A protracted affair

Sorry about the pun in the title but it is getting like that! Thanks to help from Carl Shalespeare I am moving on very slowly, it's all about timing you know

Sorry about that one too!

Anyway, Carl has been helping me out with long distance advice and he even went so far as to post me a laminated timing wheel/protractor that I could use with the standard pulley bolt.

Once it arrived I thought - "I could do that" so went on to scan my Piper Cams protractor, laminate it and then carefully scribe out a hole in the centre to the exact size of the cranckshaft pulley bolt. Then with a few packing washers behind it, it can be bolted into place as seen in the photo.

Kevin will be along in the morning with a dial gauge that will reach the inlet buckets and we'll swing into action. It's a good thing I know so many kind people or I would be lost.

After I got this into place I moved on to looking at fitting the Brantz Rally Tripmeter I had at Christmas. If anyone at work is reading this by the way, I have taken a day off!

Siiting in the co-driver's seat (something I will need to be getting used to) and looking straight ahead I felt the right location was on the glovebox door as in Theo Boonen's car and as can be seen here as a trial.

What it also meant though was that the leather strap I fitted to stop the glove box lid coming open when the going gets a bit rough needed relocating to the left. Sounds easy enough and it is but did take a fair bit of time as the trim above the lid where the electric fire extinguisher control box is needed removing to get at the back of the fixing.

The Welsh flag by the way is Sarah's as she is very proud of her ancestry and quite right too.

Then it was a case of fixing the Brantz which I did by virtue of long countersunk black screws which really match well the car and the Brantz. To ensure the Brantz is vertical I needed some spacers and having thought about this I came up with what I hope is a very neat solution.

I cut some spacers (longer at the bottom than at the top) from black flexible fuel pipe which nicely helps locate the Brantz. The fuel pipe makes the spacers the right colour (a good thing) but also give some cushioning which I think must be a benefit.

More time needed to plumb it in but here's a picture of the installation and it's looking good, very businesslike and functional - just how I like it.