On Monday evening I made a bit more progress. The steering rack first – I replaced the threaded part on the end which took only a couple of minutes, remove split pin, unscrew end cap, fit new part with a bit of grease, screw end cap back on and refit split pin. Another job that had been on my to do list prior to the crash was to adjust the rack, it had a tiny bit of play in it. On the Titan rack you just undo 4 (imperial!) allen screws and turn a slightly eccentric cam then tighten the screws again. It took all of two minutes – if I’d known it was as easy as that I could have done it in situ before!

I then removed all the bolts from the pedal box and cleaned them up along with the steering column, steering UJ and its associated bolts and after a bit of degreasing they got a coat of the Trimagard paint. They got barbecued in the evening and on Tuesday morning I bolted the pedal assembly back together. The angle bracket that holds the gear shift cable outer on the upper steering column assembly had got bent which I think accounted for my sore right knee, so I stripped that down, straightened it and cleaned it and its bolts up then bolted it onto the chassis.

Tuesday evening saw the nice shiny steering column fitted. With the UJs fitted in phase with each other and all the bolts tightened up the steering had a nice smooth feel with no hint of play. I then just had to fit a couple of rivnuts to the new chassis rails to bolt on the aluminium angle that supports the upper column.

I then moved onto the brake pipes, refitting the short sections that cross the chassis front and rear. I could then fit some new double clips and make up a new rear brake line. On Wednesday morning I got the clutch line done. I also cleaned up the ARB and painted its bolts and stuck them in the oven.

Wednesday evening saw the ARB and the cockpit adjuster refitted. I then refitted the hydraulic fluid reservoir and connected the reservoir hoses onto the master cylinders. I figured it was now time to drop the car off the trestles it’s been sitting on as it’s too high for engine installation. So using the engine hoist to support the rear end I lowered it down onto a pair of timber spars resting on axle stands.

I nipped round to see Clive, the local fabricator I use and dropped off a few parts for him to fettle. I’d never got round to getting my fuel tank filler pip welded into the tank cover so I took that, also the exhaust manifold, one of the welds holding a small bridging piece between the 2 secondary pipes had let go. I also took the new laser cut front undertray parts and their respective drawings for Clive to fold them. I could do them myself but the bigger one needs all 4 edges folding and would be pretty tricky using my angle irons and hammer. Clive’s workshop is a few miles away near Ammandford but he lives in my village and he rang me on Thursday afternoon to say the parts were all done and I could pick them up from the house in the evening.

Quite a bit of ordering has gone on – some new bolts from Namrick, headlights from Russ at Furore who was kind enough to take pity on me and do me a deal, replacement front side/indicator lamps from Car Builder Solutions. I’ve also ordered a brake pressure transducer from Ebay and a bunch of fittings to graft it into the braking system. 4 new tyres arrived from George Polley last Friday.

With the car a bit lower I bolted in the lead ballast then refitted the newly welded up fuel tank cover with the filler hose adapter welded into it. I also refitted the coolant swirl pot.

It was now time for an engine so I got it cleaned up and hoisted that back into the engine bay and bolted it in. This was all actually pretty undramatic and pretty soon I had the engine secured and could get on with bolting the manifold back onto it. Once that was done I refitted the coolant hoses and the front engine stays. I’d also fettled the reverse gear – the new gear had become quite badly chewed up despite the modified engine mounts. We now think we know why – Ian had been talking to Andy Bates who reckoned it’s not due to engine movement within the mounts (indeed I’d had trouble comprehending how this could happen) but due to a combination of the gearbox output shaft flexing and the engine casing distorting under load. Yes, really. I gather Andy got his information from Powertec. So the answer is to weld up the output pinion on the reverse starter motor and grind the end off the shaft so that even when the gearbox output shaft migrates backwards it doesn’t impinge on the pinion.

Refitting the radiators was only a 10 minute job. I then refitted the fire extinguisher. For a while I’d had it in mind to delay racing till I’d IVA’d the car but with the IVA inspector being away and me also being away for a few days early in September it would effectively have meant missing both Oulton Park and Pembrey. Jen thought it made more sense to concentrate on getting the car back out racing and forget about IVA until the end of the season so I’ve gone with that. By now I could see a bit more of the garage floor as the piles of bits got gradually smaller.

