Right - having been having a clear-up and building a tool wall for the garage, I am now back on the project again.
As I am likely to fitting stuff back together in the coming months, and there's a few bits already on the car that are rear brake-related, I pulled the handbrake mechanism out of the bits box. I gave it a clean up and followed this up with a coat of paint. It needs greasing up before fitting but I will get round to it once I have drilled the mounting holes for the new handbrake lever - the old one was scrap so I will be using a Mini lever I bought AGES ago.
And now - for some slightly bigger news: The front subframe is ON. Andy came over last night so I fed him then put the boy to work. Using a large piece of wood and a jack, we lifted the subframe up as far as it would go, only to find that the front teardrop mounts would not fit past the front panel. We played around for a bit, took the teardrops off and wound the tower bolts in slightly so we could (with the use of the "F" crowbar) make enough room to bolt the teardrops back in. This meant we could wiggle everything into position so it looked almost ready to go. Then of course there was the heelboard mounts. The passenger side needed just a little tweak with a screwdriver to pull in into line and the bolts lined up beautifully. We got the nuts on but left them loose in case of further tweaking. The driver's side was somewhat more swear-worthy. It took a good half an hour's worth of extremely bad language, struggling with lining things up and dropping stuff before it all fitted together as it should. I still don't know where that nut and washer went mind you...
The front teardrop mounts will need a bit of work though. The Mk1 front end is different to the Mk2 and this car also originally had a twin-bolt subframe in it when it was first built. I have had a look through my old photos and when I took the subframe out there was an extra nut in front of the teardrop mounts acting as a spacer. As I am using solid mounts, I will get proper spacers made up to fill the gap. More soon!
Handbrake gubbins loosely fitted together.
There's a subframe fitted to my car!
Some minor tweaking and spacers are required at the front.