I dropped the pipe off with Norman (who has been pipe bending for over 30 years! so he know a thing or two about pipes!) and showed him my mock ups and he said, yep no problem! So as he only works one day a week now it might be a few weeks before i get them back but it will be worth the wait as the rear over axel pipe is just spot on. The flanges are on their way from www.qualityparts-uk.co.uk in a week or two as they have to make the front one up from another great…

I have finally got back round to doing some more work on the car!! The summer has been a bit busy with work so not much time has been spent on the car 🙁 But now im back on getting the exhaust finished. The rear box just need the strap fitting and the centre box is just having the bracket fitted to hold it in place. So then its just the from pipe, which should be easy? but as i have noting to use as a template im starting from scratch, which is not easy. So how do i get…

Ok so the progress has been slow as its a bugger trying to line up the exhaust and get all the hangers and flanges tacked on when you only have the car up on axle stands 🙂 The back box, the pipe over the axle and the middle box have all be left with Harvey to work his magic with the welder as unlike me he knows exactly what he is doing (he did the radiator and has a nice 2.5 Vectra!!) so they should all be back this week and all i need to do now is mount the…

So its been a while since i did an update as life has been a little hectic with work! But it time to start on the exhaust build. I have had the parts sitting around for ages and the plan is to set the system up with the flanges, hangers etc.. just tacked in place and then get them welded on by someone who can actually weld 🙂 So the first part is to start with the tail pipe , which is a nice straight through pipe with a carbon outer with the hope that it wont get too hot…

Just bought some Evans waterless coolant from these guys http://www.evanscoolants.com/evans_waterless_engine_coolants.html Its expensive but reading the feedback and watching a few videos it seems like its good stuff. And as the engine is a rebuild and hasn’t been filled up with water yet its idea as i don’t need to flush it. So im getting ready for the end of april as that’s the planned time to get her ready to try a start up 🙂

The new head bolts have now arrived 🙂 I got them from http://www.krause-rennsporttechnik.de and although they charged 10EUR postage and only took bank transfer it worked out at £4 to do the transfer with First Direct and with the exchange rate it was still cheaper than getting them from Vauxhall!

As im running injection on the Manta with a coil pack i didn’t want to use the standard plug leads and needed some custom ones making. so after a little look around the Magnecore seemed like the best option. They also do a custom made set so i could get the right length and just the 4 leads. The do the ends just as you want them so i have gone with a high temperature 115 degrees boot on the plug end. there the 8.5mm red ones.

Its been a while since i last posted a little update as i have been waiting for a few bits to be made/modified and one of those is the front pulley. I have to change the standard 1.9 front pulley which the fan belt runs round as it was not possible to modify this to take the new timing disc for the injection system. So the answer was to use one from a Frontera A as they use injection and have a toother wheel. Originally i thought i might be able to get this to work with the Weber injection,…