This week seems to have taken a golden leap towards completion. The seats are sitting on their Citreon C3 runners, but still need bolting into the car. I'm looking for some 'free' ali spacers to get them over the diagonal chassis rail.

Ive tidied the engine cooling system up finally linking the bottom hoses with a length of 16mm ali pipe from B&Q. Last night I went round checking all the connections, making sure all the hoses were connected etc. Pouring two 1 litre bottles of antifreeze in one at a time and checking for leaks, a couple of the clips needed a tighten up with a spanner. Filled the system up with water. Filling up via the cap on the water rail till its full to the top leaves the header tank half full. Result!

Got a Mini exhaust bobbin off ebay and discovered the bracket I'd fabricated didn't stick out far enough. DOH! Off it came and 5 minutes later a new was ready :-) A corresponding bracket to bolt onto the rear silencer clamp was also made and some paint applied.

It took a little fettling to get the manifold to fit tightly as previously I've only used a couple of studs to locate it. Most of them came out when I took the Ford cast item off. Anyway, cleaned the studs up after getting the rusting old nuts off and inserted them back in the block with some threadlock. One of the holes on the new manifold needed enlarging but once that was done it was bolted on with a new gasket. The rest of the system was bolted together on the new brackets and feels pretty solid.

With everything ready for a warm up test I resisted the temptation and left it full of water overnight to make sure there was no leaks. Off to the club to see a Rush tribute band and a skin full. I thank you.

Today I checked for leaks and with everything apparently water tight I cleared all the rubbish thats accumulated at the front of the garage. Starting it up, oh, need to get that choke cable connected, I backed it out into the sun. Running well, ticking over nicely, and very quiet! I let it tick over until operating temperature was achieved and a couple of minutes later the fan kicked in. WAHOO!!! Turned it off to find the fan keeps running until the temp has dropped. Get in there! Nice to see the Sierra wiring doing all the right things ;-)


Got the camera out to take some pictures and was about to get the video camera out when the heavens opened, 5 minutes after these pictures there was a covering of snow!

What you can't see here is the engine ticking over nicely.