I was outside the other day giving the car some loving (well cleaning it) and a guy starts chatting to me about it (he's got a modified Beetle) and he recommended a garage nearby wuth a rolling road that had sorted out his Weber.

So I booked it in with them them for the following Monday, first thing. They'd said 2 hours to do the work and I could wait if I wanted. Bingo! So I arrived and was told that the guy doing the work wasn't about and it would be done in the afternoon and they'd ring me. No phone call. So the next day I rang and was told it still wasn't ready. Then Wednesday I rang again and was told "we were about to ring you" yeah right! "come down now and you can see it on the rolling road" Cool!

Turned up and they weren't ready to go, and they hadn't actually done anything, no tuning nothing! But rolling road it they did as was to see what was what - it's quite frightening to see your car doing 120mph whilst stationary! I was advised that the o-rings between the manifold and Weber were over-tightened and needed replacing. They didn't have any but would order them and do the work the next day. Hmmm.

I waited and waited all thursday. No call. Friday. No call, ring late afternoon. The part hasn't arrived! Monday am told the guy is off. By now I'm getting pissed off but I'm told it will definitely be ready tomorrow. They've had it over a week by now to do a 2 hour job!

Tuesday cometh. I wait til late afternoon, still no call. I decide that since it's still running I'm going to go and collect it regardless. I arrive unannouced and some apprentice is bolting the carb back on having fitted the o-ring. He was doing this 2 minute job for about 20 mins while I'm standing there. I speak to their "Weber expert" and tell him I'm taking the car as is. He says he'd like to run it up on the rolling road. OK fair enough.

He does this and tells me it's running weak on tick-over, producing 75bhp and that the engine is worn (it was blowing from the rocker cover breather and will need attention soon. Oh bum! They charge me for timing, tappets, new plugs (I told them I'd replaced them the week previous and they said "oh we saw they were new and thought we'd replaced them" nice huh?), compression test and rolling road. That came to £85 but with no sign of the print out for the rolling road, timing details or compression stats. You're getting an impression of how this company does business, right?! Still at least I've got my car back.

This Garage's name is Jack's Hill Motors in Graveley, Herts if you want to avoid them.

I picked up a pair of rear-mount lucas spots of ebay and fitted them at the weekend. They were a bit of a pain as the DPO had done a bodge fitting sealed lamps that did'nt really fit in, still I managed to work around this and mount them OK and everything is working well.

I mounted them on the front valance, I'm a bit worried they might suffer from flutter. A friend took some video clips of me driving it so will scrutinise that to see.

Oooh I found out the colour too, it is a period shade, it's Tartan Red. Another bit of the jigsaw done!

Well, after lots of advice and head scratching I decided to buy some wheels. Brown & Gammons said 6*15s was plenty big enough, so I took their advice and bought some minilite-look-alikes with 205/65s. Attached is a photo, I think they look much better, but I'm still thinking that I could've afforded to gone wider.

My speedo has been dodgy so that's going into them for recalibration, once I've worked out what it needs to be recalibrated to.

Someone had a done a real bodge with the centre console/speaker cover which I've now replaced and it's looking much better.

Fitted some new spark plugs too. It was fitted with some GM ones, I'm hoping it won't foul quite so much. We shall see.

Today I paid a trip to Brown and Gammons and spoke to their main man who knows a lot about racing MGs. I asked him about a choke cable for the DCOE45 and he said don't bother, it doesn't need it. OK! He also recommended 7*15s running 205s front and 225s rear. Although he doesn't stock them. I've also got some ideas for spots and a reversing light too.

Workwise I replaced the heater matrix. It was straightforward enough except for a couple of things:

* It appears that the control linkage on the heater was rivetted on the wrong way, so that the there was a lot of stress on the cable came out of the sheath (I should've photographed it as I did it, but it's too late now!) so I took out the rivets turned it round and now it moves so much easier. A job well done!

* I mentioned in the my previous post that the engine was non-standard, well this was further proved by the fact there's no heater control valve! I'll need to do some investigation as to if I can fit one to this engine because there isn't an obvious place for it to go. Otherwise the heater's going to be either on, or on!

Other than that the heater works like a dream.

