A call from the engine people down the road informed me that they couldn't find any main shells less than .060", so my .040" set will have to be used. That's a bit disappointing, but at least I know there's still a chance of another regrind if necessary.

I eventually got round to removing the water pump from the Hillman to find that the PVC flange had come adrift, allowing water to enter the shaft chamber and exit at the pulley. The lip seals I inserted at the last attempt to sort out the pump were fairly chewed up.

If I could find the original glands it would be a major headache out of the way, but as it stands, I have to keep experimenting with different styles of bodge.

The latest effort from the scrap bin is a brass collar (which will probably pick up on the shaft - I'd run out of bronze bar) into the back of which I've inserted a lip seal. The assembly is a tight fit in the body of the pump and stopped from shifting by a circlip on the shaft. I filled up the radiator only to see the water leaking from the hole in the casting which I presume was there to let you know when the original gland was shot. I jammed the hole up with Milliput and walked away.

But not before knocking up a couple of stainless steel brackets to mount the new radiator overflow tank. After all the talk about the problem being the pressurising of the system with the ball valve on the end of the overflow pipe, when I took it apart, the ball was nowhere to be seen. I must have at some stage taken it out unless it had somehow escaped on its own.

I don't think that I had attended a VSCC meeting at Hawkedon since New Year's day so, as The Great Collector was casting around for someone to ride shotgun, and I was fed up with the blinkin' water pump saga, we whizzed off to The Queen's Head in his Wolseley Hornet. The only motorcycle to attend was this rare Precision. I'm not sure what the 'Big Four' refers to, though as it's a single, perhaps 4hp? The artwork on the tank was worth a picture.

My 'Car of the Month' had to be this fabulous Lancia, although a BMW Frazer Nash drophead was the frontrunner until this turned up.

And at last I've managed to make myself a welding table, something I've been meaning to do for at least a couple of years and, as the scrap pile was getting out of hand, it was time to create something useful rather than let miles of tube gather dust in the corner. The laser-cutting people did the top for me. As is my usual practise, I got into a muddle making allowance for the castor height and the table is a couple of inches short of the height that I was aiming for. Oh well, nothing changes.