Rusty hatch

[festy]

"New" exhaust is done, made from whatever random bits and pieces of exhausts I found in my garage.
There's still a small leak near the front to fix, but otherwise it seems to do the job.
Plenty of clearance now too - well over 100mm at the lowest point.

I got the engine up to temperature to start tuning it, but abandoned that idea when I saw that the alternator was only putting out about 12.8v which dropped to 12.4v when the thermo fan kicked in.
I'll replace the mechanical regulator with a modern one and give the alternator a quick freshen up before trying again.

[festy]

The way the alternator's output dropped off as soon as a load was applied sounded like a brush/slip ring issue to me, so open it up and...



Yeah, that'd do it 

After a quick clean up they were looking a bit better:


The brushes looked ok so just gave them a super-light sand and a squirt of contact cleaner.
The front bearing should probably be replaced soon, but it'll do for now.

[festy]

Alternator is working a bit better, but still drops below 12.5v when there's a load so will need to check the wiring and test the regulator.
But after 10 mins of running there was a decent oil leak from either the head gasket or timing cover gasket, so will have to pull it all apart and replace them before going any further.