I also did some housekeeping on it too. It was missing the gearbox dipstick blanking grommet but not anymore so hopefully it won't smell quite so fumey in there. Plus I took out the passenger bucket and refitted it. With some fiddling it's now bolted down properly, the runners still don't do their job properly though. Also I replaced the black windscreen wipers for some chrome ones (the right size too!).

Other little niggles that are coming to light. It's been converted from pos to neg earth but on the cheap so the wiring loom is in a mess. Need to add that that to the to do list!

Finally it's been fitted with a weird windscreen washer bottle sitting where the brake servo normally would sit, I decided to top it up and noticed it was leaking. On further investigation the previous owner had pushed it on to the bracket too hard and split the plastic so now you can only fill it half full. Mmm nice one!

Well on the 23rd September I picked up LEA27E (a 1967 MGB GT in a MGC GTS style) from Gloucester and drove it to Sussex (about 120 miles) and she never missed a beat. Although the speedo, after reading incorrectly for a while, gave up the ghost and started making a racket, so I pulled over and disconnected the cable from the back. A few days later I travelled from Sussex to home (100 miles) and again didn't miss a beat.

I have wanted a Sebring replica for a while now and I am extremely pleased with the car, however there are a number of things that I'm not too happy about that over the coming months I plan to put right, plus I intend to make it as close to a period racer as I can.

The guy that carried out the work did an excellent job in some respects and a bad one in others. So first off, here's a list of things I'm very happy with:

* The bodywork is excellent - he did a really good job with the fibreglass bits - it looks so good. There is some rust that I need to sort, but it's totally asthetic (a bit on the roof and on the tailgate) plus it's got the C bonnet, even though it's only a B I was quite surprised that the previous owner didn't clean it before I picked it up, but it meant the surprise was all the better when I polished her and she came up like new!

* The engine has had a lot of work done to it and is very sweet with good oil pressure and it's got a high lift cam (don't know anymore than that) and it pulls beautifully all through the revs. It's missing the engine number and I don't recognise some of the aux bits so it may not be from an MG. But hell it pulls like a train and sounds sweet as!

* It's got twin air horns! They sound soooooo sweet. Yes I'm easily pleased.

here's a list of things I'm not too happy with:

* It's fitted with 6*15 Wolfrace wheels. These just don't go - they look just too '80s, and 6" wheels are lost inside those flared arches. I'm currently looking for some 7*15 or 8*15 minilites but it's proving to be difficult to find reasonably priced ones, and I'd like to try before I buy.

* He fitted a DCOE45, but it's set very rich so as well as guzzling fuel, it fouls the plug & if you stop it hot you can't start it again - a real p.i.t.a! I think he did this because he couldn't find a choke cable long enough. So I'm currently on the lookout for a longer choke cable. Although I'm getting conflicting reports - today someone said there was no choke on a DCOE45 - he was emphatic about it, although there is definitely a link on the top, so more investigation is required!

* He replaced the steering wheel with a Motorlita spoked wheel without the centre horn and moved the horn onto the stick (which is off something like a Maxi and looks truly awful!) but didn't move the headlight switch from the floor. I'd like to move the horn back onto the steering wheel and replace that awful indicator with the period one.

* He replaced the doors with some later ones with the BL openers on the inside and some awful armrest cum door pulls - very nasty! I haven't decided what to do about that yet. Those armrests will have to go though!

* The front seats were awful too. The rear seat is black leather with light blue piping (my first clue that red wasn't the original colour) the front ones are vinyl ones off a ~73 I think. They have now been replaced for some bucket seats, they're an improvement but but they are actually a quite uncomfortable and a bit cheap nasty. Maybe they'll wear in nicely. We shall see.

* I have already fitted headlight cowls a la Sebring. I now just need to match the shade of red properly so I can paint the runners that hold the cowls in place. I'll photograph and post later.

* The previous owner said the heater leaked so it was looped out. I have a new matrix that I'm going to fit tomorrow.

* I'd like to replace the grill for a mesh one like they used to have, I'm keeping my eyes open for one.

And that is where we are as of today! Watch this space as I think of stuff to add...

Thanks for reading.