The new shear plate turned up from Peterborugh LaserCut who did a great job, except that between us we managed to miss the fact that the drawing I sent them was not at a 1:1 scale . Therefore what they sent me was a perfect 75% scale model of the shear plate I actually needed. In fairness to them they corrected the mistake at no extra charge but I couldn’t collect it for a few days, so it effectively cost me a week of time. However I can’t fault them for thier service and will be using them to make up some ultra light 8mm mounting plates for the diff.
So a week later, with the correct plate collected I could finally weld it in place and stabilise the rear frame of the car. The plate fitted pretty well and only needed a small amount of fettling around the edges before I could weld it in place. The bolt holes all lined up nicely too… all very pleasing really.
So with the shear plate in place I cracked on and got all the rear brake lines replaced and clipped into place. The panal is all nicely painted up and pretty much finished except for the mounting required for the push -pull cable that will work the reverse control lever on the diff.