Recently I finally summoned up the courage to take a drill to the carbon indicator pods, which was "interesting" (!). Carbon's quite tough, you know...

I opted to use 4mm bolts to hold the flashers to the pods because that's about the size the old indicators were held on with (albeit probably an imperial size). As it turns out, the new flashers have holes that are more like 3.8mm so some opening out was required. It's possible that the Land Rover units are different from the Caterham ones in this regard, or that I guessed wrong based on the apparent size of the original, rusted (and therefore swollen) bolts on the car, that you can't easily get to to measure anyway.

Had I known this when guessing bolt sizes - a.k.a. had I bought the flashers first, then measured, then picked some bolts - I would happily have used smaller bolts. It's not like the weight of each flasher is going to impose enough load to trouble three M4 bolts (which, in parallel, would be just about strong enough to support the weight of the entire car, I believe).

Anyway, shiny M4 bolts is what I have. Turns out, the mounting holes are really close to the edge of the hole the flasher body sits in, and indeed thanks to some carelessness on my part I did pop one of the bolt holes through the edge...

Furthermore, that proximity to the flasher body means it can be really tough to get a washer and nut onto the bolt, so the lesson is to be really careful about where you point the drill - ideally, add a small angle so the bolt shanks all diverge slightly. The second pod went a lot better, but even so I had to file flats onto the washers I had to guarantee they all fitted.

Getting the washer and nut on the top bolt is a right pain in the arse, due to the limitations of space within the pod now that there's a flasher unit in there, but with suitably long and slender sockets, pliers or whatever you prefer, it is possible. Top tip: Get this nut located before you've even put the other bolts into their holes, this will let you angle the flasher body to give you a fraction more space.

Once all three nuts are on you can use a slimmer spanner to stop the nut rotating, even though that spanner wouldn't have been sufficient to locate the nut initially.

If you thought about this in advance, you could fit the flasher "upside down" to leave bolts at 10 and 2 o'clock, which would make them easier to reach. You'd also have to remember to rotate the rubber backing to leave the drain hole at the bottom; doing this may stress the wires at the back. However, remember you should only have the pain of fitting once!

Not a lot of space in there...

All done and ready for the next step.

What's also visible from these pictures is that, being intended for Land Rovers, these flashers have way more wire attached than you'll need, plus different connections on those wire tails.

Better that than too short though...

Repeaters:

First discovery: In contrast to every other part of the lighting loom, where a black wire denotes the common / negative / return, my new LED repeaters have a black wire as their positive.

Also, they're not fitted with any clever electronics that might let you fit them either way around (unlike some wedge-fitting LED bulbs), so you have to get it right if cutting the wires.

Ho hum. It's not a problem once you know.

The leads are only a few inches long so, while the negative will happily reach the common termination bolt in the bottom of the headlight bowl, the positive will definitely not reach all the way through the mounting brackets and back to the econoseal connector within the nose. Therefore, I'm using a length of green cable to do the latter, and fitting a 3mm insulated spade socket to that within the bowl, and of course a suitable spade connector on the repeater's positive cable.

I've trimmed the positive cable back by a few inches as it doesn't need to be so long and there's plenty enough cable already in the bowls, so any I can save is a good thing. Unlike the main and side bulb cables the repeater wiring doesn't need the slack that the former cables have to permit removal of the cowl and lens.

The repeater negative is then fitted with a suitable crimped on eyelet, to be added to the stack on the common termination bolt.

Probably should have used a larger / more common size of spade connector, but the old repeaters had 3mm pins, so 3mm is what I already had to hand.

Note that feeding the new cable down the cable sheathing and through the headlight mounting bracket, including its 90-degree bend, is a right royal PITA. The more modern lower brackets might be easier in this regard. Might.

Positive trimmed and connectors fitted.

Then it's a simple matter of putting the grommet into the hole in the bowl, and pushing the repeater in until it sits, before connecting up the wires.

Repeater: Fitted! In this particular case, to a new bowl with the cowl, lens, lighting loom and fixing bolts removed for ease of handling.

Progress! Finally got some decent garage time... well, enough to replace one side.

Before doing anything, turn your lights on and using the back of the garage door, or masking tape there-on, use a marker pen to mark the edges of the beam patterns on dip and main beam. It's not MOT standard but this will let you get your new headlight alignment reasonably close to the current one when you finish.