I spoke to Rimstock late in the week to check on progress only to find that they’d cocked up and having initially raised the order then cancelled it, so no progress on my wheels. I politely expressed my disappointment and explained the situation and the chap I spoke to said he’d do what he could to get them sorted ASAP. I’ll call them on Tuesday to give them a little gee up.

On Saturday I nipped up to Hereford to collect bits from Brian. He hadn’t expected to be able to sort my front sub-frame until next week – as soon as he cut tubes out of the old one it sprang into fairly inappropriate shapes so a whole new one needed to be made and Bob at Concept Racing had a backlog after returning to work from his latest surgery. So I was a bit surprised when Brian came out of his workshop holding a shiny new freshly TIG welded sub-frame – apparently Bob had got it done on Friday afternoon. Brian had also been busy and sorted out my replacement aluminium parts – pullrods, steering rod, suspension mount and the diff carrier. He’d also laid up a pair of new sidepod floors. He already had a pair of sidepods there intended for his son Rob’s car but they’re outsourced anyway so not a problem for him to replace those. I’m feeling a bit guilty about the number of parts I’ve pilfered that were originally for Rob’s car!

Brian also had a look at my nearside drive shaft. When I’d removed it it felt as though the shaft was pulling out of the inner CV joint. I didn’t try pulling on it again as I didn’t want it to fall to bits. Brian pulled the boot off to find that the impact had broken the circlip that retains the shaft in the CV joint. He had a spare in one of his many drawers of bits so that wasn’t a big problem. I just need to clean it up and make sure I recover the fragment of circlip before greasing it up and reassembling it. The outer CV joint didn’t feel too good though and needs replacing, so I’ll get one ordered on Tuesday. Brian stuck the shaft in the lathe to check that was still straight which it fortunately was.

Very little got done on Sunday due to golf (yes, I made my comeback!) and work in the evening. I did manage to degrease the front and rear subframes and make a start painting them. I was working again on Bank holiday Monday morning but managed an hour or so in the garage beforehand and got the subframes completed. In the afternoon I got the wishbones and remaining suspension bolts painted. The wishbones just fitted in the oven so they were easy enough to cure but the subframes were a bit too big. I had a cunning plan involving using my heat gun to heat them up enough to cure the paint but it didn’t really get them hot enough. Curing it isn’t essential but increases its resilience. I have a feeling they might fit under the lid of my gas barbecue though …

So, it feels like I didn’t get all that much done over the weekend but I’ve got lots of parts that are now ready to bolt back onto the car and I fully expect progress to be fairly rapid now. The Jury’s out on whether the car will be ready in time to make it to Oulton Park on the 10th September, it’s not impossible but it’s going to need a huge effort. I’m quite good at huge efforts though

With the repaired chassis back in the garage it was time to start thinking about where to start. The arthroscopy went fine and in fact I was in less pain post-op than I expected and was back in work the day after. Kneeling and bending are out though and getting around the obstacle course that the garage has become with a whole car’s worth of bits strewn all over it was a bit of an issue. Here’s a shot of the main dash cross rail, Brian’s grafted in a short section in the middle, internally sleeved to beef it up a bit.

I’d made a start on painting the bolts – I came up with the idea of making them into little garlands using some lockwire. They could then be hung up and sprayed using the airbrush. This worked nicely but there are a lot of bolts …

Another thing Brian had noticed was that the fuel tank had slid across slightly. This was hardly surprising really but meant the tank covers had to be removed to loosen off the central strap. I also used the opportunity to paint the threaded rods that retain it at each side as these were also bare metal and had assumed the dreaded reddish tinge. Here’s the repaired front corner of the chassis.

I cut out a triangle to replace the damaged part of the nearside side panel using the new side panel as a template. This made it easy reusing all the same rivet holes. Once that was done I could start prepping the chassis for some paint. The floor panels got masked off along with the rear end of the chassis. For the etch primer I had a go using the airbrush again, this meant it took a bit longer but gave me much better control of where the paint went and reduced the amount of the stuff landing where I didn’t want it.

Once that had hardened it was time for some of the high build primer, I did consider just going straight ahead with the top coat but decided this stuff would help blend in where I’m going from the previous paint to bare metal. I used my normal spray gun for this although I stuck to the touch up gun rather than the big one, apart from the control it just seems to give a better spray.

One problem emerged after this – the VIN was getting filled in even though I was pretty careful with the high build primer. So I attacked it with the wire brush in the drill and masked it. I’ll stick some clear lacquer over it later.

