Yay

Although it smells slightly of fumes again today. Oh well..

On the plus side not a single drop of oil from anywhere. Very satisfying.

Brand new indicators all wired up. Yay.

All nicely done with separate earth wire and heat shrink and all that business. They're nice and bright.

Several times a year I would normally be having to fiddle with them to make them work. Hopefully not any more.

Fitted a kill switch as the car does seem to flatten its battery while sitting lately. Have wanted to fit one for ages so it was satisfying to get it done. Put it under the parcel shelf out of sight, it's nice and solid too.

Car is running beautifully, it was a real pleasure to use on Saturday once I sorted the flat battery.

Reseated the exhaust manifold. Again.. The helicoil done by a professional hasn't held, I didn't think it would actually. He agreed when I contacted him to come back and do Timesert instead and probably all will be well then.

The manifold leak has been plaguing me since I don't know when and I'm really sick of it.

As a temporary measure since winter is coming I thought I'd try this high temperature sealant instead of the better quality Ecas gaskets I usually use. It has dried now so I'm keen to see if it works.

I did everything correctly and loosened the cylinder heads before tightening the exhaust bolts. (Obviously one of them is not able to be very tight!) The sealant is meant for this kind of thing, my friend told me about it.

I do notice that in general its the nearside one that doesn't sit as well as the offside one. The manifold is a replacement one kindly donated by Simon from on here. Maybe if this doesn't work I should approach a machine shop for a little spacer so it sits really flat without bolt tension. Then it will be fine forever.

It's a pain in the ass. Have you got a spare manifold?

Did you loosen the heads, torque them to 1 kilo, then tighten the manifold, then pull the torque to the end value 2,5 kilo if i am correct.

It is a pain isn't it. Been going on for bleeding ever now. I even learnt to helicoil.

This is the spare manifold Simon Crook very kindly donated me. Yeah maybe I should try the old one and see how that sits. It's only slightly up on that side even after loosening the heads. Enough to expose a weakness though I guess.

I did discover that one of my head bolts wasn't very tight so that's good.
It's all buttoned up apart from haven't started it yet to check for oil leaks, so the wings need to go back on. I'll have time tomorrow.

I checked today, I have a couple spare. I'd post, but you'd be quicker to jump on a train to southampton. Let me know if you need one.

Wow, thanks Sam. I'll see how I go, I'm down that way sometimes anyway so I'll give you a shout if I go with another swap.

I love this about forums, it's great isn't it.