The Ghosts of Lord Lucas

When I launched the rebuild of my Europa, I opted to purge the entire car of everything made by Lucas. The wiring harness was already a cobbled up mess with DPO-installed speaker wire used for many of the grounds and a few hanging wires labeled with a “?”

So I pulled out the entire harness and ordered a new one from EZWire in Florida. The harness has 16 fused circuits, the wires are color-coded and labeled every foot or so. The instructions suck, but they wouldn’t be of much use for a Europa anyway.

I’ve labored off-and on for well over a month, stringing wire, designing circuits, buying switches and lights and melding the whole system to work with the unique challenges of a fiberglass-bodied car without a convenient ground.

Let me explain that I approach electricity kinda like plumbing. Ya got the hot and ya got the cold and when ya turn on the faucet or flip the switch, all those electrons flow and good things happen. But being something of a farmyard electrician and unsure of my plumbing skills, I drug my feet for about two weeks before flipping on the master switch. And I had my wife standing by with a fire extinguisher, just in case.

So I was overjoyed when the first thing I tried, the horn, blared with authority. Life is good!

Oh, I had a few minor problems.

The cabin cooling fans ran backwards. Not a big deal, just reverse the wires.

And the low oil pressure light worked only when the headlight switch was flipped. OK, my fault. I picked up a power feed off a switched circuit instead of from the ignition switch.

The headlight indicators didn’t work, but I traced that one to a couple connections that simply needed to be pushed in a bit harder.

After a week of chasing down problems and cleaning up the mess behind the dash (wow, there’s a lot of wire back there!) I finally got the courage to call is “finis!” and screwed the facia in place.

I sat in the driver seat (ok, I sat on the floor where the driver seat should be) and admired my work.

The new dash looks great. It took only six! tries to come up with a configuration, color and finish that I found acceptable.

I hit the cabin fan button. Up for full speed, down for half speed. Perfect.

Then I tried the engine fans and I could hear the little air pushers up front come to life with a roar.

The heater fan sounds a bit loud, but I doubt I’ll use it much anyway.

The headlights work. The turn light indicators come on when the lever is toggled up and down.

Time to celebrate with a beep on the horn. Um, no horn. Not a whimper. Not a whisper. Not even a click.

And I’ve spent an hour trying to figure out why. Every component of the system seems to work the way it should. The just don’t work together.

Tonight, at dinner, I complained to my wife about the horn, asking if I was doomed to always be chasing one element on the car that needs attention, never ever being able to look at it and say “it’s perfect…everything works!”

That’s when she began to laugh.

When we first moved to Oregon in the 1970s, we had to take a road test to get our driver’s license. I was able to do it in my company car, June had to use the Lotus Cortina, then my daily non-work driver.

Of course, no driving examiner will get into a car without a safety check.

The turn lights wouldn’t work.

She hustled the Cortina home, where I quickly fixed the problem and sent her back to the DMV.

Then the horn wouldn’t work.

Frustrated, the examiner tossed June the keys to his personal pickup truck and told her to get in line.

“It may be all rebuilt, but it’s still a Lotus,” she said about the Europa.. “Exactly what did you expect?”

I guess it’s true.

You can run…but you can’t hide.

The Prince will always find you…even in the dark.