Happy new year to one and all! I'm finally able to get going again for the first time in ages!! While I've had a few opportunities to play around with the darn car, nothing has really been happening since the last update - apart from waxoiling the whole of the underside of the car. Boring, messy and not really worth of an update to the site.
However, at xmas, I got a Bench Grinder to go with the polishing kit I got late last year, and it ROCKS! I've spent most of this time polishing bits of engine, and stripping & degreasing the engine and gearbox. While the engine and box are still together (for tidiness as much as anything), everything else has been taken off as much as possible. I've got a 5 litre container of degreaser (I had it delivered to work, and it can take some time explaining why you've received 5 litres of swarfega... *grin*), and used a large chunk of it removing the build up of stuff that had been on the engine since time began...
The pics above show the engine sitting on it's new "mobile engine support tool" (the trolley I found round the back of the flats) after being attacked with water, swarfega, a stiff brush, patience and elbow grease. It's a damned site cleaner than it was, and is prob ready to be painted up (probably not reasonable to polish it...).
The last pic above shows part of the intake prior to polishing (although i'd made a start before taking the pic), and the left hand pic below shows the process after the coarse mop was finished with. You can see in the second pic below the quality of finish the polishing kit has allowed me to achieve - you can see the detail of the phone I was taking the picture with in the reflection! And in the final pic, how the finished component compares with the rest of the intake bits. Some work ahead.
The thing I do need to start to focussing on is getting the engine mounted over the coming months. I do need to pull my finger out over this, and contact Pip to get these bits sorted. Hopefully this will be by the end of march, so we can see what else we have to deal with...