Well… the evening started off with me working a chain saw to remove my brother in laws rotted out deck.  Took about an hour and I thought hey I’ve got some extra time to work on the Mini.  Went home helped Kim get the kids in bed and out to the garage I went.

First the exhaust.  Well connecting that pipe to the turbo took a lot of trial and error.  Learned a few lessons including bolt the exhaust pipe onto the engine first, don’t start at the back of the car… There is almost no space to reach up from the bottom of the car to get the clamp on and yes there is only one way it goes on… figured that out after half an hour or so.  In the end what worked best was to jack up the exhaust pipe just in front of the elbow so that it is fitting up tightly against the turbo exhaust.  then rather then trying to get the clamp installed from the bottom of the car you can actually reach it quite easily from the top.  It took me a good hour and half of fiddling to get this done, but next time around it could be a lot quicker.

Second dilemma is getting the radiator back in.  I still have no idea what is the best way.  I started on this at about 11:00 thinking it won’t take me too long.  Well it takes for ever.  Just getting the bottom hose connected is a war.  I finally got the whole bloody thing installed at 1:00 am to find out I have the engine fan installed the wrong way.  I have to take the whole thing apart.  I wanted to stay up and sort it out, but for probably the first time during the night my better judgment kicked in and I went to bed.