SO I collected the car 2 months ago, and the shippers smashed up my gearknob. The clutch slave and master was leaky and the dang there is a water leak that may or may not come from the perishing sunroof/window seals. the previous owner had probably used it as a winery hack with the amount of dust and dog hair in the car. mostly cleaned it up over the past couple of months, but it could still be better. Battery then went flat due to trying to open the deteriorating sunroof, so got a battery charger and refurbished the battery, which was great! the existing gearknob on the other hand is from a MGF with a rubber gland to keep it in place.
fast forward to last week, we got the clutch master and slave cylinders from Latvia, (NZD180 delivered! thanks eBay!) and switched it out yesterday, had to get a couple of acquaintances to help out, as crawling under anything now is just not feasible.
will need to get down to chasing the leak now, and rebuilding the sunroof. and hope and pray it passes the WOF coming up in January.