After nursing the little smurf back to the Adventure before Dementia HQ, we realised that we needed to inject some serious fairy dust into the Ligier to ensure it would be capable of surviving the huge task required.

At the workshop we increased the size of the carburetor jets, lightly ported the cylinder heads, side gapped the plugs, fitted a straight-through exhaust and installed a larger air filter. We’re sure these performance modifications will give us a better bang for our buck and significantly increase the number of unicorns in our little roller skate. Of course it’s also highly possible that it’ll do the complete opposite and make it much less reliable.

With the engine taken care of, we thought it would be a good idea if we were able to stop our little tinkerbell! We decided to replace over 25 feet of brake pipes throughout, re-assembled and fitted new pads to the front calipers and topped up the tank with DOT 4. Also just for a good measure, and to increase the maneuverability of our urban bus, we fitted a hydraulic handbrake so we can turn on a sixpence.

Now the car is running and stopping better, we needed to slightly adjust the interior of the Ligier, so we ripped it out. Why? Well, we wanted to carry on with Ligier F1 heritage and further lighten our inadequate brum to help that well-tuned 2-cylinder thoroughbred pull us along as fast as possible.

With the interior gone, we found another critical issue. The standard horn on the Ambra was about as good as a Stevie Wonder’s sunglasses, so back to the drawing board we went once more. After hours on the line scanning eBay we found an ideal upgrade: 170 decibels of Hong Kong’s finest Dukes of Hazzard style horn kit which was sold to us as a musical horn set to get past the UK dB laws. Once we fitted all five of Nelly’s trunks to improve our redundant horn and had our ears bent from Aaron’s brother’s girlfriend for noise pollution, we had one last major task.

It suddenly dawned on us. How are we going to carry luggage and equipment in a car that is just over 1.25 metres long? After lots of scientific research and head scratching, we decided to build a custom roof rack that would fit on the egg-shaped roof, which we’ve now identified as being made from dried yak’s milk.

With 90% of the modification completed, or bodged, we have the small job of completing the wiring before we can begin the first road test. Neither of us are electricians, but how hard can it be?