This morning I pulled the second top cylinder off and drained it.  At that point I could not resist putting the top down manually.  I got this far before it hit the garage door.  Which is just as well since I needed to vacuum 30 years worth of crap out the nooks and crannies of the top.

     

Well that looks good.  This will be fun if I can ever get it on the road.

I still need to track down a pump.  Meanwhile I will flush out the system.  I poured paint thinner in a jar and worked the top cylinders to flush them out.

I then took the jar and propped it up with the ends of the top hoses in it.  I then used my hand pump to suck the thinner through the lines.

Lots of ugly came out.  The good news is the lines are not leaking.  The bad news is I don’t have a lot of confidence in them.  But this is all I can do until I find a pump.

I decided to revisit the tail light buckets again.  This spring looks promising…

I should have taken more pictures but I got on a roll. Basically I pulled the contact buttons out of the rubber bung and put 3-4 coils of spring under them.   The bottom of the springs rest nicely on the contact holder and push the contact up tightly against the bulb.  I put everything back together and tested.  Works great.  Enough for today.