The 1/4" and 3/16" pipe and fittings arrived in time for a weekend's fun with the flaring tool.

I had more success with it this time; half the secret it seems is to make sure the cut ends are absolutely perpendicular to the pipe. But I was held up in any case because - as usual - in my haste I'd ordered the wrong size of bleed nipples and the 3/16th short shoulder unions instead of the long shoulder type.

I had enough bits to complete the bridging pipes and the feed to the front drums. Luckily, I'd kept a sample of each - though they were a bit mangled having amalgamated themselves to the cylinders….

… as had the 1/4" feeds from the female unions to the flexible hoses. Having said that, the samples weren't a lot of help because with the different engine, I'm re-routing some of the lines.

The rear brake pipes were somewhat easier to deal with.

Whilst at that end of the car; I got Chumley to skim 1½mm off the overall inside diameter of the rear drums. You may recall that I was having to file down the new shoe linings as they were oversize. Not wanting to take too much off them and as the drums were looking well used, skimming allowed them to slip on without tight spots.

One of my concerns was that the propshaft was going to be banging up against one of the chassis cross-members if I didn't do something about the angle of the diff. A bit of scrap from Chumley's bin and some time on the Bridgeport produced a couple of 10mm wedges to slide under the axle brackets and lift the diff pinion.

That operation went better than expected and with holes drilled in the centres to accommodate the spring pins, the desired effect was achieved.

And that's with the springs at their full downward travel. I'll have to be going some to get that to take the paint off. I've yet to properly weld the shortened propshaft together.

The propshaft isn't correctly positioned as yet - when it is I'll have even more clearance - as the pinion nut needs replacing. It's a funny old thread - 28tpi - I can't think why Riley didn't use something more readily available.

Which brought me to the point where I needed to know where the master cylinder was going to be located, and for that I needed to know where the scuttle was and the relative seating position. I hooked out the centre spine of the buck and rigged it up. The lateral former is just a few inches rearwards of the firewall and the bracket sticking out from the chassis rail is about where the gearlever emerges from the gearbox.

I added bloke to get an idea of the floor height in relation to the chassis rail and to check the seat elevation and consequent headroom. Not long now before the chassis is finished (90% done and 90% to go) and I can make some progress on the bodywork - something I'm looking forward to.