after three days of intense spannering on the new wedgee of doom the random 1.9dg motor is in, pipe up, fueled up and wired up. in the end i ripped off the original ignition system – its pants – and replaced it with the MSD system (its kevos and on some kind of loan .i must talk to him about this soon)

after lots of mucking about testing and checking i bothered to download the wiring diagram for the msd and realised that i’d wired part of it wrong. doh ! so re wire, reset the distributor and test the key –
of course….
it fires first time !

how happy am i !

so all is rosy, i spent the rest of monday afternoon doing a kind of pre-mot check. the plan was to get it mot’d duting the week and take it to beachiddento 2006 next weekend but i think that is not to be….
pretty much everything seems ok, the chopped springs on the front might be a problem but they’re upsidedown so should be ok, the horn didn’t work, then it did, then it didn’t…. all the lights work ok except reverseing light, i don’t think i need this to work (do i ?) i think it just needs a different plug to suit the gearbox on it….
the big problem is the pulley wheel, when it was taken off wherever it came from it was well and truly knacked… its bent and rippled and likely to throw the belt of screw everything up with vibration… also….

i must admit ot the biggest bestest cockup yet…
on of the exhaust studs was snapped and i thought i’d half heartedly try and drill it out and tap it…
so i drilled it out but the realised that i didn’t have any of the tools i wanted so left it.
later in the day when i was filling the coolant system with the ?5 per litre antifreeze i realised that it was pouring out onto the ground – from the exhaust stud hole. i’d drilled right through to the water jacket on the head. doh.
so fill the hole with silicone and hammer a bolt in…

(not very happy with this bodge if truth be told)

ah well.. the bus is looking much happier, got the new seats fromn thomas bolted in the back, scraped up some of the oil and gunk from the carpet and even washed it…. all looking good !