This is a somewhat measly post, added only for completeness. I have two gigs this weekend and a family day out in between so there’ll be no progress on Dilly until next week.

The Sunday gig is a dep with another band, playing bass, so tomorrow night after work I shall re-acquaint myself with the bass. I haven’t picked it up since 1st January when I fitted a £50 set of strings! I thought I’d treat myself to these and fitted them just one day before learning that I’d no longer be playing bass with The Motives. I’ll post a review of them next week.

Alternator

The alternator job which I had regarded as simplicity itself is proving to be one step forward, two steps back. Yesterday evening I went outside to fit it, so I could then move on to the dreaded hedge-cutting, Well, it doesn’t line up. I’m not sure how much room for adjustment there is with the pulley, I wonder if it can be shimmed out. It is a full 5mm out of alignment with the others. The pulley was fitted for me by the local Auto-Electrical specialists, and I cannot budge it. So I am instead looking at shimming out the bracket with washers, and to do a good strong job – I need yet more bolts! These are on order.

See: Alternator move complete.

I spent the remainder of the evening drinking tea with my neighbour, both of us staring into the engine bay and talking about old cars until nearly dark. So the hedge still needs cutting.

Mudshield (nearside)

Determined to make up for the lack of progress the previous evening I fitted the mudshield that I had painted at the weekend. It is basically a mirror image repeat of the offside that I completed in August. So, I made up a strengthening bracket to go under the wing-top, snipped and riveted a repair plate to the mounting on the inner wing and bolted it in. Also at the weekend I had wire-brushed, rubbed down, Fertan-treated and painted the footwell. Like the other side, the footwell has had a piece of flat steel welded on, in a serviceable, if not pretty manner and hopefully it will last a couple of years. It is double-thickness in places, sort of plates on plates, reasonably solid for now, but it will need to be addressed at some point.

Fitting the mudshield this side was not easy at all, much bad language, something doesn’t seem to line up properly, I think the damaged wing is pushed in slightly.

To the left of the above image is the large hole that was hacked from the inner wing when the original conversion was done. This section had been removed to allow for the exhaust. I will repair this to regain some rigidity in the panel.

Again, the bolts look longer than needed. This is because I used rubber blocks to create a good gap for rainwater to exit between the mudshield and footwell.

Exciting developments coming up!

Wow, air intake! As well as the alternator I’m working out a simpler way to mount the air filter. I was toying with the idea of going back to an oil-bath filter, but as the original chassis fixings were removed during the engine transplant and old oil-baths are quite pricey I’m going a different way. Much measuring has been done, and nearly all of the components are here already, so hopefully once the weekend is over I can complete two more jobs.

Thanks for reading.