Happy Christmas and New Year to all fellow ARP4 owners around the world.
Following on from a nice chat with Stefan at Run for the Hills, I have replaced the plastic mirrors on Morag with the carbon fibre version of the same design from Demon Tweeks which look fabulous. Thanks to him for that inspiration.
From the outset I've had the Moto Lita wooden wheel on the car which I transferred from my previous Mog 'Molly". It has great sentimental value but the brown wood didn't quite sit right to my eye in the cockpit of the ARP4. So I have just received from Morgan Park in Germany a gorgeous looking black wooden wheel. I saw this on their stand at Run for the Hills (and I then sat on the same table as them at the Gala Dinner).
I will post some pictures when I have had the steering wheel fitted.
A couple of questions for fellow owners.
Mirrors. Horizontal adjustment of the mirrors is dealt with by simply loosening the bolt on the top of the mirror. To adjust the vertical angle of the mirror arm, do you have to unscrew the whole arm from the car to loosen the adjustment which is at the back of the base of the arm?
Secondly, night driving. Has anyone come up with a neat and sympathetic way to illuminate the switchgear at night?
Many thanks and kind regards
Ian
Thanks Ian and a I hope you and yours had a good Christmas and will have a great New Year, same to fellow ARP4 owners and all TM members.
With regard to steering wheels, my car has the excellent electric power assistance, so I have fitted a 12" (300mm) Momo leather wheel which gives perfect feel, and more importantly allows me to see the 7500rpm redline on the rev counter, as well as the red line change up light, normally covered by your left hand, RHD cars only of course. It still allows full view of the fuel and water temp. gauges as well as making getting in and out easier too. There are just so many advantages, I wouldn't go back to the original.
With mirrors, you shouldn't need to take them off to adjust them once the friction screw in the base has been adjusted so that it holds the mirror in position, but you can still move it, with some effort. The problem is that the nearside mirror tends to unscrew itself and hang down. I would bet we have all suffered from this little glitch? The answer is to use some threadlock so that in normal use this doesn't happen. Whatever you do though, don't tighten the friction bolt up too much as it will just split the mirror base - don't ask me how I know......
With regard to the switches, the only one I need in a hurry is the spot lamp switch, which on a RHD car is on the bottom row and nearest to the wheel, so I have made an extension from a short length of copper tube and just put over the switch with some tape under it. The end is flattened and I can now find it easily with one finger, in the dark. The other switches don't get too much use, except the ignition and starter and as they are in the middle and only used when the car is stationary, are easy to find. My heated screen doesn't appear to work at all, so until it is fixed I don't need that switch, and the others seem to fall to hand when needed. Having said all that, I wouldn't have thought a small light under the dash roll would be too difficult to rig up. It could have a red low wattage bulb and would make the dash look quite sexy.
I am seriously thinking of removing the clock and fitting a Stack oil pressure gauge in the hole, as well as making the water temperature switchable for oil as well, I feel I need more info. on that expensive engine.
I've also fitted a large polished aluminium oddments storage tray on the top of the tunnel, not too pretty but very useful.
I'm still working on the radio, currently I've got a 'Pure' pocket receiver into which I plug the phono lead. It sort of works, but with no aerial socket, it loses the signal too easily once on the move. Has anyone found anything better, short of actually fitting a proper radio and aerial?
