I had put the flat battery on to charge for a few hours and had tested it at 12v so I chose to clean up the battery tray while the battery was out.

The battery box splintered on removal. I wasn’t that careful to be honest as it was already held together with gaffer tape and was brittle with age. However the tray (also plastic) was in good shape, although grubby. I removed it (four screws, one bolt ed bracket), and gave it a thorough wash before treating it liberally with plastic cleaner.

I used some Dirt Devil Muck Shifter to clean up the area under the battery tray, rinsed it, wiped it and sprayed it with WD40, then refitted the tray and battery. I wiped the battery over first and applied grease to the terminals.

The battery looks perfectly alright without the box am the cleaned up area looks much better. Unfortunately the remote control is still not working which was the whole idea of recharging the battery so I am still loving manually.

Think I will need to replace the remote battery or look up how to repeat the pairing process.

Under the car I tried and failed to remove the engine tray. On the face of it, a simple job. There are four large bolts and 9 small Torx screws. Two of the large bolts came out nice and easy. The other two at the back just spun around. An internet tip showed how you could grip the shank with long nosed pliers but this didn’t work for me. Four of the Torx screws came out easily but the remaining ones wouldn’t budge at all, they were rock solid. As I attempted to turn each one there was that unmistakable ‘give’ of a rusty screw head rounding off. Damn! I squirted some WD40 but I’m going to have to use every trick in the book to get these off, including freeze spray which was effective on the MG.