Today was my last day being involved with Rascal Engine Repair Week, leaving the capable Frank to finish re-building the engine over the coming days. RERWeek may now have to be RERFortnight by the time it reaches its MOT.
Frank spent today reading up on the engine in the
Haynes manual, whilst I did some painting and did some reconditioning work on the cylinder head.
The engine block is now a lovely WBHB yellow (as long as no-one actually holds up a Pantone swatch book to it), thanks to two coats of Hammerite. This pretty much finishes the paintwork, as I'm leaving the aluminium castings self-coloured (possibly polished if I get the time).
I'm sure the engine will only look nice until I drive it, but if I'm making the engine nice on the inside, I may as well get some nice pictures of it looking nice on the outside!
After buying a really poor valve spring compressor from Halfords I set to work taking the cylinder head apart. The rocker shaft retention screws are Philips head, and were in so tight they just rounded, however careful I was. So I ended up drilling them out, and plan to replace them with torx head screws. After removing the leftovers of the bolts the shafts came out with some gentle application of hammer, allowing me to use my nicely made tray to hold the parts of each valve assembly.
Then came taking the valves out. The valve spring compressor was a piece of junk, ironically bought because it would work better than bodging one from a G-cramp. We ended up using a socket to extend the head around the stuff that was in the way, and after a couple of valves I was taking them out at record speed (ish).
After more fun with the pressure washer I lapped in the valves, had a gammon sandwich and came back to Uxbridge, ready to play lighting desks tomorrow...
[The astute reader may have noticed a lack of promised cat surprise thing. This may end up being a #caturday) job]
