All quiet on the kit car front...? Not silent though!

Hello all!

Just thought I'd post a mini update, it's been a while.

Not a fantastic amount of progress to report unfortunately, had a couple of setbacks with firstly the washing machine deciding to fail in quite spectacular fashion, and that leak under the boiler has gotten worse to the point of seeing the need to replace it in the not-too-distant future... Besides the funding shortage there's the small matter of spending quite a bit of time away with work recently, and the pressing need to get the wife-to-be's Morris Minor 1000 up to an MoT-able standard, so she can do the "Miss Marple" routine (all straw hats and vintage picnics, you know the drill... happy wife, happy life).

But, undeterred, I will soldier bravely forward, and definitely not giving up. It's just too much fun!

I've just placed the order for the pedal box and brake lines - an acceptable compromise to keep the project ticking over without sinking too many pennies all at once. So when that comes I'll have some more progress.

In the meantime I'll keep you tantalised with a few more little updates:

One of the jobs was replacing the manky old shifter with a shiny short shifter. Really makes a difference to the amount of "throw" in the gearshift, and lowers the knob to a more sensible height suited to the driving position of the Legend:

Old vs new, spot the difference

Absolutely straightforward to fit, just one clip holds the bottom bush in place. I had to drill mine out slightly to fit, but that's not a biggie. And it only costs about £20, so well worth the effort.

Fitted:

Bolt-on shiny-ness that works too.

Next up, brakes. I gave my tired old-looking front calipers to a mate of mine who works in a spray shop, and asked him to give them a blast over next time he was spraying something orange. Well, he did an absolute blinding job and received back the front brakes, fully grit blasted, primed and coated in dashing orange! Very pleased:

hint as to the car's final colour

I've now purchased a seal kit from eBay, and this weekend I'll be stripping the calipers and putting new seals and dust caps in. Lovely! Of course, the rear calipers are different from the BMW ones (mk2 golf ones) so when I source a set of them I'll drop them back into my mate Dave with another packet of chocolate digestives :-)

And then just for something to do, I loosely put in the steering column after wrestling for hours trying to drill off the stupid factory "shear off" security bolts, only to find they weren't that tight all along and could have been undone by hand! (sheesh)

Steering column fitted

Clearly it will need setting up and most definitely a smaller steering wheel - just tried the standard one in position and not only would I not be able to get in or out, but it had about 2mm of clearance against the chassis!! I think a nice tiny kart steering wheel with a quick release boss might solve both those problems as well as look the business!

So for the time being that's about it, hopefully after Peter gets back from Goodwood festival of speed (jealous!) he'll be able to get the next few bits shipped out to me and we can get cracking!

Thanks for reading,

Steve