My personal love affair with the Jaguar E Type started more or less as the car was launched.  At the age of 10 I was already showing signs of being obsessed with all things mechanical and cars were, to me, the ultimate expression of that.  Living in Bradford in the postwar early 60’s very few people ever seemed to have a new car. The only recollection I have of anyone we knew buying not one, but a succession of new vehicles, was the family doctor.  My dad drove a Rover 16, lovingly hand painted black by my mother using Valspar Coach Enamel, followed by a Morris 8.

I cannot recall exactly when, or where I saw my first ‘live’ E Type but it had a life changing effect on a small schoolboy who had never seen such a dramatic, moving, work of art. Remember that in the early 60’s most cars were boxy, tall, drab and to put it politely, uninspiring.  There were exceptions and from my own area we spawned the Jowett Javelin, but such delights of automotive design were pretty rare births.

Over the years I ached for an E Type but I was never going to be able to buy one, even second hand they always seemed so out of reach that I could still only dream.  My father had to suffer along with me and over many years I persuaded him he needed a Triumph TR6, A Ford Escort RS2000 (droopsnoot front), several sporty (ish) Fiats and to help me buy an ex-race Series 2 Lotus Seven with Holbay engine and wobbly web wheels.  I loved that car but eventually the start of a career meant it had to go and a succession of cars followed (but what a 'one-up' it had been to be the only student at University driving a Seven!).

Wind forward to 1993 and I have been self-employed 3 years and convince myself I can afford an E Type as a company car! A long suffering friend lent me the money the bank wouldn’t and after a trip to a certain large specialist in E Types I bought my love affair, my greatest desire. Back then £15,000 seemed a huge amount but I finally had what I wanted, I was complete, my life ambition satiated. I was now the beaming owner of a 4.2 Fixed Head in carmen red. Hmmm. Then I drove home!  First off, the dealer had put no petrol in the car at all, so just down the road I had to stop urgently for petrol.  I found out a little while later that a nicely leaking fuel tank sump pot was to blame for a rather higher than expected consumption.  On the return journey the alternator stopped alternating, and my following friend asked why I had been doing 120 mph on the M40?  I didn’t think I had of course but with a speedometer that wasn’t working correctly I thought I’d been bravely doing 80 mph. Oh and none of the door lock keys fitted the locks, and the header tank leaked.

The ‘specialist’ (I use the word very loosely in their case even though they claim to be the biggest in the Country) from whom I bought the car relented and sent me a header tank and alternator, and also a set of lock barrels.  My troubles were only just starting though.  Trying to remove the leaking header tank revealed the one in-situ had been welded to the top of the picture frame! Having finally removed it I discovered I had no mounting frame or forward stabilising arms and so began my long and distinguished relationship with a few now wealthier suppliers.  I drove the car only a little as it frequently steamed nicely and eventually took it to a local restoration specialist for a service and ‘a few little jobs’.  The people at Southern Classics (92) Limited (SC) (now made famous by their E Type Roadster restoration on Sky TV) were friendly and rather bluntly honest.  They didn’t say directly that I had bought a pile of rubbish but I understood and finally admitted to myself what I had known subconsciously all along.  I had been well and truly conned.  I had never wanted to admit to myself that someone so into cars, so used to taken them apart and working on anything from Historic Formula 3 to a super quick Caterham could be so gullible.  A few years membership of the Jaguar Drivers Club and I now realise I’m not the first and most certainly not the last! 

