speculate on purpose of this piece, please

[pj]

Learn something every day, right? Marcus and Dan were with me on Saturday, looking at the Body and Number Plate of my Pagoda, when Marcus pointed to this thing and said "what's this?" and Dan said "that's not supposed to be there." Of course, any time I'd ever looked under the hood of someone else's Pagoda, I just didn't notice that it didn't have one of these. And it had never occurred to me to ask. It's spring-loaded, and has left a mark on the underside of the hood, so obviously it's intended to be depressed when the hood is closed.

In the picture, that's the fuse box in the middle. So we are looking at the corner of the engine compartment just in front of the driver.

Any ideas?

[jaymanek]

That's for an aftermarket alarm system.

[stickandrudderman]

Indeed, a switch for determining "bonnet open", probably part of an alarm system.
If you no longer have the alarm fitted, I would recommend entirely removing the remains of the old alarm and re-instating the original wiring where it has been intercepted.
A huse number of non-starts are caused by the failure of old alarm systems, often ones that haven't actually been used for years.

[Cees Klumper]

This looks to me like a SW underhood antenna. Needed for the Becker submarine interceptor series radios of the cold war era.

[pj]

Thanks for the ideas. Alarm system certainly sounds reasonable. I think you can see in the picture that one of the wires leading from this switch is cut, so perhaps a previous owner already had trouble with it and disabled it. So I will probably remove this piece at some convenient time.

[Shvegel]

I think what Stickandrudderman was getting at was find the "Brain" for the alarm and cut it our restoring any original wiring where needed. Most if not all early aftermarket alarm systems worked by interrupting power to the ignition coil or starter.  If it is still installed in the car if it ever decides to fail it may leave you with no start or worse yet on the side of the road.  My specialty is electrical diagnosis and "Stick" is right.  I see it all the time.

[pj]

I have the lovely "subway map" electrical diagram for the early 113, but we don't have an electrical specialist in the area. Since I'm not re-fixing the whole car at the same time, I worry about how I would tackle the wiring harness, which basically goes everywhere at once. But I would love to work on this eventually. I'm also reading the threads about updating the light bulbs. There's a bunch of good ideas there.

[RonB]

I had the same plunger system. Thru the whole out when I purchase my 280 in 2000.

Also had the same plunger switch in the trunk. It seems that these type installers just want to get the job done. No real "art" to the job

I will be doing upgrade along with AC. and electric door locks soon.