First, I removed the headlight and indicator lenses and bulbs to avoid damaging the bulbs and clear indicator lens I'm retaining. Mostly for amusement, here's what the old, offside, install looked like:

Mmm, zip ties and rust...

From the top, the green fillet in the headlight bowl is epoxy putty, squeezed between the bowl and its mounting a couple years back in a (partially successful) attempt to stop the thing wobbling about on its loose rivets. It cut the wobble by about 75% at the time.

And then there's the indicator... the top bolt, I've never seen. Not even when we bought the car. Note also, the drain slot in the rubber, half way up the right side of the flasher. Having later examined the flasher unit, it's clear from the holes in the rubber that it had been fitted at least twice, so I've surmised that during the most recent fitting, whoever attached it found that getting the top bolt in was really really difficult (likely impossible if the pod is attached to the car at the time) and therefore didn't bother. In turn that let the flasher wobble about a bit to the point that the pod plastic failed around both the lower bolts, so the lower right bolt you see here was doing nothing at all - it's only there because its nut is rusted on.

The lower left bolt I'd previously had to dremmel the nut off, and yes the zip tie was the only thing holding the flasher to the pod.

It's a bodge that's lasted reasonably well, but still very definitely a bodge.

A bit out of sequence, but here's the pod after removal and a lesson in why you shouldn't take things apart on an exploratory basis unless you're prepared to repair or replace them there and then:

I clipped the zip tie, pulled the flasher away, and the pod fell apart.

Before going any further, note / photograph the connection order of the pins in the 6-way econoseal, where the cables emerge from the headlight bracket.

Mine were (viewed from the cable side of the plug, with the clip lugs at the top):

Black is the common return, Red is the sidelight, the greens are the two indicators (forward facing and side repeater), and the remaining two are dip and main beam, although I didn't note which was which.

There's no way I was going to attempt to save and reuse the plug, so the wire cutters came out, getting in as close to the plug as possible so as to be leave the headlight subloom re-usable, by someone else if not me. Keep hold of the plug for checking connections on the new one, of course (in addition to the note and photo).

Taking the headlights off is a job for a 21mm or 22mm ring spanner (depending on age of light, apparently) with a gap ground out of the ring, to allow you to get up under the pod. It's a bit awkward to reach and there's not a lot of travel before you have to reseat it, but not impossible.

Thanks to Dr Slotter for the loan of his suitably-amended spanners; as it turned out my old lights needed the 21 and the new ones, the 22. Good job I borrowed both...

To actually remove everything once the nut's undone, you have to pull the main flasher's return wire back out of the headlight bowl, where it terminates on the common bolt (just visible in the first picture in this post), and pull its green wire through the headlight bracket. Both wires elsewise prevent the nut from leaving and therefore prevent removal of the lights.

Given the flasher was as knackered as the pod, I could have just snipped these wires, but if they'd been in reasonable, re-usable, condition, more care would be required.

Then, lift the whole lot off the bracket and pull the wires through the bracket.

Fitting the new bowl and indicator is much the reverse, of course - feed the headlight subloom cables and headlight mounting pin through the pod mount hole, then through the lights bracket, and thread the star washer and nut up the cables, thread the nut on and do it up finger tight.

Leave the subloom hanging vertically down at this point.

Then, find the slit cut in the sheathing on the subloom; you need to fee the green wire into this slit and down and out of the sheath, and the indicator's return wire up and into the bowl. Remember you can only do this AFTER the nut is on the headlight mounting bolt!

Also, feed the wires into the sheathing while it's hanging vertically as it's way easier than if there's any bend involved.

Indicator wires in sheath - note the black / common goes up into the headlight bowl.

Now, you can do the headlight nut up to "very nearly tight enough", such that you can still adjust the bowl which won't be pointing in quite the right direction. Make sure the indicator is pointing forwards...

Put the old lens and bulbs back in and reassemble the headlight unit and fit the flasher bulb and lens.

Then it's the PITA of pushing each wire through the headlight bracket, including its 90 degree bend. You can do clever things with pull cords and the like but ultimately, it's a narrow pipe with a bend in it. The factory only ever fed 5 cores through it but the repeater in the headlight makes that 6.

The best way I found for this is the "all cores at once" method, provided they don't already have econoseal pins fitted. My sub looms did, but they also had plenty of excess cable length and I have plenty of spare pins, so after a couple of false starts those got snipped off.

You can do one core at a time, if you start with the most flexible wires and work up to the stiffest, but I'd only suggest that if the above doesn't work - it's time consuming and awkward.

