Jeff,
The car is now very clean. I used a putty knife through the gear shifter hole in the tunnel to scrape out a couple of cups of goo the consistency of peanut butter mixed w/honey. Had to push out the hard junk through the back of the tunnel. Could have used a longer, skinnier arm, but it's clean. Had to grind off the banjo bolt on the right rear brake slave cylinder which was leaking it's guts out with no system pressure. That's on order. Engine bay is in nice shape, though several colors of paint, Rustoleum flat black most recently. That mixes in with the original red and then later blue in two shades (mine, and a previous owners). I'm OK with the colors, just like it clean. Interior is still an oil slick and will start on that in the next week or two. Yanked parking brake. Base of lever was solid goo, inside the tunnel and out. Primary cable was unidentifiable. Well, it's all nice now and if I can adjust it when re-installed should work for the first time in my 30 years of ownership. That will be an improvement. There's some law for British Sports Cars that says you will always have at least one system or subsystem that is either completely or partially non-functional. My parking brake has always counted in that category. I wonder if I get this fixed whether something else will take it's place of glory.
Expecting all engine parts and machine work to show up either today or early next week. Well, that's what he says. He's been saying that for 2 weeks now, and he keeps moving the date out on me.
Just talked to the gear box folks at Minia Mania. My box is indeed coming from Jolly Old England, but it hasn't shipped yet and won't be on my front door step until ~7/15. That really bums me as that means AFTER the Historics. Well, there's always next year. I'm still planning to attend, but it will be in a Toyota Tacoma. Not near as interesting as some vintage British leaker. Guess they have some funny little men in England who still rebuild these things. I'm OK with that, should be solid. Just wish it was ~2 weeks sooner to allow for installation and testing.
About that banjo bolt..really amazing how many things on this car are designed to just fit under a certain set of conditions. You have to get the car really far off the ground, provide incredible lighting for aging eyes, and contort yourself in ways you didn't know you could just to see some things. And, I'm sure I've bled the brakes before, but I haven't figured out how to reach the bleeder on the rear end. The clutch slave cylinder will be interesting, too. Plan to try access through the little plug in the passenger foot well and use some tygon tubing so it just doesn't run all over the place and create the same situation I've been slaving over to clean up. I wonder what the banjo bolt size really is? It was messed up before I layed a wrench on it. I checked the other one and it's bigger than a 9/16ths but smaller than a 5/8ths. I broke my 15 mm combination wrench years ago and disposed of it and you can't get a socket on it. Will have to pick up another 15mm to check. I've heard / read there is some funny wrench / bolt size convention on some of these parts. Guess that's why they make vise-grips and adjustable wrenches, so you can round off the bolt corners. Then that's why they make Dremel Moto Tools so you can grind off the bolt head to get the pieces apart finally. Then, that's why they make replacement banjo bolts. Something akin to the automotive food chain in my opinion.
Too bad I don't know Peter Egan's email address..he'd identify.
Scott