Wake up forum. I done some stuff.
Finally got some decent weather and no other distractions or excuses. I faffed about yesterday and sorted out the shed, post-flood, but screwed a few things back on. I wanted to do the valve clearances and get as much stuff screwed back on ready to fire up after I've made a new exhaust downpipe. I had a few problems with the valve height because the engine block has been machined down and the head has been skimmed, plus the valves stand higher than the standard ones. The way you work round this is to use taller rocker posts. I have two sets of steel rocker posts and had to take them to work to measure up and pick the taller set. Some of the adjusters were a bit loose so I swapped out for the best set of rockers, but found the shaft badly worn so I swapped that over to the better one as well. Did all that stuff yesterday and bolted it back on.
The engine has sat for probably close to 6 months now and the weather has been properly damp and horrible. No oil in it because I anticipated having this done and running by last July. Probably shouldn't be any surprise that it had seized, so I had to make up a decent lever to stick on the crank pulley to free it:
Had to take the rad back out and the fan off, but it's not seized now. It just pinged and now turns smoothly with no scraping noises, so I think it's not corroded inside or anything.
This is a steel rocker post, in case you've never seen one. Exciting:
And this is me staging a photo to make it look like I'm in the middle of checking the clearances when in fact I had finished the job:
So this is where I'm up to. 90% the way there, missing a few bits and need to buy a few new bits. The temperature sender is a different size in this head so I need to figure out what one I need. My rocker cover bolts aren't long enough for the thick alloy cover so I need new ones and I'll get cap heads instead of the useless slotted screws that Ford persisted to use. No idea where the other ones have ended up. This is what it's looking like:
Got my new alternator fitted:
And got the new radiator fitted in AGAIN:
Next update: last bits, exhaust, and hopefully fire it up.