Well first of all Happy New Year to everyone.

There hasn't been much progress on the new car as this time of year you find yourself spending time with friends and family and hobbies like speedway go on the back burner. However in the past few days work has started again, not sure at the moment if the car will be ready on time (as it was meant to be finished beginning of december) but we are trying to get it done as fast as possible.

We have finished he new birdcages so the diff is now finished as much as possible. The next step is to get the running engine in the car and everything bolted up to work out the exact final position of the diff. So I have stripped everything out of the old chassis as some parts we will place in the new chassis to get it going.

As the new cylinder heads are not quite ready the old engine will be transplanted directly from the old car to the new and hopefully by the time the car is ready we will be able to bolt on the new heads as the extra exhaust port flow and new camshafts should give the engine a bit more. Well it had better considering the engine is still running all standard gear.

While pulling the engine out I made a discovery for why the gear change had been such a pain and why every now and then the clutch would slip. Now I am no expert but even I know that a cracked clutch plate can't be helping anything. Luckily we don't need to use this clutch again!

The firewall and front screen mesh is now finished and the brake lines are being made at the moment.

I am just one pressure gauge short of being able to finish the dash off and get started on making the wiring loom. So now we just need to get the engine bolted up in the new chassis and the radiator, header tank, fan, oil cooler and accumulator can all be bolted down. Once the engine is mounted, the gearbox and clutch can go in so we can work out the drive shaft angle which will give us the final position of the diff, then we can get some wheels made up with the correct offset. Also the mountings for the power steering pump and tank can't be made until the gearbox is in because we are running out of space in the cabin.

To everyone who has been sending us emails recently thank you very much for your support and questions. I am trying hard to get time to respond to you all.

Catch ya.....MadPhil