yes, it’s true !

the race bus runs !
after the work yesterday chasing through the electrics and cleaning contacts and refitting the starter motor i left the battery on charge overnight. today the sun was shining and the smell of summer was in the air, day dreams of touring france ran through my head – long lazy days in shorts and barefeet –

get boiler suit on, clamber into the van, key in the ignition, turn the key expecting a click and the sickly slow chug of the starter motor labouring away and i was greeted with a deafening roar. the engine barely turned over, maybe one complete revolution before it fired ! i let it run for barely two seconds before shutting it off. i had to clambed out and sit down, suffering heart palpitations!

after a few minutes i thought that i must have imagined it but after starting it again and revving it a bit i was convinced. yes, it lives!

from the drivers seat of the panel van it’s deafening. there are j tubes on number 1 and 3 exhaust ports and half a header on number two port but no muffler and nothing on number 4. from the drivers seat you can see the flames leaping out of the top of the merged header. nice….

the rest of the after noon was spent sending slightly incredulous text messages and checking over the planned layout of the injection and turbo system. louie came back back and spent a merry hour or so welding up the rest of the header i’d hacked together the day before…

it’s coming together.

the engine has run for a total of almost a few minutes. (considering that its made from the parts of the original panel van 1.9 that hadn’t run for a year or more and the 2.1l block i got from nick in scotland that hadn’t run for maybe two years…) hopefully it’ll last for a few minutes more….