70. The day I have been dreading..!!

On Sunday just gone I spent the day with my wife on the Isle of Sheppey at one of my wife's friends birthday bash, I did this in the vain hope that I could forget the fact that at the same time Steve and Dave would be taking the dragsters engine apart to see how much damage there really is.

So where to start? well I got reports through the day from Bedford, the first from Steve was to tell me that he had sent Dave to go buy some milk so they could have a cuppa, the engine was slowly stripped......

The valve train, rockers, lifters etc were checked and found to be ok, unfortunately so were the head gaskets, so there goes my hope of an easy cheap fix!!!!.

Then it was time to remove the heads, this is where we found stuck rings Steve rang me to tell me that when he looked down the bores it looked like the pistons were all over to one side..hence stuck rings well that explains why we were burning oil but! at the same time there is evidence of bore wash so it looks like we had both extremes happening at the same time, running far too rich at lower revs and far too lean at the top end..

So a new set of rings required and a new set of head gaskets and a light hone is on the books, but we also need a new flex plate as it appears that our old one has ended up like me and lost a couple of teeth and the rest have been worn down..

Tomorrow I have to phone Alky Digger in the states and sort out our new tunnel ram injection system and BTE and try and get a replacement torque converter...bloody hell does it ever end???

Oh and when the flex plate and torque converter had been taken of we  found this damage on the rear engine plate...

So was this caused by the missing teeth from the flex plate or parts of the starter motor when it expired or.....was it from the 8mm spanner we found that had been rattling around down there for a wee while..that would explain the strange noise I could hear on the last couple of runs LOL....

To Be Continued......................honest!