Grills held in position with tie raps until the sikaflex cures

Boot gas strut uses existing top hole in hinge and fabricated lower mount. I had planned to get the boot to self open with the alrm remote and strut, but the geometry doesn't allow it..

Finally received the engine relay pack! Unfortunately it seems my battery was duff so I'll get another one tonight.

Boot lock fitted easily, the only pain was modifying an extra key barrel to suit the two doors.

I'll fit the solenoid to open the boot at a later date. But, I did fit a mercury switch which senses when the boot is open and tied that into the alarm system.

I got the engine running fine, until it got up to the thermostat temperature and it kept on going! Looking a the cooling circuit it seemed that there was a bypass of nearly 20mm by the engine outlet and the thermostat was just too far away to get warm. Only about a foot but the coolant went on the path of least resistance. The solution was to fit this restrictor in the pipe. Basically just a plumbing part to blank the end of a 15mm pipe.

Here is where I fitted the restrictor, the jubilee clip holds it in position. The hole is necessary to maintain a bleed in the circuit in the so-called 'dalek's head'. After this was fitted the engine settled perfectly and quickly to 80 degrees. I set the fan to come on at 85 as I don't like my engine temperatures to fluctuate too much if I can help it.

After getting the screens fitted by a local guy with VW transporter rubber and setting up the geometry (thanks for the loan of the gear Maurice!) it's all sorted now! The wiper washer system works well too.

Ready to go to SVA! Booked for Tuesday in Birmingham... 22/6/04

I did run the car up and down our close to make sure it all worked. But, the speedo didn't move at all! Luckily I had been speaking to Maurice, a fellow builder, and he had recently had the same problem, unfortunately my speedo had not been calibrated for the Rover gearbox so after getting the magic number (3800, pulses per mile I think), everything works!