Bits and Pieces

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I've spoken to MK and Neil is doing his best to get my kit shipped up in a covid friendly way. The normal way to acquire your kit is hire a van, drive to Essex and pick it up. That's actually a really nice idea because you get to see the workshop, meet the team, geek at whatever cars are in there and so on! Unfortunately there are two reasons why I'm not keen on that at this point 

  1. COVID. While it's fine to have it shipped, me driving pretty much the full length of the country in two directions would be classed very much under the "unnecessary journeys" category, putting myself, my family and anyone else I came into contact with at risk.
  2. It's a really long way. It's probably a two day trip. I'd still do it if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, but it would probably necessitate time off, a fair amount of cost hiring a van and fuelling it, and I haven't driven much further than about 20 miles in nearly a year - I am out of practice! (In the past I have done silly things like a 12 hour drive where I stopped 3 or 4 times for fuel and that was it - but to quote Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in one of the 80's finest movies - I'm too old for that sh**)

So in the meantime, I have been buying many, many tools, fixings, paint, stuff for refurbishing the engine, degreasers, cleaners and so on. Nothing terribly expensive, just loads of little things. I now own a rivet gun, a rivet nut gun (yes, those are different), picks, several different sets of sockets, torque wrench, multimeter, bright light, gloves, blue shop towel, files, spanners of many sizes, high temperature spray paint, metal spray paint, wrinkle spray paint, hole cutters, lots of masking tape, a heat gun, center punches, circlip pliers, the list goes on. 

I also (with the help of my wonderful wife) now have the garage about ready to go. The engine stand and crane in the picture are both borrowed (thanks Scott!) - once the engine is in I might never need them again so it seemed borrowing made sense. The two rolling axle stands you can see in the picture I bought - I couldn't find any second hand and I think that given I am reasonably tight on space, the ability to roll the car side to side to get at bits while I build it seemed to make sense. I will probably sell these once I have the car largely done. Just out of sight down to the left are some regular axle stands which I'll keep - they will hold the donor up to start with once I start pulling the corners off (wheels, uprights, brakes etc) until it gets carted off to the scrapyard, and then I'll use them if I need to work on the MK. Much smaller and easier to store!

So - that's probably it! Next update should be when either the donor or kit arrives. I will keep my fingers crossed there are no other delays!




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