January 2002  Well doesn't time fly! It's several months since I've been working on Percy. I promised I'd get the kitchen done last year and it was a close thing. New Years Eve I was up the ladders hanging the final piece of wall paper at the stroke of midnight. Sad or what! Anyway a promise is a promise. On the positive side I can now justify spending a little more time in the garage again.
I've bought a new lock barrel for the rear door and a choke cable from Landranger Services. I have fitted the lock barrel. It was a simple enough exercise. There is a small roll pin drifted through the locking plate on the inside of the door that fastens this plate to the barrel. You can spend quite some time trying to get this out. Or like I did following a little advice you can use your tool of choice (Mole grips), remove the locking plate by literally pulling it off upwards. It doesn't take a lot to shatter the plate and you'll be fitting a new one anyway.. Time saved at least 30 minutes by my reckoning.
You can then undo the large nut securing the barrel in place using a screw driver or blunt chisel to drift it around until slack. Remove the old barrel and insert the new one ensuring your key remains in your new barrel as you do so to stop the levers springing everywhere. Also check as you insert the barrel before you clamp it all up that the barrel is located the right way up for your choosing. (I.e. so you don't have to put the key in upside down in future to unlock).
Once the barrel is in then tighten up the large round nut (technical eh!) and refit your new locking plate with the screw provided (replaces the need for the old roll pin). Total time on this job was about 8 minutes. Slightly less than you would need to spend on our modern cars eh!

Slightly more concerning... last time I was in the garage I was certain that I'd drained the water coolant system as I'd rerouted the lower radiator hose that used to run on the outside leg of the chassis as in a previous picture. Anyway, turns out that I hadn't! I came to fire up Percy just to reassure myself that everything was as I recalled it. I topped up the water only to see two fountains emerge from the head around the spark plugs. To say I was puzzled as to why water should come from the spark plugs is an understatement. When I cast some light on the engine I could see floating around in the wash a core plug, two of them infact. Most concerned I'd done some damage to the head (appears it had frozen up even though in the garage) I popped the core plugs back in and fired Percy up. He was ticking over as sweet as a nut. The Alternator charge light wasn't working but that was no surprise as it needs  new bushes. No signs so far of any damage to the head. I suppose time will tell.