Update

 There's been a few things happening in Blatterworld.

The Stylus went to Gurston Down hillclimb school - a birthday present from my lovely girlfriend, who also drove the back up car & took many photos, which I haven't see yet because her camera works in RAW format & that needs processing apparently. Yes, she is cleverer than me - how did you guess?

There is however a video here:-

It's a really good day out for the car minded - proper cars that is - electrics & hybrids are specifically banned. As you'll see in the video (ish), there's a briefing, followed by walking the track with an instructor pointing out the salient points & where your car should be are which point. All of which was forgotten in the het of my first practice run of course, though some of it came back to me in the second one. Then there was a de-brief by the instructors, followed by an excellent lunch, after which we did another few runs up the hill with the marker cones removed & with the instructors marking. Right at the end the heavens opened, so the last run was very much slower.

But an excellent day, very well run in a very professional but relaxed manner - the marshals drove my girlfriend up the hill & showed her where she could stand to take photos, which was very kind & very much appreciated

So what did I learn? Principally that the older I get, the faster I was, because you see, I've done the school before in the Fury & I was a little faster (measured on the Go-Pro time stamp), but I knew this. I've felt slower since the crash that destroyed the Fury. Another thing I knew but was reinforced is that the Stylus - like all Jeremy Phillips' cars is just brilliant. Apart from the two 1930s racers there, the Stylus had the narrowest tyres (175/70x 13) & pretty tall gearing (the RS2000 diff) but still managed a 5.2sec 0-60 & I didn't go near the red line.

This is the Fury video - watch out for that door!

There's also another Fury related update, I made a rack for the Fury for going on trips with a passenger. I've looked at it several times with a view to using it on the Stylus, but never worked out how & anyway the Fury had a zip-out back window meaning the rack could pass through in inclement weather, the Stylus hasn't meaning the roof would be unusable with the rack on. However, I realised that if I shortened the rack, it would stand up behind the roll bar, meaning I could take the picnic basket on the rack & in the case of a downpour, the basket could replace the large side windows in the boot, the rack would stand up & we could get home dryish (it's a kit car, dry is too much to hope for).

And there's another thing. On the road trip the driver's door latch failed, that is the connection between the door handle & the latch broke. I sort of fixed it with a tyrap (which to be fair is all it ever had), but at Gurston Down it failed again, leaving me with a problem because I needed the roof up, but couldn't open the door to get in.

This is the surviving one from the passenger side, you can see the offending tyrap in the middle. 

Unfortunately I didn't photograph the new ones before installation, so there's a really bad phone photo, showing(ish) that the lower bit of bent wire coat hanger has been replaced by an alloy rod with a rose joint