Scouring eBay daily is part of the fun of starting a new project and it often bears fruit.

A pair of RME windscreen panels popped up the other day and at a price that precluded making them myself.

Similarly, a pair of rear springs.

I can't begin to think what happened to mine as the middle leaf retaining brackets are split and the leaves are all over the place. The 'new' set has nice tapered instead square ends. It's almost like mine have been made up from bits of steel in the come-in-handy bucket.

Leon told me to have a look at the AMR 500 supercharger which is fitted to Subaru's and the like. The AMR benefits from an independent oil source; it's a small and compact unit and happily inexpensive. The fun bit will be sculpting the inlet manifold. I bought a book about supercharging, though having read through it, I don't seem to be any the wiser. Generally speaking, the 2.2l Morris is at the top end of what the AMR can handle and as the Hillman's indicated rpm rarely exceeds 5000 and the AMR red line is 16000, I would guess a 2:1ish reduction would see things about right.

In his continued pursuit of performance, Awkward has discovered that some 25kg can be shaved off the weight of his Model A engine by changing the Riley head for a super-whizz aluminium flathead manufactured by a local vintage Ford specialist. Coupled with his lightened fandango flywheel and some judicious adding of further lightness with the plasma cutter, the Avon should fly.

Likewise, Learned Counsel, buoyed by the success of The Racing Driver with the Mazda-engined Locost (ASBN passim) has decided to pop a similar unit in his Locost. I turned up another throttle cable disc for him though I had to get Chumley to part it off. Parting off is apparently a common problem on small lathes and no matter how I support the work, the tool always ends up chattering its way through the material. Sawing off and re-facing is always the better option.

And having dived into making the engine mounts, Clever Chap turned up and cast doubts about the height of the engine in the chassis. He was right, so it was back to the drawing board. This is the front mount - altogether a much easier fabrication and certainly more rigid than the previous design.

The centre mount - just under the bellhousing - acts like an underslung strap, much like the one I devised for the Hillman. This nearside end will be mirrored on the offside and joined to make one continuous cradle. The gearbox mount will be the standard Ford part.

With the new engine mounts, the block is 3" further back allowing the radiator to sit on the centre line of the front wheels and making redundant the removable structure that carried the original radiator, jacking points and front bumper - that's if my forward planning isn't tripped up the next time Clever Chap visits.