On the spanners (Build day 1)

Procrastination over, it's time to start turning this huge stash of metal and plastic into something that resembles a car. Each day that I allocate to the build I intend to have a clear(ish) plan of action. Today I have decided to allow a couple of hours thinking time (walking around the chassis,
scratching my head), an hour or so for tea making and calls of nature and the rest of the time actually adding weight to the car.
Following the advice from Jake on collection day, I'm starting with the Diff.

I knew this was going to be a little on the heavy side, so, as I was going to be on my own and the ratchet straps I'd ordered hadn't arrived, I had to improvise a bit...

 I wrapped masking tape around the top rail and cut down some drain pipe to fit over it.

 With a bit of gentle persuasion I coaxed the diff into position and following the advice from many other blogs, the bolts went in, following this sequence:

1. Bottom bolt - fairly easy due to the long slotted holes.
2.Middle bolts - needed to tap the threads in the diff to clear the paint.
3. Top bolt - both spacers needed aprox 1.5mm removing with a bench grinder to fit

Both top spacers needed reducing

     I then stood back to admire my work, well earned cuppa in hand. Nothing to this building malarky. However.... the sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that in the above pic, the nylon rope has been replaced by a ratchet strap. Which hadn't been delivered....

However, by the time I came to fit the diff again it had! Yep, I had to take the whole *loody thing out again because when I'd held up the prop I could see that there was no way it would go in from the front. So, it was diff out, prop in, diff back in........DOH!! Lesson learned, I cleaned up the tools and packed up for the day.