A minor update: Managed to finish rebuilding the under window wall. Definitely could do it better if I did it again, but it's relatively straight and true and it won't matter once its plastered. Done a few other things, mostly reinstating the garden and plumbing nothing worth photographing. We also, after a year of living in the house, discovered the previous people plasterboarded over half of the bathroom window. Not sure how that escaped my attention... Decided I want to speed things up a bit, and if I sort out the beam myself it's going to take me at least a month of weekends, so I've been preparing things for the builder who is meant to start next week. New beam will be 203x102 which should look a lot neater. Discovered this while I was sorting out the dodgy chased in cables, yes they literally packed an asbestos lined air vent with old polystyrene packaging and then rendered and plastered over it. I think this is a more ancient bodge, probably from the 1980s. For the second below it they at least splashed out on real bricks. I've removed all the asbestos as I'm guessing the builder would rather not deal with it. I thought the air bricks were just for the cavity, by apparently no, this is how they did things in the 70's for kitchens. Wall looks very very weak, and the other side is even more scary now it doesn't have plaster or a stud wall holding it together. The amount of bad infill in the walls is really scary, decades of bodges I guess.

Yes you can block it off that way. For the coolant refilling of the system, as the header tank is connected to the lowest point in bottom hose there isn’t the likelihood of trapping air, but it is still prudent to follow the workshop guidance to set the heater to hot and, after filling, run the engine for a minute or so with the header tank cap off. thanks Ian

Oh yes.  My one came with Dunlop radials. It shared daily driver duties with my Mk2 Spit but I would say much of rampant rubber loss was down to my hooligan behaviour.  At the time I worked at the ordnance factory a blanket site 20mph limit but with literally hundreds of acres of unused roads, tracks and woodland. Lunchtimes, and just getting from place to place usually involved detours to the quieter parts. That and the general nonsense round town. The fabulous thing about the Mini was that all this could be done at 20-30 mph. 

Oh joy. Not short of work there. Immediate and slightly longer term. I take it the cambelt change is a dismantle the front of the car and scaffold pole on the pulley bolt job? The rampant lacquer peel may have a bearing on perusal of replacements. Wummin tend to be less keen on the rat-rod look than blokes I fear. Trouble nowadays is the paucity of half decent options out there. Bon chance mate!

Yoda: If it hasn't been deleted check this out: https://www.triumphexp.com/forum/spitfire-and-gt6-forum.8/why-do-lower-control-arm-brackets-pivot.2107844.2159699/#msg-2159699 He is definitely a Puppet. Probably of one of the more well known regulars.    NOTE: This is a problem when sites grow too big. People get banned for something they've said so the sign up a puppet account to continue their activity. (Or the puppet is for fighting and "disposable" so they don't risk losing their original account.)

I've got a cottage in upstate NY, about 8 miles from Cooperstown.  Haven't been there in over a year. Afraid to try and cross the border. 

Watching right now. Ian Hislop with his reddish hair is constantly reminding me of Toby Jones. 

This thing is due an MoT. That means I have finally change the exhaust back box, and the back tyres. Plus anything else I find.  It’s also due cam belt, needs the passenger side door lock and I’m told that third gear is “acting up”.  Then there is the rampant lacquer peel over about 1/2 the drivers side…..  Interestingly it suddenly seems to be out of favour with SM who has suddenly started searching FB marketplace for Golf’s….. Not sure I want any more middle-aged VAG tat to care for though!

All those in favour of free speech might be interested in this: Private Eye | Page 94: On Thin ICE If you don't know of Private Eye, it's a satirical magazine, m'lud, that mainly excoriates UK politics, but this issue of its online page (94) is about the US's ICE. John

That's the "American Exceptionalism" rearing it's head. "We are the best at anything and everything". I'm not slamming Americans because most don't hold this attitude. It's home is far right conservatives. (MAGA) So, Imgur has taken the attitude YOU should conform to THEIR way of doing things.  You (UK) have set some unique consumer protection rules since Brexit. Sooner or later the EU will probably adopt them and then Imgur will lose a lot of users if they don't comply.  I can't get onto Imgur if Cyberghost is enabled no matter what country/server I select. Even Canadian servers are blocked.  Similar to what Amazon Prime, Netflix and other Streamers do to geoblock people from using their streaming from other countries.  FWIW, Canada set some rules to protect major news sources in Canada from plagiarism and not getting royalties. A Digital Services Tax. The EU applauded it.  Google and others, and social media sites, blocked all Canadian news content rather than comply. Trump threatened Trudeau over it so it's been sidelined for the moment.