| I replaced the front door panels with a pair from the scrapyard but I couldn't get front seats. So I hid the damage with imitation sheepskin covers. Once the car was driveable, I took it for an MOT test. I asked the mechanic if he thought the acceleration was poor but he thought it was OK. It seemed poor to me as I had to climb some hills in first gear! I removed the cylinder head and everything looked fine so I thought that the sluggish performance was a result of the weight of the car. After all, it had a 2 litre straight six engine and weighed well over a ton. So, while the engine head was off, I had thirty thou skimmed off it and then I did a bit of gas flowing, smoothing all the sharp edges, and ground in the valves. The compression ratio was now around 10:1 and I expected a significant increase in power. No such luck. It was slower than a Sherman tank. Eventually I noticed that three spark plugs were brown and three were white. When I checked, I discovered that the rubber fuel pipe to one of the two Stromberg carburettors was blocked. I unblocked it and drove away with a lot of smoke from the tyres, leaving long black marks on the road. 0-60 in under 12 seconds. That felt better! The outer headlights had a dipped beam. The inner two didn't. So I replaced them with the outer type and had four dipped beams! I'm not sure that it was legal but I never got stopped and the alternator seemed to cope OK. I could certainly see a lot better at night! | 
