[Mick O'Malley]

On Tuesday morning, brimming with enthusiasm, I headed down to the cave to address the list of tasks requiring completion before body mounting. Front and centre of these was mounting the hand brake multiplier, which bolts through the back end of the tunnel. Once this was done I went to connect it to the bar from the lever I'd fabricated, only to find that I'd neglected to drill the necessary hole. Not a problem: I'll just unbolt the lever and drill it on the bench, or so I thought until I realised the nuts in the middle of the tunnel were inaccessible without unfeasibly long arms. Not wanting to invert the newly sprayed body on the grass, which, help being unavailable wasn't an option anyway, I hit on the idea of cutting a hand hole in the table. Lots of careful measuring and the drilling of a guide hole later, I set to with the hole cutter and access was available.



At this stage, covered in sawdust and with aching arms and back, I quit for the day while I was ahead.

Tuesday morning, with the aid of a socket extension, UJ, and contortions, I knocked that part of the build on the head: surprisingly straightforward. Next job: fit the sender to the 'refurbished' Mini fuel tank. This 'refurbishment' clearly hadn't extended to straightening the butchered locating lugs. Despite the once again limited access I managed to tap and bend them into shape and fit the sender. I decided to test it for leaks but then realised I'd need flexi pipe on the outlet stub. I measured this, the metal pipe through the frame and the unions on the mechanical pump, all at 8mm, and bought on line the necessary, including clips.

What next? Ah, the lock-limiting hose clips on the rack to prevent the front wheels hitting the body. None of the clips in my tubfull was the correct size so more on line buying.

The last job for the day was the connections for the water heated inlet manifold. Both the tappings in the water pump housing had temperature gauge senders in them, one of which needed replacing with the stub pipe outlet. Spitfire Steve had come to the rescue once again with this obscure item, handily delivered in the nick of time. The necessary water hose and clips I found and fitted, but I'll need a ½" compression stop end to blank off the heater outlet of my spiffing stainless steel pipe.



I called it a day.

Regards, Mick