shizzl

an extra set of hands to help push would be good

ill keep you posted

Possibly if I can find a house to live in that can store my shit aswell

is your commer a 1725? was it the carb angle that took up the room for the filter in the end?

today I decided to freeze my buts off in the garage. cleaned the block and moving parts.. reinstalled the pistons and crank assembly to check bearing oil clearances. I used plastigage for a rough measurement. All mains were well within spec, but 2 of the 5 have some grooving, there is no marking on the crank journals though. Big ends are basically at brand new specs top compression ring end gap is also at the min clearance range however a 2nd comp/scraper ring is broken aswell as 1 oil control ring. my guess is that this engine got a rebuild no more than 20,000kms ago, but has sat for a considerable amount of time. a couple of the frost plugs look new, where the remainder are heavily corroded. Now the big task at hand is to locate a set of +60 rings, big end and mains bearings, full gasket/seal kit, head kit etc. in the meantime I will plonk the head back on the block and make a start on the carb manifold and the headers. while I was looking over this block today I noticed many ports in the block for oil and water galleries, would be simple enough to plumb a turbo into this block if I were ever keen to see the limits of it..probably not very high.

@Cjrh welcome along... now have a look at coming to this good old shindig

checked over the front calipers today, pistons wouldnt move back in very well, cracked the nipple open, both slid in piece of piss... guessing the hoses may have collapsed inside or there is an issue at the master or bias block.. have also figured out a way to link the 2 choke controls together, so will sort that next weekend. and after setting the float height and syncing the carbs yesterday she fired up oh so sweet today, bloody bonus for carbs without accelerator pumps

So today I finally finished the shock insert conversion using an E30 insert. The only mod needed was to add a 6mm spacer in the base of the shock tube, and fit a 19x2.5mm tube to the shoulder of the spear. I added a washer at the base of the top hat bearing shoulder, slid the 19x2.5 tube over the shoulder ( this is a bush for a tight fit for the top hat bearing). Then the top hat, washer and top nut as usual.. ( I used a wheel nut for now to test to make sure it all worked, will replace with nylocs now). The spring is a standard MK1 escort coils on narrow/cone perch hunter shocks. My other set are wide/flat perch shocks, for those I will use a MK2 coil. E30 318 insert is black, hunter is blue. Test drive felt good, coils are fairly soft though, could always fit lowered MK1 coils and will be more than captive. Next job is to find some M16 ford calipers and fit those as these calipers have always dragged, plus it will allow for a vented disc conversion later on with a caliper spacer kit. I also used my newly acquired carb sync and balanced the carbs. One piston is being a dick and not centering the needle perfectly, but the sync is good, throttle response is good, but is still rich on idle as they are not the correct needle I need.. I have 6J needles where I need 6R needles and blue springs. Now that it's back together I can start cleaning up the spare motor, post matching the bike carb manifold plate, make the manifold, get the head tested and maybe new valve seats and guides etc. Clean and inspect the block, hone and paint etc. Then send the cam away for a rearing before engine assembly.

That was a pretty amazing moment when the heater actually started working, thank fuck cos it was Hella cold that day

+1 for HPC, I had all of my bolt ons on the pinto turbo done, and my entire 12a was coated aswell, very hard wearing, good for heat etc too

sorted...turns out it is a 32mm which I actually have.. block is completely stripped, the bores have very recent looking cross hatching in them/very low kms since the build.. cam looks brand new with no lobe wear, lifters have no marks on them.. the piston skirts look new although with some minor running marks as expected.. Im picking that this was fully rebuilt, run for a bit then pulled out.. I will most likely just get the block super clean and paint it, then clean and reassemble the bottom end. work out what the cam is if its stock or slightly tickled. then I will move onto the head, open up the combustion chamber similar to a Holbay or Marathon spec, then work out how much I will need to take off the head to get the comp ratio where it needs to be. will set the bike carbs up on this motor, and if it all goes to poop then not much loss at all

so according to an internet barry specialist what I have here is a 69 MKII engine with oversize pistons pushing it out to 1789cc, this block is a 5 bearing crank so is the better block to work. need a socket to get the crank bolt off, so I can access the cam to see if that is stock, and then send it away.. Free is good

So while the family is away up north ive been bored shitless and trolling FB marketplace.. stumbled across a local who is trying to offload some shit from his old ladies house.. turned out he has a hunter motor.. contacted him, went round to check it out, looked like a pile (standard british OEM spec).. looks to be either from a 68 hunter or a gazelle or one of the other many Rootes powered contraptions.. Asked what he wanted for it, he said "just want it gone".... choice free motor for spares. got it home and started pulling it apart...plans are to bore it out and put in my +40 pistons, bike carbs and get the cam reground, and port match the head etc... then..... got the head off, scraped off some of the carbon build up (stromberg lube) off the pistons to see what they were.. they all look relatively fresh, and have 1.50 mm stamped on them fucking score!!! Bores look mint, valves dont look too bad either.. and another carb to add to the collection