A word about being a passenger.  Having delighting in taking friends and relatives for a blast down the lanes, my brother-in-law returned the compliment and I must say that, for me at least, the left hand seat is a very uncomfortable place to be.  Even the miniscule protection that the Brooklands screen affords is lost to the passenger, who with less support and things to hang on to must rely on the benevolence of the driver if nerves are not to take over.  In a straight line it is just about manageable, but cornering is a different matter entirely.  The best way to describe it is to compare it to a racing sidecar outfit – on left turns one tries to lean away from the driver but because of the aforementioned chaise position you cannot get the leverage, and on right turns you grasp out for the nearest handhold with your right hand.  This is, of course, the exposed exhaust.  

Despite what the passenger may think, there is little roll, even when cornering hard.  Suspension deflection is another thing, however, as I found to my cost on the return from Prescott.  Some 1000 yards from home, there is a dip in the road at the centre of which is a patched pothole.  I sailed over this without noticing, only to have the engine stutter some 700 yards further on.  A quick glance at the tank gauge showed no pressure and furious pumping made no difference.  The engine died, I coasted to a halt outside the church and dismounted to find petrol pouring from a UJ shaped indentation in the underside of the tank.  This soon slowed to a trickle as a vacuum built up above the liquid, and we were able to tow No.1 home with little effort.  Emptying the tank and jury-rigging a gravity feed (imagine a saline drip by a hospital bedside) allowed me to drive the car up the slope in the garden and into the combined workshop/garage for the evening.  The familiarity gained from the rebuild allowed me to later remove the bodywork complete in under two hours, although the tank took an hour longer because of (my) poor mounting design.  This has now been rectified and once the hole is repaired (and the underside of the tank suitably reprofiled) we’ll be on the road again.

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