Wheels firmly on the ground

Fan with top of the ducting removed

Gradually getting back to normal

One or two of my purchases have turned up this week - some aluminium sheet, a pair of coils, a flasher unit, a pair of exhaust collets - that have enabled me to rattle of another few jobs on the list that never seems to diminish.

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The aluminium sheet was needed to build the box/duct to carry hot air from the radiator to the side of the car. I've fabricated the duct and fixed the fan in place. As can be seen I've angled this to direct the hot air towards the side of the car. Now I need to make the box that fits under the bulkhead to complete the "anti-roasting" work. I have found a suitable nozzle type vent with opening/closing vanes so that heat can be directed into the car if required (Car Builder Solutions for the vent). I also need to seal the duct to the bonnet but I'll leave that until later.

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The exhaust collets were in reasonable condition but a quick polish up has them looking quite shiny. I checked with John Ziemba on the delivery of my downpipes and it appears they should be with me very shortly
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I'm little disappointed with the condition of the coils as they are very dirty and a little bit tatty, but they appear to be sound if not exactly looking like new! I need to make some brackets to attach them to the diagonal chassis members that connect the longitudinal chassis legs to the bulkhead on each side. My local hardware store has a suitable length of aluminium strip for this.

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I spent most of Friday morning getting the springs replaced onto the shock absorbers. Having done the rounds of my local garages I found that their coil spring compressors were too big to handle the dainty coil springs from the Cortina. In the end a very helpful mechanic at A&M Motorcycles in Letchworth used a motorcycle spring compressor to reassemble the coil over shocks and gave me an Olins C spanner for the final adjustments. Once I had set the spring height at its old level I refitted them - looking rather less "in yer face" than the previous red and yellow livery.

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With the springs and shocks refitted I tightened up all the suspension bolts and lowered the car off the axle stands. I shouldn't need to jack it up again now and can manoeuvre the car around as I need to.

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I managed to source a gear change lever using an Internet based network of motorcycle breakers. That just leaves the water transfer pipe to source and it appears that my recent joining of the UK Honda CX500 group has been fruitful as one of the members has a spare that he will sell me. I've decided to route the water pipe to the rear of the engine - that is to take the shortest route, rather than run along the side of the engine, across the front and back along the other side to the radiator.

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I've removed the gear linkage to give it a coat of paint and to adjust the fixing points to ensure ot doesn't foul the bodywork (just moving washers from one side to another really)

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It looks like I'm getting closer and closer to the rewiring which does make me slightly nervous.

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Roger