With a new puller purchased (for more than the cost of the wiper motor) the linkage was easily swapped on to the replacement motor and to be honest the rest of refitting it was easy so I'll not bother documenting it here.
While everything was apart I gave the wiper arms a coat of satin black paint to cover up various chips and they look a lot better for it. I fitted new wiper blades while I was there. Testing in the garage proved that the wipers now effectively cleaned the screen and I'd even managed to unblock one of the washer jets that had never worked properly in all the time I'd had the car.
I decided to replace the headlamp bulbs while I was working in the front end of the car, a task that's not easy on the Roadster due to limited access behind the light units. I was hoping to avoid having to remove the housings entirely, which is the correct way to do the job but risks further damage to various clips and fixings.
In the end the new bulbs were fitted with the aid of long nosed pliers and a lot of messing around. The beam pattern on the offside main beam lamp was way off though. Further investigation revealed that the retaining clip wasn't holding the bulb properly and as a result it was rattling around and pointing anywhere but where it should be. So the offside housing had to come apart anyway to find out what was wrong.
On the bench is was obvious that part of the casting that retains the bulb clip had broken off. A new headlamp was ordered. The lamp units on this car are standard Hella items that are also fitted to everything from Volkswagen hatchbacks to A class motorhomes. For some reason though the main beam unit with integrated sidelight bulb holder costs around £40 and the one I need which is identical except that there's no sidelight fitting costs nearer £70. That makes no sense but after a lot of searching I found the correct part for a vaguely sensible price.
That's the replacement unit. There's only one problem. I t comes with the correct three fittings but the observant amongst you will notice that there's a fourth lug on the lamp unit as well... which means it doesn't fit. At least it doesn't fit unless you attack it with a nearby power tool.
Now it fits!
For comparison, here are some pictures of the hooks that retain the bulb clip on both lamp units. The original casting is very thin and it appears Hella have improved the design at some point as the replacement has a lot more substance to the retainers.
After that it was just a matter of refitting everything. A few plastic clips were broken but I've ordered up some replacements from Smart.
This was about the point I discovered that the car wouldn't start, having all the symptoms of a flat battery. It's always been hard to start from cold after not being used for a while so I charged the battery for a while and then got it started, took it outside and washed off many months of garage grime, by which time it had started raining so the car went back in the garage and I went off to find something less damp to do.
That was all last weekend so this weekend I thought it was about time the Roadster had a proper run to blow away a few more cobwebs. Except it won't start again. The battery does seem to be discharged again but charging it and adding a jump start battery in parallel still wouldn't turn over the engine. The starter just stalls trying to turn it.
I've no idea what's wrong now. It could be just a bad earth however I replaced both engine and battery earth straps not all that long ago. I have a suspicion that either something is very wrong with the engine or more likely the starter has now failed, although that wouldn't explain the mysteriously discharging battery.
I've entirely lost the inclination to investigate this car any further now and in any case I can't afford any more replacement parts for a while so the Roadster will have to join the rest of my non-functioning car fleet and wait until I have time, enthusiasm and funds to actually fix something.
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