As purchased the tails lamps were rather dim due to the lens having been sprayed red. All the tail lamps in all markets had a red lens except the clear reversing lamp lens (reversing lamps were part of the Luxus/deluxe package on the sedan, standard on the more expensive coupe). The red was, in the traditional way, moulded red plastic. Why these had been oversprayed in red I can not work out, but it makes the lamps look dull and flat when not on, and the output dim when on.
Fortunately I was able to get some old good parts. I also ordered some new seals which go in a groove in the back of the lens as the existing ones were showing their age.
I also was able to get an old good dipswitch.
As the car is now in the tender hands of Graeme Bell at Bell Motorsport, a good 2 hours from me, he fitted both items. The hardest part was what should have been the simplest, fitting the seals into the lens groove!
One issue the roadworthy check had thrown up was windscreen wiper arcs on the glass. Some time before 2011 someone had let the wipers operate with worn or missing rubbers scratching the glass, including in the primary vision zone. Which is a marginal roadworthy fail.
The parts source www.oldtimerteile.net listed both an old good, and a new screen but on checking neither was actually available.
With that in mind Graeme located a glass polisher used to working on toughened screens. The issue with zone tempered toughened glass as used in car glass is that the glass is sort of held together by a skin – break that skin and the glass dissolves into many many relatively non-sharp pieces, rather then relative few very jagged shards as with float glass.
So polishing runs the risk of breaking that skin.
But, in the hands of a skilled operator the result in this case was a screen which looks like new.
Great result.
Oh, and the cigarette lighter/12 volt power socket is working again. Handy for screen mounted sat-nav (not built in on 1959 designs!)