Many thanks Danny, those pics are really useful. Hopefully the cone should arrive Thursday, along with numerous other parts and breather hoses.
I re-read my first posts on this thread this morning and boy, have I learnt a lot in just over 3 months! Thanks to all of you on here who have been patient and helpful with advice and knowledge. I hope you're still enjoying me documenting my work. As most of you know, there's simply no substitute for taking everything apart and putting it back together again.
So, a quick update from the weekend. Most of it was spent getting rid of the paint on the fan shroud. Almost 2 days work has resulted in the matt white gelcoat you see here. For info, the shroud is a very close fit and cannot be removed without the alternator mount in place. With deep shielding it does direct the air well down past all cylinders (cylinders 2 and 4 shown here)
and the gaps around the inlet manifolds and plugs are very tight.
You can also see the engine bay opening for this Chesil version - kind of a D shape.
The vertical covers at the back of the engine bay need to be replaced - the left one you can see has a gap where it wraps around the shroud and no. 4 cylinder. I'm currently making a card template to fit the gaps. I'll be allowing a lot of overlap and making the 'tinware' out of ally with rubber leaf seals to seal the edges. I can get the aluminium in either 0.8 or 1.5mm. Probably going to go with the 0.8 because it's easier to work (unless any of you tell me differently) and clad the underside with glued/pop riveted heat shield.
Although I quite like the idea of a white fan shroud, I would still have to paint it because it's not 'optimal' quality as it stands, and if I'm going to paint it, I think gloss black will be neater, not show the marks and look better against all the cleaned maniofolds/carbs etc. So black it is. I'll fill a few scratches and gouges in the fibreglass before painting and hopefully I can get this done this week before the cone deflector arrives (although I now have 3 rooms to paint indoors as well, since the Long Haired General has gone back to nursing to jab patients with Covid vaccines).
The incentive to get the car finished, at least to a point where it's on four wheels again, is huge - my wrist has now (almost) recovered from surgery enough to ride my motorbikes. The bikes are trapped at the rear of the garage behind the Speedster - so nothing is moving until the Speedster moves!