also discovered that Wayne's square helmet was incredibly brittle. Gorilla glue combined with brittle Remains of Wayne and the bottom of a plastic bottle didn't seem like it would last long so I abandoned it without fitting.
This was my lowest ebb. Or so I thought at the time. Of course there would be a lower ebb later.
Casting around for a replacement for Wayne's Favourite Bathtime Gurgles, knowing I'd already exhausted everything, my wife came to my rescue and gave me the gift of a small orange sunscreen lid that was technically still in use, but I could have it. I guess I'm just very lucky man.
It had a small inner insert which needed to go, so I bust out the dremel-clone and sanded it away, careful not to pierce the outer skin. I wondered briefly how I would attach it, before deciding on God's fasteners.
Thinking myself terribly clever, I cut a tiny notch into the lid where it needed to clear an existing cable tie.
Then without measuring or even looking really I drilled holes in the other 3 dimensions in both the lid and the lens unit. This alarmingly poorly planned method actually worked OK (just) for the ties to hold it in place, but not the notch - that was now being held a few mm away from the existing cable tie, rendering it useless. Ah well.
At this point I realised I could repurpose the long splintery bits of Wayne's Mother's Maiden Name (King) into an orange side reflector. Drilled and tied in and tucked under the sad remnant of the lens' original plastic cover, I felt the job was a good 'un.
Thus far the entire story had played out in this month's heatwave. Now, when I needed to install the finished article, it rains. Of course, of course. Maybe next time it could rain turds.
I hadn't really wanted to think heavily about how I'd cover the unit. The lid was all well and good, but in rain the lights see a lot of water. And air, bugs, and probably a bit of debris too. In any case I hadn't needed to colour the sidelight bulb so that was uncovered.
I'd experimented with a quarter of a tub of Carte D'or - the box, not the ice cream. It kinda worked, but the angles were all a bit out, so it never sat quite right for me.
This left sheet plastic, which I only had to hand in two flavours: Fruit carton and empty dog food bag. And fruit cartons are too flimsy, so dog food it was.
It looked terrible and I had no means to hold it in place, but I went out to the car anyway and tried and tried and swore and cut up lots of cable ties. Then more. Then I left it for an hour and went back and did the same again. The difficulty was holding the unit in place to hold the bulb holder in place, while pushing dog food plastic in tiny gaps and making sure my cable ties didn't fall out of the engine bay or get sucked up my backside and forced out of my eyes. It was near impossible and made me very cross.
This was my lowest ebb.
But as the actress said to the bishop, I did eventually get it in. I cabletied the bulb holder onto the back of the lens unit. I strategically drilled and tied 4 positions on the unit, then ran loops of ties from these back into the engine bay and tied them (literally) onto part of the non-functioning aircon that doesn't move too much and isn't in the way of any belts. It's like a weird static kite.
I pushed the dog food bag around and up the same hole, ensuring the upper edge tucked under the bonnet drain - so water goes over this. The tension of the unit from the cable ties keeps the bag in place.
From the outside, from even quite a short distance away, it looks OK. From the side the "reflector" works well and when the indicator is on, the orange sunscreen lid works great.
The only problem is that in the excitement I forgot to sort the sidelight bulb, and have turned a 2 minute bulb change job into a 30 minute tear-filled swearfest of redoing the Static Kite Affair.
I've driven it around for 2 days now, once in heavy rain, and so far it's still there.