The journey continues!
Phil finished the car (polished too!) and got it recovered back to Stu last week, who then worked with Jay to get the thing mapped for running in. All happy - car was making 10 psi and I have a 5k limit in place. They spent quite a bit of time getting the tune nice! I collected it on Saturday... First impressions - jesus the brap feels amazing. I don't know what I was expecting to feel, but it in/ around the car feels similar to an aggressively-cammed V8 chopping away! Driveability wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had in mind, my clutch probably helps there, there's definitely a buck to drive around but it didn't annoy me - which is good! Genuinely mega happy with the work from XDR & Rotor Torque! Great quality work, great progress & I was kept updated (which is massive for me!).
What happened next was interesting... I planned to drive up to Loughborough to see some family and put some miles on the car. However, after about 40 miles, I saw a puff of smoke and thought I could smell brakes... Carried on for a min, then decided to get off the motorway, at which point I noticed my brake light was on, and I was honestly thinking maybe I've got a stuck calliper, handbrake stuck on or whatever - then the pedal went very soft and I thought oh god, fluid problems... Saw a fair amount of smoke front right, looked under and saw fire! Ran for my extinguisher & put out what I saw from underneath. Stu mentioned he noticed my bonnet cable had melted and I might need to use pliers to open, but luckily it opened no issues! I think there was a small flame on the DP/ near my blanket as I remember caking it in powder, but honestly it's a panic blur now

. At first I thought my blanket caught alight, as I'd heard that was possible. I ran out of powder so started cooling things down with the water had, things were pretty damn hot... Once the adrenaline left I realised the heat caused the brake fluid reservoir to dump fluid...
It does make me wonder why this didn't happen on the setup before though. Stu did mention it was running hotter and that he'd recommend a lower temp stat, I was seeing 95 degrees in traffic, which is more than I saw on the old setup. But my collection journey was fairly intense, warm ish day, fair amount of traffic, then a bit of M25 stop-start where I imagine the temps around the turbo kept climbing. The master cylinder was also new - maybe poorer quality? Possibly a combination of stuff going against me...
Next steps
Got the car recovered to Stu who is going to give the bay a clean, sort the master mess, change the stat, sort the bonnet cable & add some more heat management. My task is to sort the bonnet, which is where I'm stuck. There aren't a lot of vented bonnets that I like the look of, and I don't have the money right now for the one I like. So I'm planning to grab a standard bonnet and think of a duct/ vent solution that doesn't make me feel sick, is functional & is reasonably rainproof... FDs aye!!