This is the revised inlet pipe - the boss for the fan switch is on the other side. I'm just treating the ash block which supports the radiator and when that's dry and painted black, I can do the final fix. While I was looking at this set-up, I glanced down at the engine mountings and saw that the engine's not bolted down yet - it's just resting in the cradle. It's attached at the bell-housing and the output case of the gearbox but I haven't got round to putting the holes in the front engine mount. It won't need anything too massive - I expect I could just put in a couple of 1/4" bolts and it would be fine but 3/8" gives you a better night's sleep.

I've had to do a bit of extra machining on the wheels nuts because in extending the threads on the studs to within 5/16" of the hub, when the wheel goes on, the nut doesn't quite do up. The land left on the stud protrudes through the hole in the wheel by about 1/16" so, by counter-boring the thread in the nut by 3/32", I can now get them tight.

Then I moved on to the propshaft. I was playing with an old Hillman propshaft and thinking about where to chop it - so the Hillman flange welded to the end of the Morris shaft can mate with the flange on the Hillman pinion carrier - when Learned Counsel popped his head round the door and reminded me that if the Hillman universal starts to rattle about halfway to Monaco, I'm not going to find one that'll fit in the local motor spares shop. Better that I make up a flange with the Hillman hole spacing and weld it to the other end of the Morris Six propshaft which has the more available Hardy Spicer joints. Actually, I was going to do that; I was just pretending that I was going to use the Hillman universal. ... no, really, I was...

And having fought a rather recalcitrant joint from one end of the Morris shaft and faced it up to the Hillman flange, it's not going to be quite as easy as I'd hoped. I'm going to have to turn down the circumference of the Morris flange because the pcd (pitch circle diameter) of the Hillman bolt holes is too small for the Morris flange to fit inside at the moment. The drawing should make it clear.

And the other thing that's been niggling away at me is the reason why the Austin decided to throw a big end. I don't know why it did but when I fitted the water temperature gauge to the Austin, I was surprised by how hot it seemed to run and also the quite drastic fluctuations in temperature, sometimes seemingly for no reason.

Anyway, I've decided that a water pump is going to be a useful addition to the set-up and I've now got one of those small electric brushless water pumps to fit in the system.

When you see the needle pushing past the 2 o'clock, it ain't so funny...