Wed 25th September 2013

At last I called Jaz to be informed by Claire (Steve’s Mrs) that enough bits had been returned to allow engine reassembly to soon commence. Fantastic news so I went up to Jaz a couple of days later to have a look at the component parts before they became embedded in the built-up engine.

It was really good to see the previously worn and dirty bits back from cleaning, machining and refinishing. The cylinder heads had required new valves throughout which was more expense but not a surprise given the general state of the engine and its component parts. New valve guides and one valve seat had also been fitted along with new valve springs and all necessary shims.

Steve’s donated crankshaft looked fantastic with really fine attention to detail in the teardrop incisions in the bearings either side of the oil holes to more efficiently allow oil to flow over the bearing.

Steve showed me the plastic bags full of immaculately re-plated nuts, bolts, throttle linkages etc. plus chromated timing covers and turbo cam covers. He showed me the new camshafts  ground to his own specification from solid steel billets by Kent Cams. It was interesting to compare the different lobe profiles with those of the old and pretty chewed-up units.

So – pretty well everything there and just needing Dave the engine builder to come back to work to put the engine back together.