That sounds very challenging and good luck with the appeal  I had a very icy trip to work this morning on a major Cheshire A road to a lonely works car park. ( well the top deck of a multi story anyway) crossclimate tyres and 4x4 kicking in.    4x4 is ok for getting going but you need m and s tyres to stop sensibly 

I sympathize with the upside down wriggling.  Working on the spitfire in a small single garage has led to some interesting poses which require a surprising amount of strength to get back out of!  I have plans for mounting me seats at an angle to make them more comfortable and allow taller people to drive the car, and being able to remove them easily to work on the interior is high up in the brief.

Works car park at home time yesterday. Sooty had about 40mm of snow on the roof. And it was rally night….. However, snow was forecast to stop by 6 pm and cover was very variable. 40mm or so at work in the Dorset hills, but none settled at home. So we out we went…. Left at 6 and the forecast wasn’t being obeyed (!). Travelled 17 miles back into the Dorset hills and then into east Devon in blizzard conditions. Was definitely wishing Sooty was Quattro and wearing winter tyres rather than the fwd/summer tyre reality!  SM was muttering away in the left seat questioning our sanity - not unreasonably really. We arrived at the start, just a couple of miles inland from Lyme Regis and I’d been expecting/hoping for less snow there…. But no, 40+mm in the car park, though it had at least stopped falling. Event wasn’t cancelled (though entry had thinned somewhat), so we had to do it.  These particular organisers are serious and successful ralliers, known to set a demanding route - and so it was.  And would have been without the variable amounts of snow and ice sprinkled on it.  We survived it. SM got thoroughly fed up with endless tulips, but I think we went mostly the right way. I managed not to crash (ABS due the credit for that!) and we even managed to get up a really long and extremely steep snow covered hill, though absolutely on the ragged edge, wheel-spinning for best part of a mile….. All of this made up very behind and we were judged OTL - though I’m going to dispute that as we were given absolutely no way of knowing was the time limit was (don’t know if seconds or minutes or tens of minutes late) and could probably have changed our tactics at the end to avoid it. We may have won the novice class again last season (discovered last night) but we’re not really enjoying the expert class experience. That’s it for this season though as we’re setting the next one (whole other saga!) and then off to OZ for March, missing the last two. No pots this year!

Day 8. Sometimes old Vespa part replacements simply aren’t worth taking to a paint booth and doing properly.  It’s sturdy but ugly.  Perfect for my Mille bike.

Dashboard work…..

I'm with you there, heart and soul

Yeah. Had a few debates myself in the past. The civil structural guys tend to base everything, deflection, depth of section, etc on rules of thumb against span with lots of allowances at every stage. And usually on the assumption that someone is going to be living on the floor above, even if there isn't one! Lazy. And almost always grossly oversize. I look at it as a Mechanical Engineer and do the calculations on the actual load case which they have real emotional problems with. If Planning are involved (there is an ironic term) then you don't have much option but to comply but worth a debate with the worked calcs in front of them regardless. 

For sure.  A loop shouldn’t be a major job, and you can make it removable too.    As you imply, one of those you don’t think about it until you see it. If you spend some time around drag strips, you see it a lot more. 

Aye, better watch or I start with the Weegie

MOT due shortly. So while I have been buggering about with dodgy switches I have also been cheecking over the rest of the car. Did the basic service, oils, filters, trunions (TR6 based front suspension), etc. Reliant specify grease for the trunions rather than oil like the small Triumphs. Although like both small and big Triumph forums there is a bit of a debate as to the 'best' approach, gear oil, LM grease or CV grease. I tend to alternate oil and grease. Not tried CV yet. Grease this time but it had been under pressure in the gun for a while and separated so the back end was full of the oil component which all poured out when I picked the thing up. Bit of a mess to clean up! Other than the lights and switches everything else seemed OK bar the handbrake which had developed a ratehr long travel even with the adjusters well in. Took the drums off to check but the shoes were in good nick so cleaned everything up and gave the friction surface of the drum a bit of a rub with 400 grit to clear off some glazing. Next most likely issue then is where brake cable loops around a pulley wheel that is attached to the handbrake lever. A bit like the Spitfire/Herald except that the cable is in a Bowden sleeve. It has previous... Having jacked up the car it was unfortunatly the case and the cable had slipped off one side of the pulley. It's mounted up on the side of the runnel above the propshaft. A bugger to get at, but losening off all the adjusters meant I could pop the cable back into the pulley and the readjust everything. At least the barrel adjuster on the handbrake end works fine owing to many years of splash lubrication. Only other issue is a coolant weep. Annoyingly both of the block drain plugs have developed a slight weep. Tightening mankes no odds to the only solution is to remove and refit with some thread sealant. As this involves dumping the coolant I can live with the odd drip for now.