16th & 17th April. A busy time for all three cars!

The time has come to start preparing the Rally car for a bit of paint work. The body shop can take the car in anytime over the next two long weekends, so the rush is now on to get the car prepped and a decent door fitted on the nearside front. (you can see how bad the rust is from the above pic!) As you can see the work has already started and now that she is minus her stickers, she looks almost naked!
I also discovered a leaking petrol tank, so a trip up to Cambridgeshire next weekend will see collection of a replacement.

The estate car is behaving itself at present although it still needs to have it's twin SU carbs tuned. It's being taken to Carlow Engineering at Benfleet tomorrow evening for this task to be performed, but before it went over there I wanted to remove the petrol tank and flush it out.
While the tank was out I decided to fit some better bumpers to it, (the bumper bolts are behind the tank, so it made sense) but oh how I wish I hadn't bothered! Removing the rear bumper also meant removing the tow bar, the electrics and just generally having a 'bit of a mare' with it all. This took up far too much time, effort and patience! (and I had to empty the swear box twice!)
About four hours later, the car was all back together complete with flushed petrol tank. Hopefully I wont have to touch this area of the car for a long while now. I haven't got the time at the moment!

After trial fitting the roll cage to the Mk1 last weekend, I've now decided to remove it altogether. With the roll cage in it became evident that I wouldn't have the use of sunvisors, front window winder handles (not without opening the door first anyway!) rear seats, carpets, and I would have to climb over the side bar every time I wanted to get in or out! If this was going to be an occasional track car and nothing else, then it wouldn't have been so bad, but this will eventually be a long distance cruiser and comfort will be a key factor.  So, I'm currently refitting the interior. (I need black carpet!) I also have to take a trip over to Mayland later this week to pick up some BMW 3 series seats to try out in it. Now that will be nice if they fit!
The silver floor panels you can see are covered in protective Hammerite paint. Black would have been better, but I had ran out and was just too damn lazy to go out and get some more. The carpet will be over it anyway so it matters not!