I couldn't resist taping some bits of wood together to see how things might look.

Not having built a car with a roof before, what preoccupies me in the early hours is what should be going on underneath the outer skin - how the internal structure is going to be addressed. I might put The Great Collector's RMB on the ramp and have a bit of a poke about for pointers. With the build, I'll most likely start with the scuttle as a datum and work backwards.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had to make space in one of the cross-members for the gearbox mounting bolt. It turned out that I couldn't use the Ford component now that the engine's been lowered a couple more inches - there just wasn't room for it - so I'll have to adapt an off-the-shelf male/female anti-vibration block instead.

And, for some reason that I couldn't quite work out, once I'd levelled up the chassis to mark off the front engine mount bolt holes, I had to add 30mm to the uprights so the rubber blocks were fully supported. Now it all fits properly, I can pull the engine out of the way, drill the pilot holes, turn up the bolt tubes and tack them in place.

I'm gradually getting better at welding although stainless steel seems to be easier to deal with than ordinary mild steel. A tip I picked up the other day was to remove with fine emery paper, any oxidisation from the mild steel filler rod before use. Making sure the steel to be welded is properly bare metal with the blue/grey mill scale completely removed is also essential. If it's thick enough for me not to blow it to pieces, I generally prefer to arc weld mild steel.

Then, for no apparent reason, I got a result that indicated the weld was too hot. I hadn't touched any of the settings but suspected that the ceramic gas cup was getting overheated with continuous use. I let it cool down and that seemed to be effective. It might have been a plate from another batch of stainless with a slightly different composition - who knows.

Under the welding bench is my Series II MS engine. There's a couple of bits that I'll be robbing from that to put on the new block. The crankcase breather - the lozenge shaped affair under the manifold - and the aluminium casting for the water tap to its right. I'll also requisition the cam cover bolts and oil filter cover.

After Christmas with Big Sister, I'm always waved off with a massive bag of home-made goodies which this year included truffles. They're made of a Christmas cake mix which she soaks in rum (I once gave the meter-reader a piece of her Christmas cake and he wasn't sure he should drive afterwards). Covered in the finest chocolate, these confections are dynamite. The problem with magnetising is that it tends to the sedentary, so you can see how 2020 is shaping up already.