All those little jobs that I had left until now

At time during the build of the estate I was aware that a few items needed revisiting, but some of the work had been done in a great rush to get it ready for various shows or the exhaust fabricators. So having put off the evil moment for so long I decided to revisit those items that were essential to getting it running but I had put off rectifying as the jobs were potentially quite time consuming and fiddly.

First off were the water temp sender housings that fit at the rear of the heads - easily fitted with the heads off, but a real PITA with the heads on as there is so little clearance to the bulkhead, and each has 5 bolts to tighten. I hadn't done these before because the originals were grotty, full of old rust and I had forgotten to take them to the blasters.

Anyway here they are fitted, with hoses and sensors attached. the cable with the springy wire wrapping visible is a capiliary temp gauge with oil pressure gauge - I know its another worry gauge, but I do like to see the oil pressure, especially in a new engine, and I need to know if the oil will get too hot because of the FF parts - I have yet to mount the gauge inside, that can wait until the parcel shelves go in.

I also fitted the accelerator cable at the same time.

Next, I wanted to replace the autobox sump gasket - the new one had squeezed out quite a lot when fitted for some reason and I wasn't happy with it, so after jacking the car up I could do this and fit the autobox to engine strengtheners.

At the same time I could connect the loom to the autobox inhibitor switch, although I had to undo the front propshaft to get at this - the actual switch is somewhere half visible in the depths of this picture.

That done a quick test of the wiring proved that I had reversing lamps and starter motor. I was unaware until testing that these will also start in neutral as well as park.

The gearbox mount was also not correctly fitted as a spacer fabricated by FF had been fitted on the wrong side by me, that corrected the mount is nice and level, although I now need to get some longer bolts for the mount with the spacer, as the nylocs now do not have thread protruding through the nut. Fix one thing and something else needs attention!

I have also found that I need a custom speedo drive cable - the standard one that I have used is 20" too short due to the FF box, so that's another item to source

I am going to leave the car on axle stands for now, as next I am going to strip the front hubs and cure the endfloat issues that they have always had. It should be much easier with them on the car. That done I can fit brake pads and bleed the brakes.

That little lot was 10 hours work, so the grand total is now 875 hours