Anyway, one cheap E Type service turned into several thousands of pounds of work and I had an MOT for a year.  Still had the overheating problem, identified as a crack in the cylinder head by The ‘specialist’ (I use the word very loosely in their case even though they claim to be the biggest in the Country) from whom I bought the car relented and sent me a header tank and alternator, and also a set of lock barrels.  My troubles were only just starting though.  Trying to remove the leaking header tank revealed the one in-situ had been welded to the top of the picture frame! Having finally removed it I discovered I had no mounting frame or forward stabilising arms and so began my long and distinguished relationship with a few now wealthier suppliers.  I drove the car only a little as it frequently steamed nicely and eventually took it to a local restoration specialist for a service and ‘a few little jobs’.  The people at Southern Classics (92) Limited (SC) (now made famous by their E Type Roadster restoration on Sky TV) were friendly and rather bluntly honest.  They didn’t say directly that I had bought a pile of rubbish but I understood and finally admitted to myself what I had known subconsciously all along.  I had been well and truly conned.  I had never wanted to admit to myself that someone so into cars, so used to taken them apart and working on anything from Historic Formula 3 to a super quick Caterham could be so gullible.  A few years membership of the Jaguar Drivers Club and I now realise I’m not the first and most certainly not the last! SC. So I hardly drove the car and when I did I added problems to the list of ‘advises’ produced by SC each time they saw the car.  It would have been easy to have decided Southern Classics were simply trying to generate work by giving me lists of things wrong with the car but I know from many years of dealing with them that they do not work like that.  They restore old cars, mostly Jaguars, to a very high standard and take enormous pride in what they do. Fortunately their knowledge and experience matches their desires and the final standard of my car illustrates that beyond doubt.

Several more years of ownership, I still hardly drive the car and it is back with SC for another service and MOT. This time it’s serious, they think that the rear suspension trailing arm mounting points in the floorpans are beyond repair. Or as Lee, their mechanical expert explained, “When something so bad (the floors) have been repaired so badly already, we haven’t anything left to work on!”  Under the car on the vehicle lift, I could see exactly what he meant. In addition to the state of the floors we looked at other parts of the dark and dirty undersides of a car which had suffered many major abuses during its' tortured life. It was not a pretty sight.  The decision was made, new floors, inner and outer sills including the bits between.

Now Rory, a magician with a sheet of metal set to work to remove and replace the offending, or should I really say, offensive, parts to weld in sound new ones. At this point SC discover that I own a multi storey E Type.  It had 3 (yes three) floors. Southern Classics had never seen this before and getting out three layers of floor panels from both sides of the car was not easy, even for them. Rory is a nice man and I’m told he will be off the medication he started coincidentally with work on my car sometime soon!  Floors and sills finished, some new paintwork, the car looks fantastic and we have a new MOT.  The engine still has a cracked head and still I hardly drive the car.

We roll forward to December 2001.  Another customer of SC has had an engine changed and available is a 3.8, uprated engine with hardly any miles on it.  I take too long to decide to buy it and it is sold before I can say “yes please”. Now back to the good friend who helped me Buy KKB in the first place.  I cannot decide what to do with the car or in fact with my life but Jean is a qualified Life Coach and wants me to practice her coaching skills on.  Good for her and good for me.  One major decision I manage through Jean’s help is to go ahead and buy another engine, fit this to the car and then go historic sports car racing, the most likely being what is called ‘Appendix K’ racing.

So an uprated 4.2 engine is duly ordered from Rob Beere Racing, a well respected supplier of successful race engines and work begins on preparing the car for it.  We have had doubts about the offside area of the bulkhead for some time and having removed the old engine there is now ample evidence that all is not well. A phone call from Southern Classics asks that I might want to call into the workshop so I can be shown their concerns. It was not good news. As Steve (the owner of SC) put it “we have never seen a repair of the structural bulkhead before that used builders foam and a tea towel”.  Big decision time and I decide there is no way an engine with almost 50% more power than standard can go into this car, it would rip it apart.  So KKB is stripped of all her dignity, and all her add-on bits, and goes off for plastic chip paint stripping.  This type of stripping process takes off all the paint but with no panel damage whatsoever, but at a significant price!.  We needn’t have worried about potential damage as later all but the roof panel and those floors done in the proceeding several years were replaced.

Having cut sections from external panels to allow a visual inspection, the paint stripping revealed a nightmare of holes and damaged panels.  It was far worse than expected and was yet another  example of how pretty an E Type can appear until you dig deeper than the skin.  Over the next 10 months Rory proceeded to cut away and fit replacements for the inner and outer rear wings, the rear section below the tailgate opening, the boot floor, the entire bulkhead, screen pillars and even the top corner of the offside screen pillar which he said he had never seen rot on any previous example. Southern Classics have been remarkably patient, carrying out work over extended periods, taking into account my varying financial situation.

