A productive couple of hours work resulted in releasing the exhaust manifold from the manifold without any cutting. I just undid the nuts and pried the joint apart. It was a bit fiddly as the nuts had to be undone from underneath the car and I had to manoeuvre the manifold and use different extensions and jointed socket connections, but it actually came apart okay. I removed the exhaust which is in okay condition and could be re-used. After lunch I finished off removing the fuel tank which I had started a couple of weekends ago. There were three fiddly nuts left to remove. I had to hold the nut at the bottom and use socket on the boot floor which needed a bit of stretching. It was a hard slog, but I managed it. I then tipped petrol into two cans and left the remainder of petrol in the tank to fuel the lawn mower over the summer. I was then just packing up my tools when my neighbour’s son (he’s about 60) popped over to have a look at the car. In explaining various things, I mentioned that the thermostat housing was stuck. He had a bit of a poke with a screwdriver and diagnosing silicone as having jammed it on, her simply gouged it out and lifted the housing off. I had spent an hour with a hammer recently failing to remove it. ‘Easy when you know how he said….’ He recommended CAMS (Clive the car restorer) who is based on Cricketts lane industrial estate. A good day of progress.