Now we’re in the home stretch. Springs and shocks will see this ready for the test drive at Brands. Shocks get the same settings as my own, as a starting point. It will change, but it’s somewhere to begin.

Springs are a compromise for now, but it’s sufficient to start playing with the car. Rear shocks are sent for rebuild, fronts are discarded and replaced with a custom upgrade. Turnaround time on them is blindingly fast, the time between Dermott McGivern of Power4Peanuts confirming our specs and the shocks arriving at our door is about 36 hours. And the price is also excellent.

Now we’re really into the tweaking stage, some more attention to a few details.

Tank refitted. Fuel lines are removed and discarded, shown to be damaged. We remake them in cunifer and new flexi ends, and reroute them through the cockpit. They are a bit of a fight to fit because of the route that facelift cars take with the fuel lines, much easier on the earlier machines.

Time for a bit more go. A big-bore throttle is ordered from Power4Peanuts, arriving so fast it makes your head spin. Personal service counts for much.

Inlet gets a tweak, that paper filter and the tiny air inlet has to go. Breathe! An improvised adaptation is done for now, but a neater solution will follow.

Transponder resited.

Extinguisher resited.

Passenger race seat fitted. Handy that someone moved the extinguisher and it can now go on the floor, where it’s meant to be!

Driver’s seat back in, new harnesses fitted and adjusted to fit the Bear, who appears to be the correct size to emulate a Comer. He has his uses.

Critical water hoses replaced in silicone.

Front towing eye replaced, the old one was too small and technically non-compliant.

We happen to have a facelift rear spoiler. It has to be done. They are utterly ineffective, but it is 3kg at the right end of the car, and it looks better fitted. The high-level brakelight in it is wired in to supplement the foglights. Fitting it is more complex than you’d imagine, the facelift boot is different, and to bolt anything to it in the right spot does mean taking out the backlights...

Back on the scales again, and time to play with the weight. Having drained the tank we have an exact figure to work to. It’s no secret with these cars, weight needs to go rearwards. It is very easy to take a piece off the front and put it in the back. Every little helps.

Sometimes lightness comes with a cosmetic upgrade too. Some of the things that we remove and remake in aluminium just happen to look better. The difference between full Jaguar ¾ panels and aluminium sheet is a lot of weight, and it looks much more racy. The ski slope, a steel item from an automatic with the wood burned off, that gets lightened and reskinned. It is very shiny. Too shiny, it needs paint, polished alloy looks great and all, but one glint of sun and the driver is going to be blinded.

Floorpan gains some shiny chequerplate. Roll cage gains padding where needed. Note that padding is only a recommendation, not a requirement. The best is still the FIA-compliant self-adhesive shiny stuff, but who wants to pay that kind of money?

Camber and castor reset to our specifications, and it’s ready for the road. Though I might need to put in some of that petrol I stole a fortnight ago…

This is now a car ready to be tested and upgraded. Not finished, but somewhere to start. It now needs careful and extensive testing, a hundred laps somewhere to beat it into shape. I predict changes to roll bars and spring rates are still needed, but it’s now at least a proper car to go testing with.

My expectations are of a car that feels much more solid, but I know that this transformation can make it feel slower. Helen was faster than Angelina right out of the trap, but she felt slower, the feeling is wholly different in that higher speeds are achieved with less drama. The communication from the car is great, you travel faster with ease, but it does mean that when you feel like you’re in trouble you are travelling faster. A heap of crap feels like it’s in danger at lower speed. We’ll just have to see how this now feels, but what we’re trying to engineer is boredom. Crazy I know.

Tyres will need changing to the lower profile very soon, because if I’m testing this at all these 50s will die in a single day, they are crap, that deformation in the carcass kills them.

One month then of solid effort, and in summary we have bespoke fitted a roll cage, rebuilt both subframes, redesigned the fuel system, reconditioned the brakes, all suspension items replaced and re-set, fitted seats, belts, changed throttle and inlet, even the damned towing eyes. It was, in essence, a full class D car build. I almost feel that we should have totally stripped the car as soon as it arrived, bare shelled it, because really the only things we’ve not had out are the engine and dash. Given another month to play it would have been a total bare-metal rebuild and gone up another level.

PART 6 COMING SOON - TRACK TIME!