It was an easy decision to fit a complete replacement bulkhead rather than the separate panels but why do the suppliers of these major items make them so badly?  Later in the rebuild we discovered that the replacement heater box (obtained some years earlier) from the same supplier of the bulkhead did not match.  The lack of accuracy in panels and poor fit of other parts became a familiar and seriously frustrating occurrence.  I have to say that some replacement parts from the main suppliers of such items are of poor quality, poor fit and not worthy of the price charged.

As the rebuild continued decisions about the cars future use were made. I had already ordered a full FIA approved roll-cage; FIA approved plumbed in fire extinguisher system and other race parts. By this stage I had decided that racing what was becoming my beautiful vision of the perfect E Type was less and less likely.  As time moved on this decision become firmer and I finally decided KKB would be restricted to a road car with some track day use. At least with track days there is less chance of someone pushing you off in an overambitious overtaking move. Unfortunately even on track days there are less than talented drivers in cars beyond their ability so it will still entail some risk. I may also enter a few hill climb events but many do have significant solid boundaries to the roadside ready to catch out the errant driver.

Colour choice was difficult, I love dark blue and never really liked carmen red as it seems to fade quickly and look washed out. Having already bought Sabelt seats with black and red covers I decided red was the way to go and chose signal red which is a stronger, deeper shade. Southern Classics use all Glasurit paints and the final finish was superb. 

Early on I had explained to SC the need for the interior of the car to have as good a finish as outside as I wanted a stripped out racing car that was to the highest standard of preparation.  That caused a few problems as despite spending a very long time cleaning the bare shell, residual dust came out of the many internal cavities requiring more paint flatting than was hoped for.  Once flatted and sprayed with a final coat, the finish on the inside is better than on the outer panels of most of the cars you see!  A tinted primer was used inside and outside of the bodyshell which I am told ensures a more even final colour and less chance of minor scratch damage showing through. 

Whatever components were being worked on, they were completely rebuilt. When reconstructing the dash, the heater and choke controls, although working perfectly well were stripped, blasted, painted and fitted with stainless fasteners - just in case anyone looks !

The serious rebuilding of minor components included more visible examples. The handbrake has most working parts covered in a standard road car but in a race car would be completely exposed. The pivot bolt, castellated nut and link strap were all chromed and new, stainless countersunk set screws used for the mounting.

Once the outside was painted it looked amazing.  Not just the paint finish but the standard of panel work done by Rory.  A good test (and a few body and paint shops might not like you to know this) is to have the car beneath strip lights then stand back and look at how the straight light reflection in the paint appears.  Any dents or flaws show up rather well.  With this car there simply were no flaws to see. I lost track of how many days Rory spent on lead loading, a technique used at the Jaguar factory on all new cars to cover up the rather agricultural panel joints in some areas.  One really ugly original join between two panels was on the gearbox tunnel and that too was lead loaded!

Prior to the painting one of my tasks was to pre-fit the roll cage.  Ordered from a top manufacturer, it was very late arriving and less than impressive in finish. I had paid extra for red powder coating for example and some had been scraped off during delivery.  Having fitted the rear cage mountings – which required cutting out sections of the newly fitted panels, and welding them into place all seemed to be going well.  I had needed to use a hydraulic ram to spread the main cage hoop but I had expected that.  Fitting the front cage which passes over the top of the windscreen and down to the top of each inner sill and linked to the main hoop by bars over the top of each door opening was another matter.  After struggling for a while I checked various measurements and found the various sections were different dimensions each side, and a bracket on the main hoop was in the wrong place.  After a discussion with the manufacturer along the lines of, ‘the problem with E Types is they were never very accurately built’, I thought I was going to have a major battle to get things changed. A few dimensions quoted on how the cage had been built and finally they accepted that something was wrong with their cage. They arranged collection of the cage for correction and after many weeks, (as they had forgotten about it!) it was returned.  It was even more of a mess then before.

