Daylight savings started today, so I was already an hour behind the 8 ball when I got into the shed. Plan today was to finish the strapping for the wiring, put the carbs back on, reinstall the radiator and fill it.

The wiring was easy, but when I got the carbs down off the shelf I realized that I hadn't bothered to remove the remnants of gasket from the manifold. It quickly became apparent thet they weren't going to peel off easily either.

Eventually it took me about an hour with scrapers, razor blades and a soft wire brush to get the manifold clean, but in the process a lot of crap had found its way into the airways. Realising that I had to get it all out it became obvious that I'd have to separate the manifold from the carbs and blow it out with compressed air. Which I did. After all there's only 12 nuts holding it all together. 5 minutes work.

That done, and remembering that the bottom row of 9 manifold to head nuts are tricky to get on, I decided to take advantage of the extra space and bolt the manifold on first, then bolt the carbs to that.

See? Here's the manifold bolted on. Isn't it pretty? Took 5 mins.

The next step was to mount the carbs on those 12 studs, and fit one spring washer and one nut on each. Plus the return spring brackets on the front 2 carbs. Now the top nuts are a doddle, as is the front one at the bottom.

BUT. A BIG but. The other 5 are almost completely inaccessable and the rearmost one is also impossible to see and nearly impossible to get a spanner to. It took another 2, maybe 3 hours to get those 5 nuts on. I had to magnetize a variety of screwdrivers, cut a spanner in half to tighten the rearmost nut, and I simply couldn't get washers on 2 of the studs at all.

Moral of the story? Yes putting the carbs and manifold on in one piece is a little tricky and last time took me around 30 minutes. BUT it's much easier than trying it this way!