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Finally finished fitting the 4-1 manifold after 3 evenings. It gave me a chance to investigate the rattling from the exhaust silencer and it does indeed seem like the cat is breaking up. Seems like a good excuse for a carbon silencer soon! Save the current silencer for MOT time I think. Anyway, onto fitting the new manifold. With the exhaust system stripped off and weighed because I'm a bit anal (new manifold saves 620g you know), it was time to attack the bodywork once again. I really hate that job. I started off making the hole square, then slowly expanding it towards the front of the car, checking if I could feed the manifold through each time. For those interested, and please don't use these as your starting dimensions, I ended up with a hole around 165mm wide, 120mm tall and 235mm from the front of the tub. Looks like there is still some filing required on that hole! It fits quite well, and I did a better job of the silencer this time making sure it wasn't pulling down on the support bobbin. The only thing I'm questioning with myself is if I should grind these welds down a bit. I think I'll leave it. I'm not chasing every last bhp and it's brand new so doesn't really deserve meddling with! First impressions are good. I've only had it idling for 10 seconds or so but it already sounds deeper, less raspy. When summer decides to arrive I'll take it for a decent drive.

bought a new single post lift today to go with my 2 post ,and its a mobile unit so can easily be put anywhere in the workshop really chuffed with it , i need one for home now so i can get my xi above my elise

looks fair to me Adam

It was a different era in attitude and action. Our forces of today are just as brave but much better equipped than ever their forebearers were. All the planes of WW2 had no protection when attacked except for machine guns on bombers. My uncle flew Lancasters in the war and never spoke of the horrors he saw, they knew bombing civilian targets was seen by many as "not cricket" but it was necessary to bring the war direct to the people who supported it but had seen little of it's effect directly. We will never see the likes of WW2 again thank god unless the rest of the world decide to take on China. Instead we will see local wars like Iraq where cruise missiles will do the job that bombers did without the loss of life to our forces. But imagine if there was a need to call up people today, how many would go? How rich would the law proffession become in legally challenging the decision? That is what sets apart WW2 were people from all walks of life marched away to lay down their lives for our freedom. Men and women in every avenue from spying to the hand to hand combat, who were ordinary before became extraordinary overnight. All the men and women should have been recognised straight away, from Bomber command and the Artic convoy,s to the Bevan boy's who were drafted to the mines to help the war effort. For a young man who had been a teacher to suddenly become a miner was no less dangerous in many ways and many lost their lives there. When we see all the ills that this country has we must never forget without the sacrific of millions of people we may not have been in the position we are now. They say we always need to look at history to see the future I hope we never repeat what those in the war years went through ever again. On a lighter note, my office at one time was right next to Filton airport in Bristol. There was a steady stream of Spitfires and Hurricanes that came and went as Rolls Royce has a factory there. At least once a month I was privilidged to watch practice air displays by them and even on busy shopping days people would stop and watch with Awe at how beautiful such deadly machines could be.

sent - heck the beer made it easier although I am a little unsure on the content

Following on from my question regarding front number plates, I took on board all your comments and decided to go for a standard oblong. I placed an order and waited for it to arrive. Today in the post I received a parcel, the label had my correct address but the label had obviously become detached from my number plate and Royal Mail had attached it to another parcel which turned out to be a Black Sabbath CD. How on earth am I going to attach this to the nose cone, and will it be legal ? The wonders of Royal Mail! I now have to start again. Rock On

Sorry to hear your news Martin, but glad you've pulled through and hopefully on the road to being stronger than ever Maybe not doable this month, but drop me a line if you're bored and fancy a run out to the Earls Barton car meet next month or something. Happy to pick you up on my way through Take it easy for now, though

This shows we can still do top end manufacturing and design in the UK and hopefully inspire some of the young people to think of engineering as a career. Too many think you have to be a footballer or celeb to do something wonderful instead of pushing bounderies elsewhere. I remember having Thrust one as a display at a place I worked and that was huge but very blocky in design. Bloodhound seems even bigger but so slippery in shape, roll on the day they smash the record.

Sorry Steve got me threads mixed up a bit. Blob