Still struggling to find any time for the car, house hunting, preparing ours for selling and doing stuff for my mate have all eaten in to my time and energy to the point where an hour on the rod is a major event. I did get to look at the oil consumption thing, it's taken a lot of working out to get to the issues but I think I am there now. Just as well as I had discussed selling it, I was at my wit's end with things. So now I have new heads with much better flow, thicker oil and a reduced oil pressure spring. I had been seeing 120PSI, which while impressive is not what you want on an old Rover V8. The book says 30-40 PSI at 2400 RPM, I am still a bit higher than that when hot but it's a hell of a lot closer than it was. Long term followers of my exploits may remember that the oil pump originally fitted to the Rover lump would not clear the steering rack so I swapped it for a pump from a 1970's Buick Grand National that uses the same engine block but gave me the clearance I needed. The Grand National clearly has much better engineering tolerances and runs much higher pressure. The smoke stopped immediately, I don't know where it was being forced through but there is no visible smoke at all now, although it does still smoke a bit when cold - no doubt a result of no valve stem seals, they didn't worry so much about hydrocarbon emissions back in 1973. I could sort it but it will be ok for the IVA test which specifies only that there should be no visible smoke, I will warm it up before I get there.

I have struggled to find time for the car recently as our house move has been more important. I am having to get rid of a hell of a lot of stuff, moving from a 4 bed house with 2 50ft long barns to possible a 2 bed bungalow with one smallish shed is no small task. Most of the bike collection will have to go, which is a bummer as prices are right down at the moment, I will also have to get rid of my big lathe and most of my tools. Much of it has already gone, I am being careful to keep anything I may need to get the car finished.

I finally plucked up the courage to get cracking on the solution for windscreen wipers that I should have gone with from day one. The job started with getting the old Fiat mechanism out, easier said than done as the demist vents had been welded in place after the wiper mech went in and had to be cut out to get the bloody thing back out. With that done it was just 2 6mm nuts holding it in place, 5 minutes later it was out and on the scrap pile. I had to drill out the hole for the wiper spindles as the mini ones were a couple of mm bigger than the Fiat ones, far easier than if it had been the other way round. The wheel boxes fitted quite easily on the near side, not so easily on the off side, where the angry grinder had to come out and make a minor adjustment.

Building a car clearly isn't easy, you need a wide skill set, infinite patience and an in depth knowledge of the rules and regulations. You also need a modicum of luck and most importantly all the parts you need for each job in hand as parts often rely on other parts if things are going to work together. In the case of windscreen wipers a basic knowledge of geometry is useful, as is the ability to correctly read a tape measure. I don't know the exact moment at which Mr and Mrs Fuckup paid their visit to my workshop but it was when I came to look at fitting wipers to my Fiat wiper motor that I realised I had messed up big time. The big problem is that the sweep on the blades is only 90 degrees, for some strange reason I had it in my head that it was 120 degrees. Without going in to too much boring detail the rules say the wipers have to park out of the line of sight of the driver and they must effectively clear the screen in front of the driver, pictures in the manual show what is acceptable. Mine aren't.

After having such a bad day yesterday, it was nice to have a much better day today. I fitted the offside door that is now no longer a door but is actually a panel that just looks like a door, there is no way of opening it from either inside or out. I sprayed up the inner skin and fitted it, while I was at it I fitted the driver's door skin, which I had sat there waiting for a few days now. It all went splendidly, I glued the rubber to the top of the off side running board so now both sides look the same. I used the same ribbed rubber to make the brake and clutch pedals non slip, an IVA requirement.

I was quite chuffed with the two door skins that I made, I thought they came out well and would look good in the car. Things didn't  go quite so well when I went to fit the doors. The problem I had caused myself is that somehow I had managed to mount the running boards 2mm too high, which may not sound like a lot but when I glued the rubber on the offside one I realised the door would not open properly as the bottom of the door rubbed on the ribbed rubber. It wasn't too bad but certainly wasn't right, it was easy to fix though, literally half a millimeter ground off the bottom of the door had that fixed, sadly it was a very different story the other side.

At some point in the past somebody had hacked the rear panel about, I suspect so they could mount exhausts coming out the middle of the car, something that would look rather cool. Sadly they had cut out all the strength and it was what race engineers refer to as flopping about all over the place. I got it back in to shape by bending some 6mm round mild steel rod and welding it to the edge of the sheet metal, I clamped it up so it was in about the right place before starting. I started in the middle and worked my way out, it worked out rather well. There were quite a few dents where somebody had massaged it with a hammer so some filler had to be applied, the bumper covers most of it but I wanted it to be right, I don't want to be embarrassed when I tell people I built it.