Apologies to my readers; there has been a bit of a hiatus over the last few months because while I am waiting until the roadster body is ready there's little I can do.

Current state of play:

Bonnet. I drove out to see Ross two days ago. There are 14 individual panels that make up the bonnet, held together by about 100 1/4" bolts and a lot of setscrews. It's been disassembled, paint stripped and grit blasted and all of the dents have been knocked out. The underside of the nose was pretty crumpled. otherwise the panels are pretty straight and rust free. Ross reckons he'll have the guards done this week and will then reassemble it with the newly replated bolts and screws.

Body. All of the metal work on the tub is complete, and Ross has filled it with fish oil and painted the underside with stoneguard. It is painted in primer and ready for blocking back once the bonnet is reassembled. The doors have new skins and are fitted up to the body shell.

Engine. I pulled the engine down 2 weeks ago. It looked to have been recently rebuilt; bores look good, +20 pistons that looked pretty new and pristine looking -10 crank journals. The head though does look to have some internal corrosion and the flywheel is quite scored and will need a serious face.

After a bit of thought I have put aside the temptation of just putting it back together and I'm sending the block off to be resleeved to standard bore with top hat liners. I'll get everything including the head checked and measured, and hopefully will be able to leave the crank as it it with just new bearing shells. I'll still get the block chemically cleaned, get the mains line bored if necessary and rebush the rods. Then balance everything and reassemble with new timing gear and a full head rebuild. Chris reckons he'll have the engine done by the time the body is ready to bring home to my place.

Other ancillaries: IRS complete. Suspension complete. Carbs complete. Cooling system complete. Brakes largely complete; trial assembly of the Kelsey Hayes looks encouraging. Heater box complete. Gearbox done and dusted. Wheels: cleaned, pumped up and trialled on my coupe, seem pretty much brand new.

Next big PITA job is getting all the chrome redone. Ross has still got the bonnet chromework to make sure it all fits, but I should be able to get that back soon. After my experiences with the last chromers I'm going to try someone different. Hopefull they'll be better.

Roll on End of July!