Buying tools, waiting for bits

Title says it all really. Various tools and Haynes manuals ordered, and, slightly more interestingly, some seats:

3.5 kg each, and after speaking to the bloke on the phone, he even agreed to put heated inserts under the padding (presumably fibreglass can take the heat... it is glass after all, I suppose). Quite pleased with these.

Chased up the bloke with the engine a bit - he says he's currently trying to hire a trailer so he can get a mate to deliver it to save money on a courier. So, hopefully delivery next week should be doable. We'll see...

Garage preparation continues

Table finally gotten rid of. After attracting no bids on Ebay with a starting price of 99p, a friend eventually took it off our hands. It took us about an hour to manoeuvre it in through her narrow doorway / hall / etc into the dining room, but the garage now has a Seven-sized space in the middle.

I took advantage of this to assemble the engine crane. Despite low quality instructions (the step-by-step instructions stopped midway through a paragraph about 3/4 way through assembly, and the diagram was photocopied to the point of being unreadable), this was fairly straightforward, and involved only minimal use of the hammer to make bolts fit (twice), one trip to the kitchen to apply plasters to a minor injury (thumb crushed between spanner and crane = bleeding thumb), and two small and unimportant looking bits left over. The latter look a bit like narrow washers (or maybe rings), but broken in one place and twisted so that they make a slight spiral (the ends just touch but don't overlap). Any ideas?

A few more tools to buy while the sales are still on, then we're ready to start. The bloke selling the engine has been in touch. Apparently he's been ill, but intends to ship by start of next week, which is either reasonable, or he's stalling while he leaves the country with my £900.

To be honest, I won't be spending much time in the garage until it warms up a bit anyway, so I can live with the delay. Also: Q-plate vs donor car registration (probably around M reg I guess)? Which is preferrable? Need to decide. Former may imply laxer emissions checks etc, but latter may improve resale value?

New wheels

The wheels showed up at work yesterday, and I promptly got an email asking me to remove them from reception ASAP. I think it's probably for the best that I'm not planning to get the chassis or engine delivered to work. This would not make me popular with the receptionist. Hopefully she won't object to the engine crane arriving next week...

They look pretty in pretty good condition for what I paid (£200), with some moderate kerbing but nothing too severe. They could easily be refurbed to look like new, though I'm not sure I'll bother.
Tyres are in very good condition (about 5mm of tread all round), though sadly not matched so I'll have to sell these as I don't fancy the handling that might result from differing levels of grip at each corner. Three are the same, so I could just replace one - we'll see how in-budget I am at the end...

I think these are original BMW wheels, though it's hard to know really. They have BMW written on the back though. I've weighed them and they come in at 17.3 kg with tyres. Assuming around 10-11 kg for the tyre, that seems pretty good.

Also: we now have a tidy garage, modulo the presence of a dining room table which needs a new home. It will be going up on Ebay shortly.