To be fair to them eventually they sent their top development engineer to Southern Classics and he built a totally new cage to fit the car.  He also measured the car and admitted it was accurate within millimetres from side to side, unlike any he had seen before. Obviously the car used by the company to make their original jig was not very accurate!  The finished cage is excellent, shame it was a farce getting to that stage. The cage was painted in body colour to match and left out of the car until almost all interior trimming (as limited as it is) and wiring etc was finished.

Other modifications to the body involved driver seat mountings and harness mountings.  Just in case I decide to race I wanted to ensure mountings would conform to the RAC Motor Sport Association Regulations. To do that involved drilling out the existing captive nuts fitted on the underside of the floor to allow the 8mm high tensile bolts to pass through.  Beneath the floor is a 4mm thick alloy section required by RAC MSA Regulations. In my case I have fitted an L shape section beneath each pair of mountings for additional strength. It is obviously very important for safety to ensure the seat is secure but this also helps with driver confidence.  Any seat movement (and it’s surprising how much there is in some cars) can affect how quickly it is ultimately driven.  The seats themselves were to be Sabelt high back units with slots for 6 point harnesses, the driver seat with an inflatable lumbar support added.  However, as with a few other aspects of the car, changes later happened. The Sabelt seats have been sold and the car now has beautiful replica seats as fitted to the lightweight race cars. These are an aluminium shell trimmed in Connolly leather by Suffolk and Turley. More period and totally gorgeous!

The harnesses are again Sabelt 6 point and additional ring bolt mountings have had to be fitted for the crutch and shoulder straps.  All can be removed and holes filled with rubber blanking grommets if the car is to be returned to standard at any time.  Whilst on that subject, the roll cage mounting plates which are fitted into and welded are not easily reversible but would all but disappear beneath standard carpet and trim.

Security of the car has to be a priority and some of the race modifications help in this respect.  The door and rear quarterlight glass has all been replaced by LEXAN 400 plastic.  Same thickness as the original glass so fitting is easy, but at a fraction of the weight.  The other advantage is that they are seriously strong and almost unbreakable.  The tailgate glass was also to be replaced with Lexan but the double curvature caused problems trying to fit this into the rubber seal. White Ellerton Products (who supplied the headlamp covers) moulded an acrylic screen using the original glass as a mould in four days. Almost as strong as the Lexan, the correct shape and hardly any weight at all. Having fitted high security lock barrels to the doors, gaining entry would not be a quick affair for a would-be thief.  Inside there is an Armtech battery isolator and a SPA plumbed in fire extinguisher system.  Both are electrically operated and a supplementary control panel for these devices sits where the radio panel normally resides.  Trimmed in matching vinyl it looks as if it always belonged to the other three dash panels. A Motolita leather covered 13” steering wheel finishes the ‘office’ off rather nicely.

One more major component to be rebuilt was the rear axle. As a significant piece of work this was a rather expensive exercise but well worthwhile to avoid problems in future. The cage was grit blasted and powder coated. The diff rebuilt by a specialist who also fitted a lower ratio crown wheel and pinion. Coopercraft brakes are fitted with stainless flexible hoses. The springs are uprated and fitted to AVO adustable dampers which have height adjustable spring platforms. One headache often encountered with the rear brakes is the difficulty of getting to the bleed nipples. On this car they are extended downwords for easy access, especially at a circuit. With a pressurised bleeding system this should work but we will see once the car is driven in anger.

Fitting up a car can be a frustrating time and mine was no exception. Badly made parts have already been mentioned and there is definitely no substitute for experience. SC only use one supplier for door seals as they have found that all the others supply mouldings which are the wrong shape and/or in a rubber compound which is far too hard.  Guess which I had already bought!  New door catches were being fitted as the originals were not deemed worthy of replating and they took an absolute age to arrive despite always being promised ‘in the next few days’, same problem with moulded plastic headlight covers. This happened on a number of occasions from this same supplier, happy to take the orders even though they did not have the stock. They were eventually sourced from White Ellerton Products Ltd in Boreham Wood. George there was very helpful and covers were with me less than a week after confirming the order.

