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The pipe under the manifolds that connects back to the water pump housing is a return pipe, so the connection to that is the outlet of the heater.

If it's properly built, it's out for hot, in for cold. However, the later controls fitted on MkIV onward are designed to use a different valve. If you fit a MkIV valve to a roundtail Spitfire then your heater control will work backwards as Nigel described.

Hurrah! Excellent news on the gearbox. When I rebuilt my Vitesse engine, just before moving house, it flatly refused to start. Just wouldn't fire. Lack of time (due to moving house!) stopped any further investigation. Some months later, I put a new battery on it and it started first time. Perhaps more relevant to you, though, was the time my GT6 got abandoned subjected to an unplanned lay-up for three years. Upon recovery, I found the battery so dead it had corroded itself to the clamps. New battery, new clamps, prime the fuel pump, generous squirt of WD40 (easy start works too) down the air intake, plenty of choke, plenty of throttle... fired up first time. Ran like a complete dog for a few minutes until it was warm but then the petrol was three years old! If you can get some fresh fuel in the tank it will help a lot.

Yes but since you've never put it into the condition where you could tell whether it was, my suspicion is that it is! If you knew that the temperature gauge should be reading fully hot, then you could see whether it does. But your engine doesn't overheat so you can't see that it's under-reading a bit.

Probably dud then. They're rubbish quality. I had to replace the one on my Toledo three times before I got one that worked properly for more than a few weeks.

How often does your temperature gauge read fully hot? I would test by connecting a 20 ohm resistor between the tank sender wire and ground. If the gauge then reads full, your sender is faulty. If not, see if you can repeat the test with the resistor directly on the gauge. Any change in these tests indicates a wiring fault. If the gauge still only gives 3/4 then my money's on the regulator. They fail in that way much more often than the gauges do. If you don't have a 20 ohm resistor, connecting directly will work but you're looking for the gauge to go off-scale and it's best to keep the test down to a few seconds.

I think you should be OK. The restrictor is definitely needed in the heater bypass but it's normally present in the tee off the return pipe to the pump (along the block below the manifold). The T-piece was integral to the inlet manifold on later Spitfire twin-carb setups, so perhaps you have an early (Mk3) manifold?

I was told by Green Flag that the clause explicitly excluded all my other cars and I would need to pay for explicit cover on each of them. I haven't asked any of the others but their T&C wording is very similar.

Yes. Very capable, very efficient, very comfortable, very deserving of the Mundano nickname. Still, keeps the wear down on the proper cars.

It's a very late Mk3 of a model that's currently at Mk5. It's still the second youngest car I've ever owned (the youngest was a W-reg Dolomite 1500 that I bought in 1990).

My dad was a freelance TV sound engineer. All his cables and stuff were marked with a dob of ugly pink to identify them. Well nobody else would choose that colour!

No, that's one of the electronic ones built into an old-style case. The clue is the colouring That mix of green and brown regions is because it's a GRP printed circuit board - brown where the copper is present on the other side, green where it's not. There will be four or five surface mount electronic components soldered to the copper. The original bi-metallic ones had a plain piece of brown paxolin or similar.

I think it depends on the ignition switch. My Spitfire's has a two-slot nut like the fan switch.

I wish something as simple as coloured tape would ensure my tools went back where they belong! 😛

Wasn't it American crown-cut walnut? A slightly paler wood than the European walnut, just like American oak is paler than British oak.

I'm struggling to remember but I think Pete may be right about Vitesse cappings. The 2000 and Dolomite ranges were veneered on the front face only, I think.

Yes, I also misuse them for that purpose

Be careful with the small print on that! Last time I looked the "member cover" option (from all the major breakdown services) covers you for any vehicle under 15 years old that you're in. (Edit: In my case, that actually excludes SWMBO's car and, from next year, my modern)

You should be able to remove the float chamber with the piston (and jet) still in place.

Do you mean the copper pipe with the flange in the upper right hole of the air filter face? I think that's the float chamber breather, so any fuel coming out there suggests your float valve is stuck open, or the fuel pump pressure is too high.

I bought my Spitfire's loom (technically a late Mk3 but rebuilt as an early one, with some tweaks) direct from Autosparks and apart from using different bulb holders for the instruments it was as expected. It does seem odd that you found a duffer. When you say the light connectors are spades, do you mean the rear lights? The front ones are all on the bonnet loom with a bunch of intermediate bullet connectors. The rears would be a different type of bullet - actually bare wire ends as supplied - up to late Mk2 GT6 but they would be spades on a Mk3.

A lot of restorers get the pale blues wrong. If your car was originally Wedgewood, it's likely that the restorer used Powder Blue or a BMC near-equivalent. That happened to my Toledo, which was originally Ice Blue and never looked as good in whatever it got resprayed to. (Ice is quite a bit paler than Wedgewood or Powder).

I find that my Spitfire and Vitesse are both happy with NGK plugs. The GT6 seems not to be but I suspect there's something underlying.

The pump on the Vitesse 1600 and early Mk1 (up to engine HC4999) is different to the later one, and hard to find. I assume that's what you have? I've possibly got one spare as I replaced the engine in my Vitesse (the old was HC932, the new is HC56xx) and had to change the pump too. But I've done a couple of rebuilds on these AC pumps and they're not hard. I think I got the kits from Canley.

I also bought a new brass tap to replace the one on my Vitesse, which had a rusted-away spring. The new one leaked worse than the old so I swapped it back.