Well, it's been a busy time

Though not on the car! I can't believe that the last post was in September - some work's been done on the car since then, but not a lot! :(

The engine was timed up, after a couple of hours searching for the cam specs online - thanks again to Ron for his help with that. The alternator arrived and Ron's started making the bracket up to fit (he's an engineer, with access to all sorts of useful stuff like lathes and bits of scrap metal, and I work in IT, I'm not copping out, honest!). As we mentioned in a previous post, we also went with bike throttle bodies, the megasquirt injection & ignition system, and we've got all the bits for this (except I think we still need a fuel pressure regulator - on the GSXR it's built into the fuel pump in the tank).

We're also making an inlet manifold for the throttle bodies - I'm going to buy a spacer kit to make them the right width for the pinto, and the manifold itself is going to be made from a fairly chunky steel plate and CDS tube - the inlet ports are 1.5" and the tb's are 1.75", which matches the inside and outside ODs of the tube. Cut at an angle it should do the job nicely.

We've been busy with a lot of stuff over the winter - we're getting married in September so there's a fair bit of organising there, we managed an actual holiday in November (went on a plane and everything!), and Claire had a car accident in December (she wasn't injured thankfully, but it wrote off the M3), so we had to spend some time looking for a replacement (we ended up with a 99 BMW 540 - mmmmmm V8, I wonder if that'll fit in an MNR), and helping Ron out with some bits on his car. On a track day last September, we found that the laminova oil cooler wasn't quite up to the job - after about 3 laps of castle combe, the oil temp was reading about 130! Ron's modified the bodywork to fit in a larger air cooler, and also fitted new Hi-spec calipers to the rear - there just wasn't enough rear braking with the old setup.

So, it's on with the show. Once the garage has had a bit of a tidy, it'll be back to it, trying to get the inlet finished off so we can move on to the next bits.

hopefully there'll be more to report (and more piccies) very soon!