Only a week to get anything done this time and I had plenty of other things to do as well such as Christmas shopping but still made reasonable progress. Also got hold of a sump guard while I was here.

The first job I tackled was repairing and refitting the damaged driveshaft from the last trip. Once this was done I drove it out of storage and into the main garage to work on it.

The next job was to modify the rear gearbox mount to bring the back of the engine up slightly. I never noticed last time I worked on it but all the little jobs I did moving the engine in the bay to get better fitment of the driveshafts resulted in the gear lever fouling the rear of its aperture. It didn't help that the bush holding the main selector rod was extremely worn either. It meant I had to disconnect and remove the gear lever and linkages in order to shape the gear lever aperture to provide clearance. At least I didn't have to move the aperture plate itself as the lever now just clears the hole. I also wrapped a suitably sized piece of rubber hose around the main selector rod to make up for the worn bush. This worked rather well and the gearchange is even better than it was before.

Once that was sorted it was on to the brakes. I'd obtained a replacement master cylinder so it wasn't long before the brakes were sorted. I did have to remove one brake line I'd made and replace it as the replacement master cylinder was slightly different to the old one. So now I had brakes, a good gearchange, a fixed driveshaft and a nicely running engine. There was only one thing to do - drive it properly! However, I couldn't do that without a seat so I temporarily installed one of the bucket seats I intend to put in it when it's ready for its MOT.

The car drove really well and the driveshaft problem seems to be sorted. The brakes are a little on the rubbish side though, although I wasn't expecting too much as it's not servo assisted. I'm hoping when it's been driven properly for a good distance they'll improve a bit. I got my brother to take a couple of short videos of the drive with my digital camera. They have no sound and the quality is quite low but if you want to see them:

Quick Time movie - Rat being driven 1

Quick Time movie - Rat being driven 2

My camera saves these movies in Quick Time format so you'll need that installed to view them.

The next job was to trial fit the sump guard to see how much modification it would need to fit the 'Rat. The front mounts bolted straight to the front tie bar mounts but the rear mounts are designed to fit the Panda body and were nowhere near fitting the 'Rat chassis. However, the tubular frame passed right under the front lower suspension arm mounts on both sides. It was an easy matter to cut off the rear mounts and hammer the tubes flat for approximately 4", then drill through them and the bottom of the suspension mount and bolt them up. Job done. Next time I work on the car it'll be coming back off to be stripped and painted.

One more job before putting it back into storage was to fashion a rear mount for the exhaust. Last time I worked on the car I cut the rear mount off as it was quite rubbish and it had been suspended on tie wraps since then. I didn't have any proper exhaust mounts so I used a spare engine mount for a rather unique fixing. It does the job really well and should last as long as the chassis.

That was it for this trip.