Took the car up to Doncaster the other weekend (when it snowed), 200 miles each way.
2 issues came up, but neither affected it's ability to complete the journey.
First one was that after about 40 miles I realised my lower legs and feet were cold despite adjusting the heating to downwards. The wife was fine, lovely and warm and so was my upper body, by the time we got there and suffering 3 hours of 3 degrees I couldn't feel my feet, coming home at minus 1 was worse and it's hard to drive smoothly when you can't feel your feet.
When we stopped I put a message on the Facebook group asking what the issue may be or was it a feature? Suggestions included the vent maybe shut, but when I got up I had an email message from the previous owner telling me the hose had split that transferred heat from heater box to drivers footwell, he'd removed it and blanked it off the holes. He had a new pipe and he'd send it to me but I'd need a new vent.
I got a vent for the princely sum of £13 from eBay and the pipe arrived it was then I discovered that it hadn't split, what actually happened is that when he'd upgraded the ignition system he'd either forgotten about the pipe or purposefully left it off because the upgraded coils were sat exactly where the pipe needed to run
.
So what should have been a 30 minute job turned into a 2 weekend mission as I've had to fabricate (grind, cut and weld the old bracket to fit two different mounting holes) a new mount and relocate the coils to the big open and free space on top of the left hand rocker cover, why this wasn't done when the upgrade was done is beyond me as it's literally where the standard ignition amp lives so there is space for the there, plus you have better access to the leads if you need to change them
.
So now with coils relocated I've mounted the vent, fitted the pipe and all that remains is to bond it in (with sikaflex) so it doesn't leak. Hopefully done tomorrow.
This also made me aware that the brake fluid reservoir where it was sealed to the body was not sealed anymore and it was allowing water (quite a lot of water in fact) to get into the drivers footwell, so that's been sealed up with new RTV sealant now.
The second issue was that the oil pressure sender appears to be failing and the gauge sometimes reads normally and sometimes at zero when it's hot. So when it's serviced in the spring I'll fit a new sender then. I already replaced the sender for the pressure warning light (and this works perfectly now) so was comfortable it was just the other sender failing too.
I'm still strugging to get the silicone hoses to seal on the new radiator so I'll get some Mikalor clamps in the new year too.
Other that that it was fine, a bit scary it the snow (as I couldn't feel my feet and kept making jerky pedal movements) and I've decided I need a car limits day in it next year so I know when it breaks away, how to control it and what it feels like during this process. I have pretty good control and know how to drift and all that (nearly 20 years of grass track racing teaches you that) but I'd prefer to learn 'this car' on an airfield rather than a wet roundabout on the public road.
Other than that I had the 2 front wheels refurbed by a local firm who stripped and repowdercoated them, they look great now, unfortunately one of the rears has flaked too now so I need to do both of them in the spring also.
It's going into my mum's garage this weekend as her bungalow sale fell through so I might as well take advantage of the space as I cleared it out.