A nice touch for my car was meeting the guy fitting the headlining. As we chatted I discovered he had been responsible for building the trick roof for the James Bond DB6 in Goldfinger. No I do not now have an ejector seat but I am thinking of guns in the bonnet! Perhaps there is a connection as the 4.2 XKE engine has probably powered more military vehicles than ever fitted to E Types. Although not the correct ones, I decided I had to fit polished cam covers. I had several but then found a pair at the Jaguar Spares Day at Farnham. The photograph shows a 'before' and 'after' of what they looked like. This was an easy one, there was only 10 hours work to turn one into the other! At 20 hours+ total I'm glad I did this rather than pay someone else! 

We had fun with the wheels and tyres for the car, fun being used in the ironic sense! Another customer’s car was spotted with Minilite magnesium wheels and I discovered he wished to fit chrome wires. They were to be for sale and very shortly after, a sum of money changed hands. The original plan was for the wheels to return to Minilite for stripping, examination, x-ray and re-finishing.  How I wish we had done just that.  In the event they went off to a local wheel re-finisher who stripped them but then refused to powder coat them as they were magnesium. Southern Classics finally repainted them having had a number of colour choices from me. We finally all agreed that a particular shade of gold would be nice and although not likely to be the correct shade, would be as some competition wheels were painted in the period. All the spline adapters were re-chromed but on reassembly it was found that several wheels were loose on the splines.  We now knew why several had thin spacers sandwiched between adapter and wheel.  As the existing spacers were varying thickness 4 new ones were made.

Tyres also caused considerable debate. This car has a lower diff ratio fitted but also has a much more powerful engine, with a higher rev limit. The result should be a fairly easy genuine 150 mph as compared with Jaguar’s original optimistic quotes. I also wanted tyres that had more grip and as 80% profile tyres are rare and not likely to be V or Z rated the size needed to be 205 in 70 section. Now in theory getting a 205/70/15 tyre with V rating should not be difficult but add the requirement for a high grip compound and it most definitely is!  The final decision was Avon CR6ZZ tyres which are intended for historic road rally use.  They are apparently not brilliant in the wet (no experience early on but later at Goodwood they didn't seem to bad on a seriously wet track) but are becoming popular for historic cars doing track days as the compound is resistant to overheating. They are not particularly expensive but that trades off against not very deep tread so expected mileage is unknown at present.

The suspension of the car is far from standard but has not involved radical changes such as full adjustable fabricated wishbones for example.  The front and rear dampers are competition AVO units with adjustable spring seat on the rear four.  Springs and torsion bars are all uprated, the bars being hollow which also saves a little weight. The torsion bar reaction plate is adjustable, courtesy of Rob Beere Racing, which means that front ride height adjustment is much easier than standard. The primary reason for fitting height adjustable units all around was to allow easy corner weight adjustment to optimise handling.

Brakes have gone a fairly standard Coopercraft route front and rear with every other part of the braking system replaced or refurbished. The front brakes are not fitted with backplates and if the need arises I have located a source of suitable front disc scoops which would allow air to be fed to the discs for additional cooling. However, the change of bonnet to a replica lightweight one means there are brake ducts already helping channel air where it is needed.

The bonnet was a major headache. As with many cars, it was not in particularly good condition but the centre section and both wings looked reasonable.  I decided eventually to go for a cheap option for the short term, a fibre glass bonnet.  This was ordered from one of the acknowledged suppliers in race weight, meaning slightly less layers of matting in the lay-up process.  It was made with the heater and air ducts to allow for road use.  The finished product has now included aluminium louvres, replacing the cut out moulded ones, and moulded plastic headlight covers.  These are fitted without the chrome surrounds and secured with small stainless steel domed head allen screws.  As delivered the bonnet was a pretty bad fit, in particular the two sides were well short of the upper surface of the sills. On one side there was over an inch gap.  A local fibre glass specialist modified the edges and they look perfect.  He also added honeycomb aluminium reinforcement to both wing rear edges to stiffen them and match the shape of the bulkhead.  Later a flat spot in the moulding below the nearside side light (which obviously is common to all bonnets from this source as I’ve looked at many in race paddocks) was taken out.  The bonnet is now a superb example of how they can look, but it no longer represents a cheap option. Then I changed my mind again and decided on an aluminium bonnet!

