New Spot-Lamp Sorted!!

Wow, the weather really has turned bitterly cold this week and spray-work is out of the question. I think that to get the lacquer on before xmas now will need somewhere indoors to do it, but I did find a real spot-light this week to replace the fake one so, even though my fingers were numb and purple I just had to get it on. After all, we might have fog again tomorrow...

A while ago I got hold of a replacement front-bumper from a mint import car and luckily it holds the bracket I needed for my missing spot-lamp, which made finding the new one much easier. I will be replacing the whole damage-repaired bumper eventually, but the new one is black so I'll have to get it painted first, its a bit too big a spray job for me I reckon.

The spot-lights haven't been cheap on eBay lately, with a few on for £40+ and loads of pairs starting at £70. The lenses have Subaru etched along the bottom and the back of the lamp is angled, so you can't switch sides and have to rely on finding the one you need. I spotted a near-side one for £30 delivered from smr-subaru and thought what the hell. It took a week to arrive, but its in great condition [much better than my current one] and has a blue/rainbow type halogen bulb in it, which is nice, although I'll have to buy a matching one for the other side!

FITTING:

All 3 of the bolt-holes in the old bracket had broken off studs in them so the whole thing had to be replaced, but luckily the bracket just slides down off hooks and can be lifted out without removing the bumper. It slides out between the gap in the bumper corner so the under-tray doesn't even need to come off. The old wiring socket for the spotty has been hanging loose next to the wheel-well, so I gave it a good clean out with brake-cleaner and electrical solvent before plugging in and testing. The new bracket is off an import too and as you can see from the pic its in great condition with perfect threads so I bolted the new lamp in place with 3 more of those trusty alloy allen-bolts from the skip at work. The top-right bolt also holds the corner-indicator in place again, which is great as its been held on with a giant ball of ally-tape sincebefore I bought the car. I'm chuffed to bits to have this boxed off at last, the car is starting to look a lot less ratty - just gotta fix that broken wing-mirror and the body is complete!!