Bruce thinks that when the distributor blew it may have knocked everything out of sync and caused a very small crack then - hence the tapping, which started after we replaced it, and it's probably sheer luck that it's lasted so long since then as it easily does a few hundred miles a week.
MAY have sourced a replacement though from Holland but I won't get it til the end of the month if I go with it. Got a lot of thinking to do now... It'd be great to just have something economical but I just hate the feeling of being driven rather than driving. I detest power steering too, the non-feeling you get going round a corner, to me power steering usually just feels like serious understeer and freaks me out
