Ooh, getting close to starting her now.
Much progress was made last week, the oil cooler has now been positioned next to the left hand radiator, and the oil lines appropriately rerouted, thus completing the oil circuit. This, only occurred after my customary clumsiness had seen me knock over container holding ¾ litre of engine oil which I had just collected while removing the cooler in the first place. Even when I try to be tidy I seem to conspire against myself <Sigh>
The fuel lines were rerouted and new unions allowed completion of the fuel circuit. Jack, my nephew was staying over, and offered to help out in the garage despite his self professed total lack of mechanical knowledge. To his credit, he listens well, learns quickly, has good mechanical hands and does a good job. He’ll be welcome in my Garage or Pit anytime. Amongst other things, Jack wrapped the supplementary fuel tank in heat shielding material to help protect it from the harsh environment of the engine bay. It looks all very NASA now. We also cut open and inspected the old fuel filter and I’m pleased to say that it was found to pretty much pristine, with no visible grit or debris present at all. All very promising.
Of all the main fluid circuits that simply left the coolant, those nice folks at www.spec-r.co.uk had made and delivered a custom swirl tank in less than four days, and this was duly fitted to the car. With the tank in place we rerouted most of the coolant pipes, and by 5pm had a 99% complete coolant circuit. The 1% missing being the radiator cap, and the fluid contents. I’ve become recently concerned about the amount of hard water deposits in the cooling pipes. We live in a hard water area, and all the unions seemed to contain a mineralised dust, where the residual water in the system had dried out and left a deposit. So I’ve ordered a family size quantity of distilled water, and will use this in the engine from now on. Along with some Water Wetter.
After the coolant system was complete, Duncan and I cracked on, and we got the left hand floor all mounted up. It now just needs a shroud for the Rad, the back wall bonding in place and a couple of additional clips. One more good weekends work, and she’ll be running and rolling on her own wheels again, and ready for a corner weight/alignment check 
. After that its the normal checks and replacement work that we do in the offseason, and a bit of paint/titivation and she’ll be ready for a shakedown test in mid May. Which then leaves me a couple of clear weeks to fit the reverse & Cat ready for an RGB outing in early June.