The drivers footwell was rather a mess when we started. The carpet had been glued in with some super strong adhesive and once removed we could see why - disguise! The gearbox tunnel cover has already been removed. Note the 'bent bit of metal' steering column mount.

And after much serious work the same drivers footwell looks like this! The 'new' refurbished (and very hard to obtain) aluminium steering column mount can be clearly seen. The under-dash trim panel has now been fitted and some other trim added as a minor attempt to reduce noise when driving. All can be easily removed for serious track days.

The car is now fitted with a gorgeous example of how a bonnet should be made.  In aluminium and made to the pattern of the Lindner/Knocker low drag coupe, complete with all correct internal ducting and additional long range light apertures. This looks amazing but before you ask anyone how much one will cost you, sit down and have a stiff drink! Fitting was, like any E Type bonnet, not entirely straightforward. One lower edge had to be extended before it could be formed into a wired edge and inside, two closing panels had to be changed, one having a gusset welded in, the other being remade completely.

Having gone to the expense of the bonnet it seemed appropriate to also fit aluminium doors.  They appeared to be beautifully made and when we weighed a steel door and an aluminium one for comparison, at 14lb 12 oz versus  6lb 12oz they are significantly lighter. Unfortunately the 'fit' problem returns once again. The door skins had been fitted seriously undersize so up to 10 mm of aluminium had to be added on the front and bottom edges by TIG welding to get them to fit.

The doors and bonnet have now been painted. A new windscreen is now fitted after a false start. It appears the supplied screen from Triplex is one of the batch made to the wrong size!! (what have I written before about suppliers?).

Take one standard, small size saloon race mirror, paint mounting in silver and body in the car body colour and we have a perfect match. A modern mirror that looks like it came from the 1960's. Still as useless as all other mirrors on an E Type but it looks good

The bonnet is painted and back on the car. Fitting up started 30 January 2004 and progressed quickly.

The car was collected at the end of February for initial testing. Overall the result was superb. There were several minor issues to resolve, the main one being the seriously optimistic speedometer thanks to the rear axle ratio change. The aluminium covers for the 'boot floor' still needs to be made and trimmed and fire extinguisher has been relocated.

Performance is impressive. With less weight, over 300 BHP and a lower final drive ratio, acceleration was mighty even using a rev limit of 3000 for the first few hundred miles. Torque at 2000 rpm plus was seriously strong so mid range acceleration provided easy and safe overtaking on the road. Once a few more miles see the engine nicely bedded-in it will be fully extended to see exactly what the performance is like. Before that Rob Beere, the builder is going to have a final check on carburation and ignition.

The ride is surprisingly good despite the uprated springs, torsion bars, dampers and roll bars. Turn-in is sharper than a standard E Type although the 70 profile tyres do mean it still has a little delay. Higher tyre pressures still need to be tried and most certainly would affect this on track. There is little roll at road speeds achieved so far and handling is quite neutral although the available torque has indicated a nice 'tail-out' attitude is fairly easy to induce. We presently have a little too much negative camber on the rear suspension and we need to dial that out along with a slight raise in rear ride height.

The car attracts so much attention wherever it goes. I think the best possible comment I have heard was when taking this picture and a mother with her little girl walked along the road. The girl stared all the way past and simply said "cool car!". She couldn't have been more that 7 or 8, now that is a compliment! 

