Yesterday was a wonderful day. The sun shone and my daughter and I spent the entire day outside, working on the car. She proved, again, that her mechanical instincts are sound and, dare I say it, sharper than mine. While I was hunting around on forum posts for safe alternative jacking points, she was sat by the car saying repeatedly “Dad, it’s here.” She was right of course.

It was a very productive day. The old engine is finally out, along with the gearbox. The two are separated and the flywheel is off for measuring. We also removed the exhaust and some of the heat shielding. And made a start on some of the areas of the bodywork that might need attention for the MOT – notably the inner sill on the driver’s side which has a little more rust than I thought. We’ll know more once we get the outer sill completely removed.

Big job now though is finishing my CAD model for the electric motor to flywheel adaptor. Then I can send this off to Protolabs to get it machined up. Plus we need to do some measurements for the adaptor plate between motor and gearbox and pop over to the steel stockholders to get some plate and box section.

Oh, and we need to swap the steering racks over now that the electric one has arrived and the old hydraulic one is mostly out. Need something to separate the tapers on the rod ends though.

Finally, before we start the install process, there is lots of cleaning and prep to do. Looks like the motor was a little leaky (apparently common with M43s), so everything around and under it is pretty filthy. We’ll give the transmission a clean up as well, while we’re at it.