I’ve managed to right a few of the wrongs on this car–and have polished the bonnet and headlight covers, as seen above. Neither of the latter are perfect, but they are far better than they were.

You can see that one of the fog lights is shattered–I’ll probably replace it, but I never, ever use them (it’s rarely foggy around here and I think it’s kind of douchey to drive around with them on otherwise) and they’re $120 to buy. The paint isn’t quite as nice as it appears in the photo, but it’s a good five-footer and that’s better than me, so good enough.

Paint should be arriving for the roof this week, and we’ll see how that goes. It’s not in your line of sight, really, so even a moderately ok job will probably pass muster.

Just another look…the headlight covers still have some pitting but they’re improved 100%

Let’s see. My three warning light friends were absent on today’s errands, and honestly, if they want to see other people, that’s cool with me. I should be so lucky–undoubtedly they’ll be back. The generic OBD2 readers I have can’t see the codes being thrown, which means buying a bespoke Land Rover reader, the cheapest of which are $150.

I fixed the driver’s door handle. It was not the big control assembly, but rather a plastic clip which was wallowed with age (I feel ya, buddy). I used a tiny zip tie to build the worn area back up and it seems to have worked…for now.

One of the ash trays had its spring adrift, and I was able to fish that back into place, so a win there.

The left horn button was just rattling around in the wheel. Popping it out, I found a couple of pieces missing. There is a fixed plate in the wheel, and then a spring keeps another plate from touching the fixed one until the button is pushed, completing a circuit. The plastic button holds it all in place.

I’m guessing at some point the button popped out, the spring went flying, and the two plates fell against each other, for an instant perma-horn. They “fixed” it by cutting off the plate and just putting the button back in to rattle around. Obviously the button doesn’t work.

For the short term, I found a spring and put it behind the button, which at least keeps it from rattling and looks right. For a real fix, I have to buy a new horn button, which I think are $50 to $150, depending where you buy them. And if I do that, I am just going to disassemble it, fish out the spring and top plate, solder the old wire to the new plate, and be done with it, rather than taking apart a bunch of stuff to fish the wiring harness down into the car. I am just that lazy.