Equipped with the porta-power I unlocked the garage door and got busy.  It didn't really hit the spot though.  I managed to push the scuttle back but it didn't have much effect on the positioning of the shroud.  I started measuring again and felt a little perplexed as the scuttle is pretty square to the main chassis rails.  This is a puzzle.  I took the shroud out side to get a long distance view:

It looks anything but correct.  The photo above shows the worst of the two worries.  One is that the bonnet aperture isn't great, it looks like the righthand side front edge drops too much.  Two, the righthand section of the shroud that the wing mounts onto looks compressed.  It was hard to make any meaningful conclusions though as the thing looked different every time it was moved.  I feel a little frustrated though as I paid a professional to sort out both shrouds and he assured me that they had both been put on a jig and sorted; clearly they hadn't been.  I decided to give it a break for the day and come back to it later on.

I did however notice that I hadn't put the front cross brace section on that well and so took it off again.  I have a distant memory of doing this before,....

I had made arrangements to borrow the porta-power from my panel beater friend but when he called I was eating Easter Sunday lunch so I ignored the call.  I sent him a text but he's not great with texts so I never heard back from him.  I know he was planning to go away over the holidays so I didn't call him on bank holiday Monday, instead I headed for the garage and decided I should find something else to do.  This proved harder than I thought it might do.  I ended up renovating some bits that I am in no rush for:  Pedals, pedal bar spacer, clutch linkages, anti-roll bar and mounting brackets.  Why, well they were clearly visible and in need of a refresh.

It was quiet enjoyable work but I was struck by the length of time it took me to get it all done, coated with POR15 pre-paint metal ready and then painted.  It took the whole day.  I used a variety of wire wheels to get the bulk of the paint and rust off then dug the sand blast cabinet out to finish off the places that were hard to get to.  I tried a few things with the sand blast cabinet that I had not done before, initially I replaced the fine sand/grit with the medium stuff that I had bought some time ago and this made a massive difference.  I could almost see what was happening in the cabinet and it actually worked.  The second thing I tried was to put the compressor outside so that it didn't inhale the fine dust that filled the garage; it still lives to this days.  

Anyway, I had a lovely day procrastinating in style and ended up with some lovely shiny bits:

Pedals ready for painting

And then painted: