As the Yellow Peril began to show signs of impending demise, my original plan to replace it with the Sprint looked decidedly questionable. I began to look for an alternative, and found a 2500S saloon in the local WHY. I checked it out on the way home from work one day, and informed the vendor that his asking price was too high.

I'm not sure whether I expected him to accept my verdict but he offered it to me for my suggested price. It had only two owners from new (the first for only just over a year) and drove fairly nicely. I could see some signs of rot around the wheel arches (despite obvious repairs) and the big ends were a little rumbly.

I had not owned the OWL all that long before it started making a metallic "ping" noise from the offside rear when cornering. Then I noticed it had begun to sit extremely low at that corner. 2000 expert Chris Witor suggested a likely problem with the spring, perhaps a broken coil. It turned out to be worse. The panel on which the top of the spring locates, and which effectively supports the car, had rusted to the point of total collapse.

My local garage refused to tackle this job. Frankly I don't blame them - when Andrew and I got going on it we discovered some true horrors. The rot extended all along the floor member attaching the rear saddle to the sill, and the car's main strength. Worse still the sill itself was badly rotten. To make things even worse, the rear floor had been "repaired" before. This repair consisted of a sheet of metal so thin it could have come from a biscuit tin, tacked over the rotten structural member. Given the history of the car, I am quite sure this bodge was perpetrated by the MOT test centre who had originally failed it.

Needless to say, Andrew and I repaired it properly. We cut out all the crap and fabricated new panels from at least 18 gauge sheet. This had to be done bit by bit because we needed the rotten originals in place both as a template and to keep the car square as we worked.

By this time I was using the OWL as my daily transport, and the gentle rumbling of the big ends was becoming a slight concern. As it happened I had a spare engine, which had come out of "Gordon" - Andrew's 2000 Mk1 estate. All of Gordon's mechanical bits were actually 2500S parts, and later than the OWL as far as we knew. The engine had unfortunately been left outside with the head missing because Andrew was getting it skimmed to PI compression spec. His plan had been to put it in his Stag (which had a Ford Essex V6) but he'd sold that on so the 2.5 engine was spare.

Rebuilding Gordon's old engine was done on the cheap to an extent, in that I inspected the rusty bores and decided that a good run over with a honing tool would leave them "good enough" to use the existing pistons. The cost of a rebore and new pots would have been too much. The bearings were all in very good condition, but I replaced them anyway. Had I been unable to get the decent quality Vandervell bearings I wouldn't have, since the old (TR5 spec) mains would likely have lasted rather longer than a new set of Glacier ones.

To match the increased compression ratio, I fitted a late GT6 camshaft (which is the same part as a late 2.5PI). Chris Witor advised that without this change there would probably be severe running on problems. With that in mind I also de-burred the combustion chambers for good measure.

With the new engine fully rebuilt, I was ready to do the swap. Taking the manifolds off the old engine proved awkward because I couldn't separate the hoses from the cooling pipes. I ended up cutting one in half to find it entirely blocked with rusty sludge. I had previously observed that the block drain tap did not release any water even with the system pressurised - now I knew why. Goodness knows how long that engine had been run without antifreeze to get like that.