Thank You Sweetnam Bradley in Malmesbury

[Mooch]

The heat shield on my exhaust failed on a track day last Friday.  The welds on the bits where the jubilee clips pass through failed and it all but fell off.  At least that was all the terrible rattling was!

 

As its an aluminium alloy piece, its tricky to weld, but I dropped into Sweetnam Bradley, a metal fabricators in Malmesbury  completely unannounced while I was having my new tyres fitted to the Westy.  They are right next door to Kwik Fit.

 

Met a delightful chap, turned out he'd scratch-built his own kit car and he offered to TiG weld it there and then for the cost of a few quid into the tea swindle.  Fantastic service and a really nice thing to do - and a really neat job, too.

 

So in return, I'll give them a plug on the Forum.  If you are anywhere in the vicinity of Wiltshire and need some metalwork, here's the people to do it!  Good chaps!

[Terry Everall]

Good service but why do you want a heat shield?

Very few of us use them

[Mooch]

Good point, Terry - I suppose its because SWMBO still comes out for the occasional blat  and it's really to protect her delicate pins from the searing heat when getting in and out!  I agree that apart from that, its just excess weight.  I built the car thinking it would be used for pottering around the lanes and for pub lunch trips etc, and like everyone else, I've ended up getting my kicks on the track.  Because of its origins, it's still essentially a road car that gets thrashed around the occasional airfield and still pretty much a stock Mazda MX5 SDV Westfield, so I still have the shield on.  

 

The next one I build....that's a different matter....I know what I want that one to do....