At last I feel as if I’m getting somewhere. Given what I need to do before the season starts that’s a good thing.
I’ve finished sticking the airbox together, and the final version is in the photo on the right. Actually, that’s not quite final as since then I’ve arranged a couple of little brackets to stabilise it to the roll cage and covered up that hole which was a failed attempt at getting access to one of the fixings on the top of the standard airbox; I’ve decided to live without it.
However, even with the airbox like this there’s an obvious thing missing which is an air filter. I’ve done here something like what I did last time and installed a grid inside the standard airbox lid onto which I can sit a layer of air filter foam.
This is just some galvanised (I think it’s intended for gardening really) mesh that’s held in place inside the airbox by melting it into the polypropylene.
Of course, I need to put the foam there as well and the next photo shows the foam in place. To be honest I reckon it’d just sit there happily but as you can see I’ve 
retained it slightly with, yes, a couple of tie-wraps. I deliberately put them in a bit askance, as I convinced myself it was better that way. Can’t quite remember why now, though.
With that I could put the airbox together and put in the little brackets I mentioned. The only problem is, Adrian lent me some air filter oil and I left it on my desk at work. I’ll have to wait until I retrieve it to put it all together.
With all that done I’ve reached the point where, at last, I can put the bodywork back on and it’ll start looking like a car again. I retrieved the main tub from where I’d parked it hanging from the roof and put it back over the chassis. I then 
spent a good time cleaning last season’s clag from it. I also started changing the mirrors. For all of last season I never felt I got very good vision from the large central mirror I had. It’s rather in the airstream and seems to vibrate like mad at speed. So, I’ve decided to have a go with just wing mirrors again. However, the Racetech ones I had before are really rather too small, and it’s hard to see over the humps that are the “shoulders” of the J15. So I’ve bought some rather larger and more sticky-out ones from Lifeline. I’ve mounted one of the left of the tub (I’ll do other once the screens are in place) and you can see it compared with the central one in the photo above. it remains to be seen whether I like this or not.
With the bodywork back on, and I’ve started putting the sidepods back too, you can see the new oil cooler nestling at the rear end of the sidepod. I’m planning on shrouding this slightly so as to make it a bit less in the way of stones thrown up by the wheel, I keep wondering if that isn’t the reason I had the failure at the end of last season.
With the reappearance of the bodywork, I can clean it up and take off the numbers that were on there for last year’s aborted Birkett. Luckily, I think I’ve got enough 5s 
and 0s for three new 50s which I’ll put in place soon.
I’m now getting perilously close to putting the car back on the ground and starting aligning the modified suspension. Oh joy, that’s just so tedious…