Then suddenly, roughly a year ago, He was fixed up and put on the road in all his glory by 'PurpleDasiy' - and to christen the event he decided to drop his load big style all over the motorway on his maiden voyage,.. so with a blown engine (conrod failiure - resulting in internal engine components exiting the gearbox case!) he was placed in the naughty corner and left to sulk for another year in the Cotswolds - so after umming an arrring - i finally got my *bottom* into gear and Took the plunge on saturday with the help of my Bestest trailer buddy
Two hour round trip and we'd collected him:
Got him back home and opened up all his doors and windows to have a good air out and took the carpets up. Initial inspections revealed a New rear subframe, New exhaust, Spotless interior, Immaculate boot floor with 0% rust, scuttles are fine, and the floors are solid - though there's a bad repair on the drivers side floor which i think i fancy sorting out but it isn't desperate and certainly wont be an MOT problem... other than that the only rust that needs sorting is a 4" section on the sill. Lots of moss but hardly any rust!!! yeeaaaay!
Still on his standard wheels + trim:
Original black grille, bumpers would have been too but have been over painted hammerite black at somepoint
Center clock dash configuration: i love it. So simple and uncluttered, I intend to keep this + a 52mm rev gauge and water temp also.
He came with a chrome grille ready to go on, so i'll proabably fit that at somepoint, but for the time being: he's going grill-less:
I have done some work on him already in the past two days : the electrical components on the current dead engine will be used on the new engine that i've got for it (a standard 998 that i'll fit a stage 1 (and a bit, wink wink) kit, onto) have been removed - the radiator is as new, as are the rest of the ancilleries - the only change i didn't bargain on was the distributor - it's a ducellior so i want to change this straight away for a lucas item (think i need a 59D4 ideally)
future plans? well you'll have to see.... But I have a brand new Cooper S disc set-up to go onÂ
which'll pave the way for some lovely 10" wheels i have,... and I fancy building my own roof rack Engine is now ready to lift out, worked on it for most of the day - the vast majority of it came undone easily but the engine mounts were right buggers! And i also adjusted the latches so the doors close fully and smoothly with no bangs or clunks.
Over the past few weeks I've also been working on a Nice little 998 engine build - So far the head has been:
dipped:
primered
and painted graphite grey, metallic:
Then refaced - de-coked - the valves were cleaned and lapped in gently:
I also took the oppurtunity to replace all the valve stem seals - which i bought along with the following little lot from minispares:
* Bulkhead fire+sound proofing kit, the original stuff
will make everything really tidy and quiet * Rod change selector oil leak fix kit - just a precaution that makes sense to do whilst the engine's out
* Kevlar reinforced Bypass hose - i have bought one of the conveluted rubber types but don't trust it.
* A nice 'Austin' Rocker cover sticker - bit of bling.
so the engine was then partially built up:
I also kept the Ducellior distributor and decided to re-condition it - it's better than new now and should perform just fine.
There's lots more progress already but it's all back dated so Ill update the rest later to bring you up to speed with where the project has lead over the last few weeks!!!!!
