Stoneleigh etc!

I had a busy weekend last week! I still managed to fit in the spares day at Stoneleigh though. It was literally a drive there, quick look around, go home event for me this year. My grandma was taken into hospital on the Friday so I had to be back to visit her along with various other things. It was still quite a successful trip though. I picked up a new set of carburettors from Andrew Turner and bought various nuts and bolts. The carbs are awesome and a huge improvement over my last set - Andy had a look at those and pronounced them knackered! The new ones are not only better (fitted with seals around the throttle spindles) but shinier too! I'll post some pics of them at a later date.

I also got on with the heater box this week. Painting it was my first experience with POR15 and I've got to say I'm pretty impressed. It's not the easiest to use because you have to clean the part in various solutions first and then you've got to transfer some of the paint to another container and seal the can with cling film. You also need to wear gloves or everyone at work will be asking you why your hands are black! The results were pretty variable. The first parts I painted ended up covered in brushstrokes whilst some of the later parts look similar to powdercoat. It's certainly interesting stuff!

I also got around to sorting out the hose that runs from the inlet manifold to the heater valve. This is usually a shaped piece of rubber hose but I wanted to replace it with silicone to match my other hoses. Having a custom hose made would've cost a fortune so I decided to use two 90 degree bends and a piece of alloy tube that I bent to shape. This looks good and gets the job done on time and under budget!

I'm sure there are people reading this that are going to be thinking that I should have used a flexible hose because of the movement of the engine. I have checked this out and it all seems fine. My engine is fitted with new mounts and doesn't vibrate around all over the place! There is also a load of flexibility in the silicone parts so I don't think it's going to be a problem!