I popped into the local fastenings place this week for some longer bolts for the top shock mounting. I had 3 3/4″ inch in there and they weren’t quite long enough so I was after some 4″ efforts. Unfortunately, they only had 4 1/2″ ones but hopefully they won’t intrude into the boot box area.

Gone from this:

To this:

I’ve also managed to make a fuel tank sized dent in the stock of bits too. The manual suggests fitting the fuel tank and then the fuel pump/fuel filter, but I thought access would be better if I did it the other way around. Unfortunately, I don’t think I kept the bracket for the filter from the MX5 so I’ll have to source another one.

I used rivnuts to pump bracket to the chassis like the manual suggests. I had to fit them though as despite paying for the factory to fit rivnuts, these and the filter ones haven’t been done. May as well have fitted the rest of them myself and saved £40 odd quid to be honest.

The fuel tank isn’t quite central, being slightly to the left. I don’t see how it’s possible to seat it centrally as the outlet would foul against the chassis.

I think I’ll attack the handbrake next. The two pre-drilled mounting holes that the build manual allude to are missing so I’ll have to add them myself, once I’ve measured them out. I don’t think I’ll get a lot of time to spend on it over the Christmas break though, too many family functions!

187 hours in and 56.78% of the way through… yikes…