Work continues unabated, the reground cam eventually arrived back from Sydney, but when it came to replacing the cam bearings in the block it was found that the cam journals were undersized, therefore requiring oversized bearings. These were near impossible to find, but a set was eventually sourced and dropped off at the machine shop, who by now had honed the bores and discovered that the pistons now had too much clearance. The pistons were then pressed off the rods and sent to High Performance Coatings to be built up with 0.003″ of ceramic coating. They’re due back any day now!
Meanwhile a set of 1.5:1 roller rockers and compatible valve springs arrived, together with a nice vernier timing gear set up from Mr Swiftune in the UK.
Work on the dashboard is well underway, with most of the instruments having been pulled to bits, cleaned and rebuilt, but the speedo, which I believe is from an MGA (with an MGB pointer fitted) needed recalibration to match the 3.1:1 final drive and the 12″ wheels and tyres that the Marcos will be running.
My friendly instrument repair guy requested information on the number of turns the speedo cable performs over a 10 metre distance, so that he could do the recalibration.
As the gearbox was already built and the front subframe had already been fitted up with suspension and drive line components, it was simply 
a matter of mating the two of them and rolling the assembly over the required distance.
This was made easier by having the subframe mounted on a mobile jig, but unfortunately the jig doesn’t allow the wheels to touch the ground, so a track was laid using 2″ thick boards for the wheels to run along.
The dutiful wife came in useful for counting the turns of the speedo cable drive as I pushed the front-end along the tracks. I used some twisted tie-wire as a pointer, wrapped around a match stuck in the speedo cable drive hole, and made a degree wheel out of cardboard that sat over the speedo drive. It all worked brilliantly and wifey thought it was great fun 
– Yes, we are but simple country folk 
…. and the answer was – 7 full turns plus another 60 degrees
Whist the engine block, pistons and camshaft are away having magic cast upon them, it was time to approach the issue of wiring. As there wasn’t any loom in the car when I bought it, it’s a matter of starting from scratch and creating a multi-colour equivilent of the yellow brick road, which was a rather fantastical journey that ended up back where they started
Beginning by stripping down a couple of old Mini wiring looms seemed like a good idea, after untangling the spaghetti, there will hopefully be enough colour-coded wire to match components to their proper colours. My head was hurting trying to keep track of what connects to what, so a mud-map (Australian slang – a map drawn on the ground with a stick, or any other roughly drawn map) was thrown together to try and sort out the mess.
It’ll take while to create order from this chaos, but I’ve always found wiring to be almost a contemplative task and one of the most interesting parts of a restoration. I’m using a combination of spade terminals and bullet connectors with all joints soldered together. I love heat shrink tubing insulation although when working through tasks like this, I sometimes worry about whether I’m developing OCD 
Here we are testing a circuit with an old indicator switch and flasher can before committing
it to paper.
Unlike a Mini, all the fuses (8 of them), relays (3 of them) and the bulk of the wiring will be kept behind the dashboard. This should keep the engine bay relatively uncluttered from a wiring point of view. Keeping the the area behind the dash in order will be tricky though. There will be an MGA / MGB style speedo and tacho with 5 smaller Smiths gauges, a bank of switches and warning lights and an early model Mini column switch set up with indicators, dip and horn functions. Then there’s the radio/MP3 player. map light and so on.
Eventually all the wiring worked its way in and apart from the front and rear indicators showing opposite signals, all the bits I could test seem to work OK. Some effort still needs to be spent tidying up behind the dashboard and laying out the wiring neatly in the engine bay.
Very disappointed with the fit quality of the perspex headlight covers, they don’t go anywhere near the profile of the panels so we’ll do without until I can either find or make a better set 
I understand now why Rodger Howard made his own !
Instruments are a combination of new and old Smiths gauges. The Tacho (0 – 10,000 rpm) and the speedo which were originally fitted to the car are non-standard items, and according to Peter, my instrument repair guy, they’ve been assembled using a combination of components from various English makes and models. They’ve come up beautifully though and should look tremendous when fitted into the Mrytle wood dash panel.
I found this stainless steel Holden Torana XU1 muffler on ebay, it has a 2″ central inlet and fits neatly into the space inside the rear subframe. The twin exit pipes will need to be extended by 3″ or 4″ and I’ll have to weld some mounting plates onto it, but I think it has potential .
The engine wiring has now been tidied up. All wires come through the firewall on the right hand side of the engine bay and track along the inner guard area. Thermatic fan and horn wires continue on through to the front housing while the rest track across the front of the engine bay and finally into the left hand wheel well.
The water temperature / oil pressure gauge capillary tube and oil line will track down the left hand side of the engine bay. Not sure where to bring the speedo cable through the firewall yet , will have to wait for the dash and engine to be in place first.
Mini Marcos GT 