I think you’ll be pleased. The app/interface is very good and over shortish distances it’s great. Sitting on the sofa checking your car battery voltage is pretty impressive!

One of the next jobs is to fit a low coolant warning alarm. I've looked at a few different ways to do this and settled on the Eliseparts kit (£130). It comprises a tank with a Bosch float switch and a small wiring harness which includes an electrical circuit. This modulates the signal from the switch to stop it from flashing off and on when the car moves about and the coolant sloshes around. It's a very 'OE' looking neat package.

There are a few problems. Firstly the tank only has one additional inlet, so I'm either going to have to dispense with the 'breather' hose back from the radiator or tee it into the other hose which comes from the cylinder heads. Secondly, I need to make up new mountings as the Elise tank has different moulded brackets. Thirdly, the Elise wiring uses a spare warning light in the Stack dashboard and I'll need to modify this so that it will work with a nice bright LED warning lamp.

It's going to be a bit of a faff, but I really think it's worth it for the peace of mind it provides. I've got the kit and ordered some connectors and some alloy to make brackets etc. so watch this space.

Looks similar to an MGF tank. I managed to make mine fit the OE FG bracket thing. I tee'd the small rad feed into the top corner head feed. I also put a tap in the rad feed at this end so i can shut it off (not pictured).

Interesting - thanks for that.

On the KV6, there are pressed steel caps that seal the open ends of the camshafts and prevent oil leaks. My car had oil seals which I think is a conversion to make them easier to replace when the engine is fitted to an MG or Rover saloon with very limited access.

The oil seal on my rear cylinder bank was leaking and since there's plenty of space around the engine I decided to go back to the factory cap. An oil seal puller whipped out the leaky seal in seconds, then a couple of taps with a hammer and a bit of Blue Hylomar later we have an oil-tight engine. I should have done this months ago, a small puddle whenever you park is really annoying. On the basis of leaving well alone, I'll do the other one when it starts to drip.

Another thing I didn't know existed before I bought one...

For a mere £28 I have bought from eBay an OBD gauge. This little thing plugs into your OBD port (must be OBD II) and reads info from your car's sensors and the ECU. The sensors are pretty accurate as they are part of the emissions control system.
I've discovered that my temp gauge is about 5 degrees out, I have gained an oil temperature gauge, battery voltage meter and can view many more things that I haven't looked into as yet.
Speed doesn't seem to work but I suspect that it is measured from the ABS system so that's not surprising.

Verdict - Entertaining. A very good 28 quids worth.

Be aware the bluetooth(?) thing you plug into the car will draw power even when ignition off.

I do have a 'dongle' that operates on wifi with a mobile app, but this little gauge has a wire and a plug so hopefully no current drain. At the moment I have other drain issues, so my car gets its power cut on an evening as it only has a small battery.

Monitor gadget arrived and is proving quite useful - thanks Nick.

It confirms there is a small battery drain and after a bit of fuse-pulling I've pinned it down to the flasher/hazard circuit.
With everything switched off, as the battery is connected I can hear a couple of clicks and it turns out to be two relays in the Hazard warning circuit.
Hazards obviously have power to the relay with ignition off but don't understand why they are doing anything without the hazard switch being pressed, so it seems to be a wiring issue.
So, progress but quite how I sort this out remains to be seen......I'll keep you posted!

Well, the world shortage of Rover 100 expansion tanks and a split in one of the top inlet pipes of the one fitted to my car has brought forward the fitting of my Lotus Elise coolant alarm kit which was planned as a winter job.

After I took off the old tank and the original combination of a steel/fibreglass mount (which on my car was a bit messy), I decided that I wanted a better way to attach the new assembly to the engine cradle than an exhaust clamp. I found some nice cast alloy clamps with rubber inserts that are sold for fitting spotlights onto bull bars. These fit onto the 1.5" tube perfectly.

The new tank being much larger, a bit of care was needed to position everything so that it clears the rear clam, and once this was done I made a folded alloy upright to support it. I'd like to have made the upright a bit thicker but my guillotine and folder will only cope with 2mm sheet so I've strengthened it up a bit by riveting on an extra supporting plate and adding a swaged 'sight hole'. I may spray it black, but I do have a leaning towards polished alloy.

