At the end of March the propshaft arrived back from Bailey Morris. A bit later than expected, but they were busy. I’ll forgive them because they were nice enough to avoid putting balancing weights where the handbrake might be!

Before I fitted it I changed the seal on the gearbox turret – it had seen better days!

I changed the oil in the turret itself and refitted it.

Upon fitting the prop it still fouled the handbrake bolts. I got some countersunk ones and fitted rivnuts to the passenger side panel. This meant it can be bolted in from the ‘other side’ and so be flush inside the transmission tunnel. It also made it completely flush on the panneling which is a bonus.

Much more clearance now… let’s hope its enough. Some people have to uprate the gearbox mounts so that will be an option if I still get inteference.

The speed sender has also been fitted. Fortunately it comes with an led on top to show when it’s working. Just as well as the first position I put it in didn’t work! In the end I’m reading the bits on the diff itself.

I meant to cable tie the wiring loom to the bracket to help keep it away from the diff. Oops! Off with the tunnel top again then.

Now, as we know, no bit of progress is complete without a disaster and this time those brake pipes have come back to haunt me. Went to bleed the brakes today but it seems it’s leaking from one connection. Probably not bad in the scheme of things, just one connection out of all of them. It would be the hardest to get to though!

(it’s the bottom pipe in this photo)

The leak was coming down the pipe so I undid it and flared it out a little. Unfortunately I flared it too far and split it. I cut that off and reflared it a bit further down. Unfortunately it still leaked. Probably a blessing in disguise and shortening it did make a bit of a mess of the route in that area.

I ordered some bits now so I’d be able to cut the pipe off behind the seat backs and attach a new one. It makes the most sense as I won’t have to replace the entire pipe and I can plan the route better.

Still, it was nice to reassociate the word brakes with some swear words…