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I managed to waste most of last night on a "minor" job - the front bumper fit.

When the car was painted they removed the front bumper but when it was refitted they neglected to fit the two end bolts so it was only attached by the main two bolts. As far as I could see the holes didn't line up as the main fittings were bolted up tight.

Because the sides were not bolted up they were chaffing the new paint, not a huge issue as it is easily touched up and out of sight. I figured if I loosened the main mounts I could get enough slack to get the bolts onto the sides.

Wrong! Well to cut a long story short, I had to remove the bumper then found no threads in one side and very bad alignment. A couple of hours fettling and slighting elongating a few holes gave me just enough room to get three bolts out of the four in, I figured if I could just get this last one in then I could wind them all in a bit at a time and it would settle. I ended jacking the bumper up into position and using some studding to allow me to wing in the side fixing.

Access to the bolts on the wings is easy but the main ones are buried in the engine bay and you need double jointed octopus arms to get at them, it's just an uncomfortable and unnaturally angled job. Add to that there is very little room to swing a spanner (and my ace ratchet spanners are too long) and you end up with a painfully slow job.

the result looks better as the bumper now fits in the holes in the wings rather than hanging low to expose them.

The only other job I managed to do was to strip, clean and reassemble the brake pads to try and prevent the occasional squeal that they emit. The pads are old Unipart but look like they have seen no work at all, supporting the info I have that the car has done very little mileage since it's restoration 20 years ago. I chamfered the edges and put a dollop of copper-slip on the backs then reassembled, that should do it. I was a bit knackered and filthy at that point so I elected to call it a night. I am now off to Milan for a couple of days with work so I won't be able to do any more jobs on the list until Thursday. Fortunately some new parts arrived in the post this morning so that bodes well for getting at least the important stiff done. To be honest the only really important job is the heater valve and I think if that doesn't arrive I can just bypass the valve to it's on all the time, I don't think we'll be complaining it's too warm in Scotlandshire!

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