Oh yes, joys of home ownership. There will be a stopcock off the main out in the street but when you get round to I suggest a modern stop valve of the rubber diaphragm type for the first valve at the house. Reliable and easy to use. The brass screw down types tend to seize, pass, or weep at the gland unless exercised regularly. Don't use a ball valve for the first isolation in the house either as they also tend to fail after being left in place for a while. And good luck with BT. I have been lucky that the Openreach field engineer round here is very good, the hard part is getting the BT help desk to actually send Openreach to the problem. Glasgow largely snow free, at least near the river. Very icy still in places to been mostly walking myself. Even that has been quite challenging at times. However it has given us cracking crystal clear evening skies these last few days. Even here in the city. Looking south from the house with the Moon and Venus shining brightly. This is from a couple of nights ago while the moon was still early in its cycle and the crescent is much more spectacular. As is the shaded portion that picks out with the camera but not the naked eye. Look east and Jupiter is also clearly visible.  

Yep…. Seems entirely normal. Very similar to my recent dishwasher experiences. I’ve been in the house 10 years but hadn’t had to mess with that before. BT are just awful. Good luck with that!

Today I had my first washing machine delivered, you would think that would be easy, all the plumbing looked to be in place, the previous owners had a washing machine there after all... Washing machine came, all fine, connected it up... Isolation valve immediately starts leaking all over the floor and can't be turned off. Trap left by previous owner? Where is the stopcock? Oh, previous owners decided to lock it in place with the skirting boards... Chisel some chunks out the skirting board (not my neatest job, I only had a cold chisel and was in a rush), loosen the stopcock that definitely hasn't been turned in years using ring spanners for leverage. Emergency run to plumbers merchants (with long detour due to utility works), change the valve, clothes can now be cleaned. This is home ownership I guess? It's just like Triumph ownership. I'm guessing there is much more of this to come. Was also meant to finally get internet today, but Openreach cancelled the appointment without telling me because my "line has an exception", they didn't elaborate on what that means and don't offer a new date yet.

Good to see you back and very pleased you are in a new home. Look forward to the updates. Resolving previous bodges whether vehicle or house related is rather tedious. However that looks like an excellent garage. Rubber floor mats. My own story is from my Hillman Avenger eatate which also came with runbber floor mats and as it turned out had had a fairly substantial leak from a hole in the bulkhed under the mat and then to the rear footwell. All completely hidden by the mat of course. 'Discovered' one very confusing and completely dry spring morning driving into University when a brisk stop resulted in a tidal wave errupting from underneath my seat and soaking me up to the knees .  

Good to see this moving again. Some fairly alarming discoveries on the braking system there.  Possibly not all that wonderful even at their best either; certainly I didn’t enjoy the drum brakes that my 1200 Herald came with. I fitted discs. Not sure if the complete vertical links are interchangeable with Herald/Spit etc? Oh yeah, house POs (or the low-bid baboon tradesmen they employ) are often far worse than car POs….. Good luck with that!!

Firstly, to explain the disappearance of this thread, I had an issue with a rather unreasonable neighbour and some allegedly extremely restrictive covenants on my rented property’s garage. As the aforementioned neighbour already has a reputation, I decided to ask for the thread to be hidden in the meantime. Anyway, we’ve now purchased our first home, with a garage, so it was time to awaken the Eight from its slumber and move it to its new home...     The first job I did was to replace the knackered front hub with a later and stronger one (same as a drum Herald). I found that the other side had already been done, and even found an invoice for it from 1958... Also repacked both bearings with grease. Unrelated, but I also fitted a new condenser and distributor cap as I think that is what caused the breakdown when driving it home as well as replacing the leaking filler neck rubber.   As mentioned. the front brakes needed the most, I didn’t want to do more than was necessary as I plan to convert to disc brakes (eventually). However, what was there ended up being a lot worse than expected - I was hoping to just fit new seals to the wheel cylinders but, as usual, someone had been there first and damaged the bores. In the end, I fitted new (expensive) wheel cylinders, shoes and flexi hoses. I also checked over the rear brakes, fortunately, they were serviceable, but the less said about this wheel the better... Similarly, I replaced the incorrect brake master cylinder with the correct sloping one, in the process I found that the Eight uses a smaller clevis pin than later cars. Luckily the original master cylinder was amongst the random parts included, so I used the unobtanium push rod from it. I also found that the split pin to retain the clevis pin to the pedal was missing, meaning that when I was driving the car home in the summer, the clevis pin was both a rattle fit and could have fallen out at any moment. However, as the braking effort was almost zero, that point is academic...     Moving to the inside, I discovered the original moulded rubber floor mats are probably the reason these cars rot so badly. I hadn't checked under them before, as they looked to fragile to do that before I bought it. Underneath, I found waterlogged and rotting jute underlay - despite the car not having been outside for several months. Presumably, the perished screen seals let the water in sometime ago, and the rubber floor mats and lack of drain holes prevented it from evaporating once the underlay soaked it up. I tried my best to take the floor mats out without destroying them by removing the seats, but despite this I was unsuccessful and they just disintegrated into smaller and smaller pieces...   So that was roughly it, I roped my wife into help and we bled the brakes, added some petrol and it more or less sprang into life. Picked the wettest day (so far) in January to do the move, flooded roads and even some snow. Did okay, but I did find out why the previous owner had disconnected the speedometer, the odometer is seized and the drive pinion makes a hell of a noise, I couldn't hear anything else even with the engine singing along at 50mph. Brakes still not really there, shoes probably way out of adjustment, and this is my first time adjusting front drum brakes. Can report that the heater and wipers worked flawlessly though. These days I have a lot of house things to deal with (mostly undoing previous owner's plumbing bodges), so probably no update for a while. But I have picked up some new parts for the car, including potentially its new engine.

Two steps forward, one step back. I've finished putting new ends on the ignition leads, an easy job with the correct crimping tool. The new Link ECU's mount is finished, and it should be physically installed behind the passenger's parcel tray today.  The step backwards was a wiring loom for the coils. I made one, and then took it apart again. I made a loom with a branch to each coil, and a Deutsch bulkhead connector, covered in a heat-shrink harness wrap. It would have worked, but it just looked horrible. The heat shrink contracted into strange, contorted shapes and the branches to each coil were different lengths despite careful measuring of each wire. I looked at it the next day and decided that it wasn't good enough. I had an image of what I wanted, and my first attempt wasn't it. So, I ordered some more parts and will make a new loom next break. That's one reason the project's taking so long. I work on the car during my week at home, and often find that I need components that aren't available locally. Even local suppliers need to order what I need from Brisbane or Melbourne. If I order the bits online, they arrive the following week while I'm away at work.  For example, I really needed 18 or 20 gauge wire to make the loom. It's not available here (the salesman at Repco thought I wanted to wire up 18 gauges!) so I used what I could get, mostly 3mm wire, and odd bits in my leftovers box. It really was too thick for the connectors. So, yesterday I ordered some correct 18 gauge wire (Brisbane) and new connectors (NSW) online. They'll be here sometime next week. Anyway, rant over. I took some photos of the MS3 Pro and coil, if anyone's interested in them. According to Australia Post, it'll cost AU$47 to post 500g to 1kg to the UK.    

Yeah….. tyres make a huge difference.  Current ones on Sooty seem to have more lateral grip than traction/braking grip.

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.