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Here’s my suggestion. Mrs May stops being called to the EU at short notice. Write this message. Dispite our efforts, and our close friendship, we feel at present we are unable to reach an acceptable relationship. With regret we therefore intend to leave without a deal in March 2019. If the EU have any further ideas or suggestions they are welcome to visit the UK to discuss them. As always we look forward to a continuing friendship with the people of Europe and confirm that those EU members who currently live here are welcome to stay. Goodbye.

The shocks also arrived from Protech yesterday. I'm yet to finalise spring rates for this car as on the first JW4 i had to get a set custom made as they originally came fitted with 85lbs at the front and 105lbs for the rear. This car has a heavier chassis and also a heavier larger capacity engine so I'm hoping I might be able to use standard off the shelf springs mut I need to sit down one evening and calculate the motion ratios so I can compare to the first car.

A trading partnership is fine. The EU are trying and have been tying to get POLITICAL union in through the back door of trade. This is not acceptable. Kinnock was mentioned. I'll mention Mandelson and Farage as well. All of them soundly rejected by the UK electorate yet they become EU politicians. This is the very opposite of democracy and if it happens with those we vote out of office I'm sure it happens with politicians from other countries too. In other words the very people we deliberately reject end up being in a position of power and largely exempt from the will of the people. The British government handled this all wrong. The UK is the 5th biggest economy in the world https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/the-worlds-biggest-economies-in-2018/ We trade with more countries under WTO rules than we do with the EU. We should have said "We're out. If you want us to trade with you, come up with a deal or we'll spend our money elsewhere." And at the end of the day is Germany really going to say that they don't want to sell us BMW's, Mercedes, Audi's, Daimler, Bosch, Siemens etc etc. Hardly. We need to hold out nerve, stare down project fear, keep calm and carry on. The core of the EU are much more concerned about contagion. If they make it easy for us to leave then they will be faced with several other countries wanting to do the same. The harder they make it for us the more unattractive leaving looks to other countries who may be on the cusp, and that is political cynicism of gargantuan proportions. I'm old and I spend a LOT of my working time in Holland, France and Germany and I'm a confirmed leaver. No deal is fine by me. WTO rules will work the way they always have.

I'm also reaching that, stage of the build where I need to start thinking about bodywork. I've got a spare complete set of mk2 panels which I've been hoping to use. They're a miss match of parts as the undertray is red, the upper body green and the engine cover white so they'd need to be painted. I dragged the, all out of garage loft where they've been stored for the past 3 years so I could have a closer look at them but I'm not convinced they're useable without a significant amount of work. The lower body has been used to take a mould and has a lot of additional parts crudely grafted onto it to to extend flanges and cover holes. The upper body likewise shows signs of a heavy impact on the nose, its subsequently been filled and sanded, there's a couple of cracks and a few holes to fill. The best part was the engine cover which is complete other than being cut in the wrong place for me to fit around a roll bar. As I surveyed the parts the magnitude of the task to get the bodywork right dawned on me, they'd be a lot of hours of prep work and then the cost of someone to paint it to end up with a body which might still not be perfect. As I'm fortunate to have a set of body moulds the decision has been made to commission a brand new body for the car as the actual cost of a complete new body works out to be about the same as painting the old body. the moulds have been dragged out and ready to be trailered to the laminators of Friday. While looking at the bodywork I thought I'd see how much cutting and shaping would be needed to fit around the extra chassis tubes that the Carburol Special has. With the assistance of the angle grinder (it didn't have to look pretty) I cut into the spare cockpit section I had to try it for fit. I think I'm going to have to loose the seat back section due to the forward stays on the roll bar but the biggest hurdle is the dash hoop, this I fear will need some creative thinking with the wind screen. It might not actually be quite so bad as the photo but its difficult to position it exactly until I've got the lower body on.

