Panels and exhaust

After some delays, my replacement primary and the silencer arrived in the post. With Emily packed off to Germany for the weekend, I spent it almost entirely in the garage working on the car.

Exciting parcel.

First up, I fitted the new primary - this one clears everything with plenty of space. With that attached, I put on the manifold, and trial fitted the silencer.

Silencer on.

It's pretty big (8" diameter), but it has twin cats which are good for 300 bhp, so there's plenty of headroom for future engine upgrades. Most importantly, the sound is great: not too quiet, not too loud, with a nice growly sound at idle and a really sporty noise when I poke the throttle a bit.

Once the exhaust mounts were in, I was finally able to bolt down the driver's seat, and attach the rear wheel arch and drivers-side wing.

Saturday's main goal was to run the engine, now that I had a silencer to keep from upsetting the neighbours, and see if everything worked as it came up to temperature. I gave it about 10-15 minutes, during which time the radiator got warm, and no leaks developed, or anything else untoward, other than the Racelogic traction control reading the revs about 50% too high. A bit of internet research suggests that it is probably configured for a 4-cylinder engine, which would make sense, so this will likely be an easy fix. I also tweaked the switches on the dash so that they light up dimly with the sidelights, and brightly when in use.

On Sunday I enlarged and finalised the hole for the exhaust primaries in the front wing; then Rich came round to help have a look at the bonnet. He spent most of the afternoon having a nap in the drivers seat, but eventually he woke up and we got round to lining up the bonnet and bending it. Conveniently, the exhaust is about the right radius to bend it over.

Bonnet on. Looking really close to being complete now...

Unfortunately, the bonnet predates a design change where Peter moved to having flared front wings, to allow hot air to vent at the sides of the engine bay. This means that the rear end of the bonnet needs to come out about 15mm further each side... which I think is the cause of the 10mm vertical gap to the wings. It would be possible to flatten out the lip at the bottom and rebend it, but I can't imagine the result would be very pretty, so I think the best solution will be to get a new, slightly bigger bonnet.

There are a few things left to do before I get an MOT and IVA test, but not many. I need to fit a clutch switch for the traction control to do its full-thottle-gearshift magic (not an IVA requirement, obviously, but access is much easier before I rivet on the drivers-side front wing); cover up some sharp edges with rubber trim; fit the fourth wheel-speed sensor; sort out the bonnet; setup the suspension geometry... and that's more or less it.

I'm tempted to book an MOT a long way away, as (I believe) I can legally drive to it, but this is probably unwise. Tempting though.