Bianca Ratlye

[C2K]

Cheers for the kind words guys. It's been a long time coming to fruition, but with 21 months in South Africa in there I've not done too badly really. Had I known I was going for that long I would've sold it, not swapped engines!! The water pump is really annoying. I bought a genuine Peugeot one and i had an unbelievable dry bearing noise when warm. After swapping it for a warranty replacement it's better but not perfect. I'm not touching it atm!

It will be some time before it sees a show or a track - I have to build up trust in it, and in honest finish some parts of it off (i.e. secure the oil cooler lines further). I need to replace the passenger front wheel arch which popped out last year and subsequently shredded itself!

Tonights efforts consisted of a further coating of iron out (given the amount I found yesterday) left to dwell for 5 minutes whilst I went off to the shed to find my Smartwheels wheel cleaner to do the pass wheels and the hosepipe (epic wheel cleaner, leaves nothing behind when neat, 3:1 mostly good enough). Worryingly though there is a strong smell of fuel near the rear arch, so hopefully whatever was allowing fuel to leak previously is obvious(the irony is, he night i lost the coolant i was trying to deplete the fuel level to look for a leak that had appeared).

Much the same story as last night:






It took me the sum total of about 45 minutes to pull off the Rallye sticker on the bonnet (in little bits lol), but at least underneath is an example of virgin paint. The efforts on the front wing match it nicely, so I appear to have got it as good as can be with 2 layer paint.



I did find time to take it for a hoon though, another 15 miles on the clock and it's behaving itself nicely. It still seems to run very cool but I had noticed that previously. It's going to take a few nights to complete it in little steps, and the Mrs appears this weekend from SA so that's this weekend taken care of in advance!!