Once I’d done a bit more work masking it was ready to turn the garage green again This went pretty well and while it was drying I swapped the compressor hose to the shed and sprayed the etch primer on the new side panel.

Each prang in a Fury usually results in needing a replacement steering rack, usually along with fixing the rack mounts. Because the steering rack in the BDN is mounted behind the bulkhead it’s pretty immune from the impact although one of the threaded end pieces is a bit bent. The rack is a bespoke one produced by Titan, so I rang them to get a new part. It’s basically a 1.5″ long 7/16″ UNF threaded bar with a little ball on the end. £32.99 plus VAT and delivery was a bit of a shock to be honest and seems completely extortionate but having had a chat with Brian straightening the old one isn’t really an option so I gritted my teeth and rang them back and ordered it. And here it is, doesn’t really look a lot for 40 quid, does it?

I’d taken Monday morning off work after my op but was back in Monday afternoon.By Thursday the swelling had pretty much gone, I was back in the gym and walking without a limp. It wasn’t really impeding progress with the rebuild. However I didn’t get back out to the car until Saturday morning. I got the remainder of the bolts painted and got the front bulkhead refitted. I spent an hour or so in the kitchen giving the bulkhead a bit of TLC the other morning so it’s looking a lot better. I could then put the bends in the offside side panel and the nearside triangular section and drill the rivet holes in the new tubes.

I lost quite a bit of the morning replacing the brake pads in David’s Civic – took a bit longer than it would with the Wilwoods! Once the bolts were dry they went in the oven for 10 minutes at 175°. Like doing a pizza but smells much worse! I got the fuel tank refitted and replaced the covers. The side panels then went up to the shed and got a coat of black paint on their inside surfaces.

On Sunday morning I cleaned the paint off the engine stays – they were originally painted with an aerosol rather than 2 pack from the gun and it just isn’t as hard so they were looking decidedly tatty. 10 minutes with the blow lamp and wire brush followed by a clean off with some thinners and they were ready for a coat of the black self-phosphating paint. Before painting them I’d checked that the longer one fitted in the oven which it does, just.

While they were drying I could get the side panels riveted on. I then gave the rear bulkhead a clean up and refitted that and torqued up the bolts. The engine stays got baked n the oven to cure the paint and look much better than they did before. I then just about had time to bolt the pedal box assembly back on before heading off to work on Sunday evening.

While I was waiting for Brian and Ian on Saturday morning I made a start on stripping the bearings out of the mangled wishbones. There’s a combination of rod ends, spherical bearings and acetal bushes. The spherical bearings are held in with a circlip one each side so after removing the circlip each bearing could be pressed out using the tool I made to put them in in the first place. The bearings all seem fine although a couple of the housings were a bit deformed. The trouble is they feel OK when loose in your hand but it’s difficult to check them for play etc. so I’ll check them all carefully once they’re installed in the new wishbones.

Once the Baldwins arrived we pulled the trailer out into the sunshine so they could have a good look at the chassis. We removed the front machined bulkhead which had had a slight curvature to it, Ian had said he’d be surprised if it wasn’t OK and indeed as soon as it was unbolted from the chassis with no stress on it it was straight. It’s a hard grade of aluminium alloy with some copper in it apparently and it certainly seems to be up to the job. After some measuring the conclusion was that apart from the obvious damage the rest of the chassis was OK with no twist in it. Brian also reckoned he could replace the tubes OK without removing the main undertray/floor. He wanted to get the chassis back oto the jig he’d used to fabricate it in the first place though and that meant I needed to remove the rear subframe, the rear bulkhead and of course the engine …

Brian and Ian left at lunchtime so after some lunch I get the spanners out and got going stripping the rest of the stuff off the car. First of all I removed the right rear suspension, then the body mounting frame and rear undertray followed by the rear subframe (which seems unscathed but Brian will also check it against the jig he made that on). I made surprisingly light work of getting the engine out and had it done by just after 3pm.

The engine bay was surprisingly messy with a combination of soil from the off, loads of bits of rubber and a general film of dirty oil. I decided I might as well go for it so I removed the battery, master solenoid, catch tank and then the loom came out as well. This allowed good access to clean it all up.

The whole underdash panel came out with the loom then I removed the fire extinguisher hose and this is what the front end looked like then. All I need to do now is remove the rest of the offside side panel and the lower triangle of the nearside one then the chassis’s ready to go to Brian, hopefully on Monday evening.