Don’t Be Negative

After last week’s post I had some great messages left for me and couple of nice emails too, so thank you. It was pointed out that I hadn’t actually posted a pic of the Krooklok in the car. Yep, I missed out one of the main points of what it looked like in the car. So to make amends here they are;

I don’t think it looks out of place either. Those with eagle eyes will spot that the pedal end of the lock is not shiny. Correct and this is something I eluded to in the last post. The metal end will damage paintwork on the pedal so i wrapped a little wire loom tape around it. This is a cloth tape and will cushion the metal on metal. On modern cars where the pedals are pretty much out of sight I wouldn’t need to do that. But as the Mustang pedals are clearly visible from outside the car chips in the black paint would look rather nasty. Also the cloth tape blends well to the pedals too.

While I was in the garage I had a little clean up under the hood, nothing special just a quick detailer wipe over to get some dust off. While I was at it I decided to change something that has been annoying me for quite a while now. This was the Negative battery cable terminal.

OK, so it doesn’t look wrong considering this isn’t the original wire, but a replacement cable for some reason or another. But, it looks sort of period correct so I left it, until now. I sourced a much more stock looking terminal and set about swapping them over.

The old terminal was a simple two screw squash the cable idea, simple enough to remove and will allow for corrosion for the exposed ends of the cable.

The cable separated easy enough and I cleaned it up with a wire brush to get it clean as possible. With the cable cleaned up I got my gas powered soldering iron out to prep the wire ends with some solder. As I was dealing with solder I put the heat resistant pad on the battery to stop any hot drips marking the plastic. The “Tinning” (a pre applied application of solder to aid in the final solder), had to be build up until a nice coating was all the way round the wire. I even cut back the sheath of the cable to expose some fresh wires. I slid a heat shrink tube over the cable which I would use later to give the finish a much cleaner look.

The next step I had to skip a little as I had one pair of hands to take the pics and do the work. I inserted the cable into the new terminal and clamped it in place with the two nuts on the top. Some stray long strands of wire were snipped of flush to the end of the terminal. With the cable in place I used some long nosed mole grips to hold the terminal up so I could fill the gap in the terminal with more solder.

This would give that neat finish I was after and make a great connection to the battery. My Dremel mini sanding discs were used flatten down the end as solder is a soft metal. With the end nice and flat the heat shrink was moved up to the terminal to cover any any gaps from the terminal and wire. Now the cable looks much nicer and neater and more importantly, the original stock look I was after.

I was able to refit the tightening bolt to the terminal and reconnect back to the battery.

The only remaining part now is to put the battery tag back on. I really am looking for things to do on the car now that don’t really need doing – just so I can do it. It only took about two hours from start to finish with the whole thing being cleaned and polished up. Well worth it as the wife was writing lots of lesson plans for her school. I was best out of the way! I think I may tidy up the other cable as well now. Also clean up the mats as they are pretty dirty too.

One of the simple little jobs was to swap out the interior bulbs for the LED equivalent. These included the footwell courtesy lights, and the rear centre console lights. They had the standard tungsten filament bulbs which gave out a warm glow. Not that I disliked it by any means, in fact that was the stock lock, I just wanted the more modern subtle look of a bright crisp white illumination.

The interior LED’s give out about three times as much light and shows of the internal colour scheme a bit better too. The pick above right was taken inside my garage and not outside in the sun.

What’s the next little job? I will think of something. 😉