Joel

Your first step is to find your local paint shop and have a chat with them. If you don't know where it is, ask at a local accident repair garage who supplies their paint. The two basic paint types are cellulose and 2-pack. 2-pack is the professional choice, but it's more expensive, is dangerous to use (you need a respirator) and ideally should be baked to get a hard finish. Cellulose is a drying rather than hardening paint, so it's better suited to amateur spraying in your garage. It's cheaper too - you should be able to get a basic colour from £10 a litre, metalics and pearlescent are more and are more difficult to spray. You'll also need an etch primer, high-build filler, and if you're using anything other than a basic colour, a clear laqcuer too, not to mention panel wipes, thinners, G3-G10 (T-Cut), wet & Dry paper etc. You should be able to do your car from about £100, or if you could afford a little extra and are worried about getting a good finish yourself, you could do all the prep work up to the primer/filler stage then have a professional garage do the top coats for you.

You can buy an engine flush from the usual places (Halfords etc), that you add to the old oil and run the engine for 10 -15 minutes before draining. I used one on the donor sierra before I took the engine out, and it doesn't seem to have done it any harm.

You can get very high temperture paint from most car supplies places like Halfords, or failing that try your local fireplace showroom.

Thought it was too good to be true. I was hoping to change to Vauxhall 2.0 16V in 2 to 3 years anyway, or failing that the injection pintos were in plentiful supply at the scrappy on Saturday.

I thought the new Hall was better, though I only stumbled across it by accident. There seemed to be more room to have a good poke around the Hoods on display, without jostling for position with those trying to get to stalls. I thought Robin Hood could have made the effort to be there. Even if the new models arn't ready to display they could have provided some information of what we can expect. They probably missed a lot of business from people wanting to collect parts, and it would have been useful to those of us already building (there must be hundreds) to have another look at the demonstrator cars.

This won't be much use unless you're willing to spend a lot of money, but I recently read about a bunch of like minded Saab drivers on a forum not unlike this one, who were clubbing together to have LSD's made for their cars. I think the company was called Quaife, who will do a limited production run to just about any spec. Quaife Website Obviously the Sierra setup is a lot more common than Saab, especially in the after market tuning department, so they might have something off the shelf. Alternatively you could try a Ford tuning specialist like Burton Power. Burton Power Website. Either way, call me sceptical but are you ever likely to achieve a theorectical top speed in your Hood?

I spotted these devices at the Stafford Show - they seem to be the perfect answer to a cheap/easy conversion to unleaded petrol, without going down the valve seat hardening route. Fuel Cat Web Site Does anyone have any experience with them? Cheers Joel.

The word from Robin Hood Engineering is that they won't be exhibiting at the Stafford Show. Don't know if that's useful to anyone, but I thouht I'd share it with you anyway.

If you mount indicators on the front cycle wings, in a position where they can be seen from the front and side of the car, does that remove the need to have the nose cone indicators 400mm from the outer limit?

You could try a 'D' shaped flat bottom steering wheel. There are dozens to choose from at places like Demon Tweeks.

They do them for a similar price at Europa Spares too. I'll happily pass mine on to anyone who'll find it useful when I'm SVA'd, though it could be some time, so form an orderly queue

I think Westfield are just trying to get a cut of what is a very successful market - the budget 7 kit. If you have 2 similar products at opposite ends of the price scale, then it's just human nature to assume the more expensive one will be better in some way. So unless RH start charging 18 grand for a 2B, then they will always be looked down upon by drivers of other marques.

What's the correct direction of flow on a fuel filter? ...from the diagram, is it A to B, or B to A?

Is there space on the cylinder head bolt to drill another hole to the side of the pilot hole?

If money didn't matter, which kit car would you build?