All that remains is to fit pins to each core - something that's easier with a bit of cable length to spare, so don't be trimming your wires down to the absolute minimum possible length - and if you're paranoid like I am, plug them into the expected socket holes for a quick lights check before assembling them into a new plug.

Not quite finished!

Once happy they really are in the right order and that the new sub loom colours are the same as the old, fit them into the plug housing, click in the locking plate, plug them up and test the lights again.

At this point, refer back to the marks on the garage door to have a reasonable chance of getting your lights pointed in the right direction.

Once that was done and the nut finally tightened up, it was off with the lens (again) and a swap of the old, original, reflector/lens unit, to the new Cibie unit mentioned in the first post of this blog. They're held into the cowling with four wire clips for which you'll need pliers, but it's a simple enough job.

At first glance the Cibies don't look much different, but in testing (again, against the back of the garage door) there's a clear difference as the Cibies put out more light, in more places. Looking closely the Cibies have clearer glass, where the old units look almost like obscured, bathroom type glazine, which presumably leads to more diffusion and less of a defined beam.

Cibie on the left, original on the right.

So, halfway there, then I can go for a drive again!

Wow. Just, wow. Last night was the monthly area meeting and thanks to some nice weather, the first time we've had the Caterham out in the dark since the headlights refresh.

The Cibie reflectors and lenses are a staggering improvement. For things that look very much like the old Wipacs they replaced, I wasn't expecting more than a modest improvement when I first opened the boxes. How wrong I was!

The dipped beams are brighter and provide fuller and more even coverage of the road ahead (and the ditches to the side), while the main beams throw further and again with better coverage at distance.

The single most impressive part though is that the main beams also retain good coverage of the 40 or so feet immediately ahead of the car (and again, the verges and ditches). The main beams on the Wipacs used to leave a big black hole in that area, making rapid progress at night as much a test of memory as anything else.

I can't think of a more useful or cost-effective upgrade for your Seven, unless you never drive in the dark - less than £90 will buy you an easy 10+mph top speed increase on unlit roads.

That link again:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371168061389

There is also a 5 3/4" version for those of you with newer cars, obviously (!) being smaller it costs... er... more. 

NB. On the offchance you've moved your sidelights to somewhere else, there's also a cheaper version without the sidelight fitting included, make sure you don't buy the wrong version!

An update on the light outputs, still inside the garage:

Due to a mix-up on my part, in my initial test I'd left a standard H4 bulb (from Gerlux) in the new Cibie, so I was comparing that bulb in the Cibie against a Halfords +120% ultra brilliance bulb in the Wipac. So, my original comment of, "At first glance the Cibies don't look much different, but in testing (again, against the back of the garage door) there's a clear difference as the Cibies put out more light, in more places", probably understated the improvement as the Halfords bulb is brighter and whiter.

On the main forum, Jonathan Kay asked for comparison pictures, so, in the spirit of providing evidence (and acknowledging that a lot of things I've learned about tinkering with my car have been learned thanks to other members' contributions to Blatchat and LowFlying), I've been back to the garage and taken a few.

They're maybe not helped by being taken merely on a phone which will of course attempt to compensate for differing light levels, but they do (I believe) show some crucial differences.

Note, in all cases, the Left hand / nearside light is fitted with a Cibie reflector/lens and a Halfords +120% bulb. Both units also always have the same LED sidelight. All pictures taken with the phone resting on the windscreen top with the camera above the centre popper, to attempt to give a consistent angle and range.

1: Cibie and +120%:

This is the target to aim for...

2: Cibie and Gerlux:

Not easy to spot (it's more obvious to the naked eye) but the Gerlux output is more yellow and slightly less bright - you can see a ridge in the garage door in the middle of shot that was bleached out in the first image.

3: Wipac and +120%:

Note here the much smaller spread of bright light from the Wipac - there is now a lot of ridge visible / not bleached out in the middle of shot.

4: Wipac and Gerlux:

Finally, the old lens and the less bright bulb - the worst of all four results.

Obviously, light seen on a garage door by a phone camera does not equate to useful driving light on an unlight road; that said, to my eyes, the Cibies put out more light in more places than the Wipacs, regardless of bulb.

Based on the pictures above you might think that the brighter bulbs don't make much difference, however personal experience in the real world (a damp, unlit road) says that actually, yes they do. The whiter light and increased throw of the brighter bulbs made a significant difference. I am hopeful that the Cibies will provide a similar step change in performance under actual driving conditions.

