Suffered a touch of Deja Vu this trip. The last time I worked on the Rat I'd hoped to fix the problems with the wiring loom but the loom turned out to be completely different so had to abandon that. I acquired another loom for this attempt but on inspection the loom turned out to be butchered into uselessness so I abandoned it again...

On the positive side I got quite a lot of work done on the interior instead. I made six panels in total: two for the back of the cab and two per side. All were made from plywood cut to shape and with carpet glued and stapled to them. The two main side panels also had speakers fitted into them and wired up for the stereo fitment. So once all the panels were fitted I completed the wiring for the stereo and tried it out. It sounded awesome. The cab is so small that only a moderate volume is required to fill it with rich, bass heavy sound. It sounds brilliant. For those interested in that sort of thing it's a Ministry Of Sound set-up. It came as a stereo and matching speakers, complete with gear lever knob and tax disc holder. And all for a budget price.

As you can see in the pictures lower down the page I also made an aluminium strip to bridge the gap between the plywood panels making up the floor. It has cut-outs for the handbrake lever and gearlever/4x4 selector. Once the floor carpet is in this will be bolted over the top of it and should look pretty good.

There was more bad news with the seats and harnesses as well. I got them out of storage to check the fit of the side panels as I was fitting them as I didn't want the side panels to foul the sides of the seats as I was fitting them at an angle from top to bottom. The seats and harnesses had been chewed up by mice! They were ruined so now I'd have to find replacements. The fitment of the side panels was OK though.

The last job I tackled this time was fitting one of the indicator side repeaters into the side bodywork. I first made an aluminium backing plate for the indicator to mount into then I cut a hole in the bodywork to accommodate the protrusion of the indicator body into the cab. This was a pretty simple process involving lots of drilling and hand filing. The indicators are BMW items kindly donated by a member of the Fiat Forum. You can see the finished result in the bottom three pictures lower down the page. I'm not sure if I really like it and may change it later but for now they serve the purpose of making my indicators legal.