Skint and not enough space in the garage with all the rubbish in there. There’s 2 fridges and a dishwasher from moving house, and a barbecue etc that should be in a shed that I haven’t bought yet. Then theres all the bits I took off the 55 plus the old and new engine and boxes. Oh and a crane! Time to tidy up. As they are still building the estate I live on, there’s plenty of pallettes and wood knocking about. Using my best woodworking skills (ie none) I cut a pallette down so it would fit between the legs of the crane and lowered the old block onto it. Some of the left over pallette made a few handy supports.
That’s the old one out of the way, onto the new one. That was already on a pallette with a box section frame supporting it. I’ve given up on the TH350 and I’m gonna look for a short tail one that’ll be an easier swap for the ‘glide. So plan B is to put the glide on for now. I got it hung on the crane and lined it up behind the new block, bolted up the flex plate and started bolting it all up.

All OK so far. Bolt the starter on. Bolt one OK, can’t get bolt 2 to line up. A quick look underneath and I can see why. The mountings are in a different position on the new block. A quick search on the net shows up a standard starter and a “staggered” one. OK. Off to find another starter. Turns out there are different amounts of teeth on certain flex plates. How many teeth are on mine? Dunno. I’ll have to pull it back apart and count em. Doh. I’ll leave it all hanging on the crane for now, and start tidying up. A few hours later, it’s looking much better.

I had seen the car for sale on Duksville’s web site before I bought the Dooster. It was more money than I had, and although I was very tempted, I stuck with the Dooster. A month or so after I got the car, I decided it wasn’t for me, and asked around if anyone was interested in buying it. A guy from just down the road in Cardiff bought it and the money was going to go on the new house we’d just bought. And then I had another look at the advert on the site. It was £600 cheaper. I rang Geordie Paul and told him I was interested, and he offered to trailer it to his yard in Cheshire for me to look at. I took my wife Lisa with me by offering to buy her lunch on the way back, and off we went.

When we got there, I fell in love with it. I said “Wow”. Lisa said “What a piece of Shit!”. It was leaking like a sieve, was in a mess internally, but looked solid and amazingly rust free. Paul showed me a few patches that he’d spotted, but nothing major. He made us a cup of tea, I gave him a deposit and that was it. A few weeks later after we’d moved, he trailered it down to Wales for me for sensible money, and helped me push it in the garage. Top bloke. It didn’t fit in the garage, despite me getting the builders to check the length of the garage, but it was only an inch or so, and the door could be sort of locked. And then I started to take it to bits.