I've blocked off the small-bore hose that runs from the radiator back to the tank as there's only one top inlet on the new tank and that's needed for the pipe that runs from the cylinder heads.

Next job is to fit the electrics for the low coolant warning alarm.

I think I have finally tracked down the parasitic drain problem on my Libra.

Two relays click when I connect battery power.
One is the hazard flasher circuit, which makes sense to be always live.
The other is a tracker device fitted when the car was built. Its an Auto-Txt unit (company long since disappeared) and I reckon this is the cause of the problem.

The issue now is how to safely disconnect it as there seem to be quite a few wires involved, at least one of which goes to the immobiliser unit...

As a temporary measure I've fitted an auxiliary fuse box fed directly from the battery and run 12v via a 3amp fuse to the permanent 12v input on the radio. At least now when I use the isolator switch to disconnect the battery and stop the drain, the radio retains all its settings - still no central locking but it will have to do until I can figure out how to remove the tracker

I'll have to see if mine's got one of those.

The Eliseparts coolant level warning kit has proved to be a bit of a challenge and I have ended up doing things a different way, at least for now.
I fitted the new tank with sensor switch but couldn't get the electrical delay system to work (this is intended to stop the alarm flickering on and off when the coolant moves around during driving, making it necessary for the switch to be on for a period of time before activating the alarm).

In the Lotus Elise, the sensor and electrics are connected to a warning light on the Stack dashboard but it won't operate an independent LED or buzzer. After a bit of experimentation, I discovered that the switch float in the tank has so much buoyancy that it would probably never hit the bottom of a full tank and make contact, so I've wired it directly to a small battery pack and a 110db piezo buzzer. This seems to work a treat - I've driven around deliberately trying to slosh the water about and there's no alarm but if you push the float to the bottom of the tank it goes off.

Once I've run the car for a bit longer to make sure it's all ok, I'll wire it up properly.

The throttle cable snapped right at the nipple near the pedal the other day. Luckily I was only a few hundred yards away from home so I managed to set the revs at about 1500 and limp home by bending the inner cable.

I'd been meaning to have a look at it for a while. The action of the pedal was pretty awful, stiff with loads of play and jerkiness. Everything became clear when I took the pedal off (which fortunately is very easy as it bolts onto the outside of the pedal assembly and isn't an 'all out' job). The arm at the top of the pedal is quite thin steel and it had bent sideways and down so that it was pulling the cable at about 45 degrees. This had caused the snap and was also responsible for the awful action. I'm not sure why it had bent, but I straightened it up and ordered an MG TF pattern cable from Rimmers for £36 plus post (part number SBB000280P).

There's a plastic flange that seats into the MG pedal box which I had to trim right down so it would thread through into the cabin. Even with the flange cut back I had to enlarge the hole in the rear bulkhead and the two holes in the floor crossbeam a little so that it would pull through.

With a new, much lighter return spring on the pedal, adjusted up (about 1/3 left) and with pedal play removed, the accelerator action is now really light and smooth - an absolute revelation compared to before. I've also gained a few bhp as due to the bend in the arm, the old cable wasn't opening the throttle fully.

I feel your pain! I had my second throttle cable failure a couple of weeks ago. Same place, right by the pedal nipple. My pedal was only slightly bent. As you say, very thin steel. I've put the failure of the cable down to a bending/sawing action on the cable strands from the hook on the pedal as there is a degree of rotation of the nipple within its hook every time you push the the pedal. To prevent that in the future I drilled a hole in the pedal bell crank above the hook and attached a short flat of steel free to rotate via a pivot bolt. I then clamped the cable through a second hole in the new bit of steel using a bicycle type cable pinch bolt. This puts all of the rotation through the bolt rather than the cable and has the added advantage that the broken end of cable could be re-used (after a little trim to remove the frayed end) as there was enough left to go through the pinch bolt below the pedal. Careful alignment is required as the side of the pedal is quite close to the pedal box so a slight bend needs to be left in the bell crank of the pedal to allow the pinch bolt to clear.