Another weekend on the Spitfire

After driving the Spitfire for a while I noticed the head gasket starting to weep oil, so I re-torqued the head, ony to strip the thread on one of the nuts. Not knowing what state the rest of them might be in I decided to change the head gasket and nuts. I had already picked-up a new-old-stock Payen gasket, you can't trust some of the junk that gets sold but Payen have been well reccommended. The head was reluctant to come off, but with the coil disconnected and a quck flick on the starter the head was free.
It prooved a straight forward job, running the engine for one minute without water then re-torquing the head again. Once the engine had cooled fresh coolant was added and the tappets adjusted. Then for a longer run, once again, just as had after taking the carbs off previously, it proceeded to squirt petrol everywhere from the petrol connections onto the float chambers. Luckily with new petrol pipe and cleaned connections the problem was solved.

But then onto the job which took most of my time this weekend, wiring. On a drive out to the shops on Friday the windscreen wipers, heater motor and tachometer all stopped working, fortunately it was not far to the shop and by the time I got out it had stopped raining.
Thinking it might be a dirty fuse problem, I cleaned the fuses and contacts, but that only appeared to have caused the rear lights, indicators, dash lights and gauges to also stop working. The car still ran though and the hazard lights work all around the car and the front lights worked. It took me a while to work out that the cause of the problem was a lack of pressure between the fuses and their terminals.
All those hours when I should have been working on the GT6, not chasing dodgy connections grrr..
Oh well will try to get something done during the week. ;)