May 2004 saw the first serious outing for the finished car – Goodwood Jaguar E Type Register track day. The previous evening was spent in a nearby hotel so an early start was relatively painless. Static noise testing was a slightly nerve inducing operation and it was a close thing. How close we would discover later. After the mandatory drivers briefing we were in the second group on track. After a delay caused by one of the first group’s overly noisy car exploits tripping the local Council’s noise monitoring system, we were out on track! Sadly after two laps I was in! Too much noise , said the pit lane Marshall – tone it down a bit! I think the problem was likely to be using high revs to balance the car around Madgwick so there was nothing for it but to be a little less enthusiastic. Even so the car was quick and I was able to explore the handling to some extent.

The next session on track was wet, very wet! Still using a lower rev limit (a reset limiter doing the job for me) the car performed amazingly despite having tyres rather less suited to the conditions. By the end of the 15 minute session we had lapped all 9 other cars and made about half a lap lead on the nearest one. Most probably due to correct caution on the part of the other drivers and a lack of self control on my part. The ‘E’ performed wonderfully and I had no problem with leaving the increasingly wet circuit to more ‘adventurous’ club members, some of whom later probably regretted their decision. There were a few interesting ‘offs’ but no one was hurt.

June saw a visit to Prescott Hillclimb Drivers School and what a fantastic day this was. Beautiful sunshine, an eclectic collection of cars, humorous fellow drivers and very critical chief instructor!  Numerous runs allowed me to gain insight into the car performance and mine. I was terrible although improving by the end of the day. The car really needs high ratio power steering for this type of event. A gentle run up the hill is not a problem but for a high speed attack much quicker steering is needed. Another problem was gearchange and double de-clutching which became more difficult as the day progressed. This was looked at later. Prescott was a brilliant day and highly recommended to anyone with any car – but take your thickest skin with you for the instructor feedback sessions!

The gearchange problem was due to a clutch slave cylinder slowly pressuring and not correctly releasing the clutch plate, resulting in slip. A different push rod and problem solved. Apparently this can happen whe the push rod is slightly too long and the slave cylinder piston does not retract enough to allow fluid flow back to the master.

The double de-clutching problem was traced to the pivots on the throttle linkage quadrants, bending. When this happens (or if the linkage is badly adjusted, excessively worn etc) throttle pedal movement becomes greater and it is not possible to move the pedal enough to raise the engine revs. Now we could have fitted a remanufactured stainless steel linkage but there are better solutions. Using the existing quadrants, with the pivots removed, a new linkage was made using stainless steel rods and rod end joints (often called Rose Bearings) With lightweight NAS spec bolts and ‘K’ nuts the whole assembly now has zero play, is ‘bend proof’ and looks a very professional race car design. We may produce a limited number for sale in 2005.

As the end of 2004 approached a call from a photographer to help with a calendar was received. The finished product, featuring a player (and his gorgeous wife) in the London Irish Rugby Team, has just been finished. This was done for the players’ benefit year and we were very pleased to be able to help. The picture below is one not used on the calendar and needless to say the model is not a rugby player!

Jobs for the New Year included fitting a Rob Beere oil cooler scoop which fits below the water radiator, so avoiding any restriction on cooling. A quilted leather cover for the gearbox tunnel may be made to reduce heat transfer a little, and there is a lot of polishing to do!

One of those pressing jobs for 2005 was the oil cooler and this is now fitted. A rather nice aluminium scoop fits with the inlet mouth below the engine picture frame, so there is uninterrupted airflow which also does not affect the water radiator. Not easy to fit (to say the least!). An interesting problem was one union on the brand new Mocal oil cooler simply coming away when the oil pipe was being tightened. The cooler was replaced by a very helpful supplier who explained that they are now basically 'glued' in place and do fail in this way! Be warned, check you oil cooler if it is recent to ensure it is not showing signs of failing (and yes before anyone suggests otherwise, two spanners were being used to do up the union!). Above is one view of the cooler supplied by Rob Beere

The car was eventually sold in 2008 to an enthusiast in Switzerland. Less than a year later the car returned to Britain and is now owned by a real enthusiast who will be using the car for historic trials.