So, one of the first things to tackle on the car was the electric hood, which the previous owners had told us was broken. Sure enough when we first tried it we heard clicking but there was no movement. My initial diagnosis (fuse, ground etc) was rather undermined by my not understanding the process you had to go through to make the hood work: ignition in second position, foot on brake, before pushing the button. I got it right the first time but then clearly didn’t repeat the process. Once we worked that out and charged up a flat battery it progressed pretty fast.

When we peeled off the carpet around the hydraulics we found that the rubber bush had been replaced with a stack of medical gloves. That was a new one on me. Wish I had taken a photo before I removed them but I was in shock. Weirdly the original rubber bush was still there, just sitting in the bottom of the bracket.

We removed the pump and the rubber gloves, and scraped out the residue where they had degraded, then replaced the correct bush and tightened it all up.

I’m guessing this restored the earth connection because when we then read the manual and understood the hood process properly, it all worked fine.