I've had a bit of time this week so have managed to get a few more jobs completed. Sometimes even the simplest of jobs can take an hour or more to complete and that was certainly the case with the gear knob. I'd got one in the box of bits that suited the car quite well but it screwed on with an M8 thread and I needed 3/8 UNF for the top of the lever, so I'd need to make an adaptor. Luckily I had an offcut of 3/8UNF studding so in the lathe I reduced the diameter at one end down to 8mm and then cut an M8 thread so one end could screw into the lever and the other into the ball. I also bent up the seat mounts. For metal folding I use a vice brake which is a very basic vice mounted folder that will bend upto 3mm steel with ease. I have used it on 5mm but I wouldn't reccomend that

Mazda power the ultimate driving machine

Hi Guys, As many of you know I work in the friction industry (The Avatar is Sort of a Clue) I am currently speaking to Mintex with a view of getting one of their distributors to come on board with us as a supplier member.It would not be possible to deal direct with Mintex, as they have a distributor network "BUT"................................... The company concerned are motor sport orientated, so watch this space as they say if It is felt they will give us support, help and advice as well as competitive prices then I will get them to contact our club sec.

The EU has some good points to it but many bad ones and over the years countries who are nett contributors have been paying more and more in to the pot to prop up the countries who economies are basket cases. As Stuart has said the corruption is almost beyond belief and when you cannot get audits signed off by anyone it shows the level of problems. All the EU had to do was to make some concessions to Cameron to fend of the rise in UKIP and there would never have been a vote offered, but as it was they felt that the UK people would never vote to leave. Once the vote was announced, my brother who has lived in France for over 20 years, told me that politicians there were rolling around with joy. If the UK voted to leave they must be punished as other countries must not see that leaving is easy. If they vote to stay all previous concessions won would be swept away as they could treat us with contempt in the knowledge that we will never leave. Both sides lied, project fear being one and the land of milk and honey full of money from the other side and to be honest somewhere in the middle is the truth. So here we are and the issue for me is we either support democracy or ignore it, the people voted on a single issue and the leavers won. The EU has deliberately made it a difficult negotiation and are using the potential return to bloodshed in Ireland as their ace up their sleeve. No one wants a return to that but no PM would allow a part of the UK to be treated differently. May is in an impossible position and this has been driven by divisive people on both sides in this country and those in the EU. I am sure a deal will be done but will it be what people voted for or a fudge? What has happened is that no one in the EU wants the UK to leave as we are a nett contributor, business knows they export more to the UK than we export and we will get access via World Trade terms but even that is being made difficult by some. Will it be done by next year who knows, will we get a second vote I doubt that otherwise you go against the democracy and trust will be even further eroded in the state of politics. I hope both sides come out with some pride and we continue to work with and live by our EU neighbours who in the main are like us, good people led by self centred people who want power more than anything.

Yup, that works

Cheers @AdgeC I hope to drop down on Saturday for a quick wander through. Chris

mazda power chasing @Andy (Sycho) s2000 from 19minutes onwards for the flames

You lot scare me ....................

I'm surprised someone doesn't sell pre cut strips for the terminally lazy... It could be easy to get a batch laser cut up. I'd buy one!

.....says the self appointed 'Insurance Clerk, storker of Thatcham'

Thanks Matthew. Won't be able to do tomorrow as getting a new garage door fitted after a break in and need to sort the inside out once they are finished. But I'll keep it in mind and will look out for any meets near me in the future. I'm a pretty quiet guy so may need a little persuasion.

What a load of weirdos in Cheshire area we have !!

She was an Admirals daughter but her navel base was always fully of seamen

This old git voted to leave because of my grandchildren’s future prospects. I just think real future growth may well come from the 93% of the world outside the EU, in part, because of the EU. If you want a good read about how the EU operates try Yanis Varoufakis - Adults in the Room about his battles with Europe’s deep establishment. He predicted we would be exactly where we are by now and that a deal would be impossible on anything like fair terms.

I'm an old fart but I also happen to have worked in Brussels and have seen at first hand the greed, power mania and empire building etc. Its a corrupt money black hole.

At last some proper progress pictures. With the chassis unloaded from the trailer the first job was to clean all the powder-coating from inside all the holes with a reamer. I'd had the forethought to leave nuts on all the threaded studs so as to protect the threads and make it easier to clean those. I could then begin the task of assembling everything and the first job was fitting the new rear axle assembly. The pedals went in next. Followed by master cylinders and tachometer. The tacho is the original Krober unit from the Carburol Special so I was keen to re-use it. Whilst it's not within period for a JW4 I wanted to retain it as it's a part of the cars later history, the rubber mounts had all perished but luckily i was able to source some reproduction parts for it from Germany. Making good progress the rear wishbones and uprights were next to go on before the light outside began to fade too much and I was forced to call it a day.

I’m still hoping we’ll come to our senses and not leave. The older you are, the less your vote should count in this instance.