Fresh from its rather turbulent visit to a bodyshop in Glossop, Neil and Flamey ventured up to the far-flung parts of Cumbria in dismal weather. Understandably, he was a little late as the crowd gathered to see Flamey in its glory.

John performed the usual checks on the tyres, water, oil, plugs and compression to make sure there were no obvious problems. He then secured the car to the rollers, and did some mixture checks. This meant running it up to certain revs under a bit of load and checking the emissions.

The mixture was clearly very weak, so a change of needle was decided. The car was then checked for power and mixture at a few key points on the rev range, and some minor tweaks were made to the needle at the appropriate points using the bench drill and some emery paper until the mixture and power were optimal.

Neil explained to John how he wanted the car to run, and the fine tuning was done. Then came the Power Plot, which involved running the car at full power at particular revs. The BHP was measured and noted. This was alongside some commentary from Neil's brother over the mobile, and between mugs of tea to help warm the mits!

After some minor tweaking of the timing, the results were finalised and discussed with Neil, explaining where the high-mileage MED 1380 engine was running well, and what could be done to potentially improve it. And George fitted a new tyre thanks to a rather unlucky nail strike that hit just next to where there was already a patch. We gave him a good deal though, as if he hadn't had enough already from his nightmare with the body shop in Glossop.

The verdict: Neil is pleased with the vast improvement in driveability of the car. It now has torque all the way through the rev range, making it much more pleasant to drive (especially at 30mph). And with 74 bhp (at 6000rpm) available, it is a great fun vehicle; gone is the jerky and inconsistent performance. Job done.