Edit: See two posts down for results...

Moving on to the headlight bowls:

When I first put the repeaters into the headlight bowls, the repeaters I used were some nice units from Seven Speed (now kitcarsupplies.co.uk, but they no longer do the items in question). Nice, but, they take a standard 5W wedge bulb and are therefore quite deep. I managed to trim them by about 10mm overall, but they still protruded far enough into the headlight bowls that their length defined where they had to be located, and even then I had to remove the rubber caps from the back of the headlight to get everything into the space.

As it turned out that was no bad thing as, at about 90mm back from the front of the bowl (excluding cowling) they're both fully in view from the cockpit. The MOT states side repeaters must be visible to someone stood 1m away from the car, in line with the rear axle (or words to that effect), so they don't have to be pointed perpendicular to the car's long axis.

The new repeaters are very much more compact, as you might imagine for an LED, and therefore offer more flexibility. However, I rather like the existing locations so I decided to duplicate them in the replacement bowls.

This is also handy because, on investigation, my existing nearside bowl is in at least as good a condition as the chromed "new" bowl, so I've decided to keep that bowl, complete with existing repeater hole, and just replace its front cowling.

So, first job, measure where I put the holes first time around... I did measure for these back then of course, to get them the same both sides, but that was a while ago now - do I have a note of the measurements? Do I heckers like!

Using a decent pair of compasses (plus extensions) (you could equally use non-stretchy string, card templates, whatever) I determined that the hole centres were 89mm (linear / "as the crow flies", not around the surface of the bowl) back from the lip at the front of the bowl (the visible join between the bowl and cowling), and 144mm (again, linear) from the edge of the bolt hole at the top where the cowling retaining bolt goes. Your choice of dimensions may vary; I'm looking to have them vertically centred in the bowl for personal aesthetic desires.

Scientific, it is not... Some pictures may help; obviously working from an existing hole I had to estimate the hole centre:

89mm when the compasses were lined up with a steel rule.

Extension arm and some contortion required to find this dimension to be 144mm.

With these dimensions, stick a decent piece of masking tape over the undrilled new bowl and use the same compasses to mark a crosshair.

Check at this point that the crosshair really does look like it's in a sensible location as it's easy enough to knock the compasses. Once marked, re-measure the compasses to ensure they've not moved.

Obviously, when you first do this, it's more a case of picking a spot that looks good on one bowl, marking it on masking tape, then measuring that to replicate it to the other bowl. If the bowls aren't attached to the car at this point, take a few moments to make sure you're not about to put holes in the same side of both bowls, as that would be an embarrassing and expensive mistake...

Then it's out with the drills, starting small of course.

As soon as the hole's large enough to accept its centre point and assuming you have one, it's now time to commit sacrilege with a spade drill (if yours, like mine, was intended for wood).

No, you're not about to cut a 19mm hole in the brass with a wood-specific bit, but just give it a few turns so as to mark the outer edge of what will be your hole.

This means that, as you enlarge the hole and/or when you run out of drill bits and resort to a round metal file, you have a marked line in the metalwork so the effective centre of the hole won't wander.

At this point you can remove the masking tape and enlarge the hole to that limit. Even if you have a 19mm drill bit I suggest you stop short of using it and use a file to complete the hole as this gives much more control on the hole's shape and limits. That said, the repeater sits in a rubber grommet that's fairly forgiving so your hole has to be neither exactly 19mm nor exactly round. Naturally, it's better if it is both...

One more thing to note:

The sidelight hole in the Cibies is very slightly smaller than that in the Wipacs. However, it is also rubber lined, so the original sidelight socket will fit and be held secure.

The only downside is, when you remove it the rubber will attempt to hang on to the bulb which can then get stuck in the reflector/lens unit.

The Cibies do have their own, bayonet-fitting, sidelight holder which presumably would get around this issue, but that would mean buying new bulbs, cutting the original bulb holder off the sub loom, and fitting more spade connectors to the now-trailing wires. Frankly, I'm not going to go to that trouble. It's not like I take the headlights apart very often, and with LED sidelights they shouldn't need removing that often.

The H4 bulb retaining wire is captive on the Cibies (a big improvement!) so you can swap the bulb, if necessary, without removing the side light (no risk of dropping the clip so no need to take the reflector away from the car).