Rover V8 section

So the moment came to take the V8 apart. Spanners, torque wrenches, screwdrivers - oh, and lots and LOTS of different sized hammers found their way into the garage and were used judiciously (and sometimes fairly injudiciously) and slowly the V8 revealed its guts.

It's probably fair to say that it was a bit of a horror story. I had thought for a very fleeting moment of just hooking up the engine 'as was' and seeing what happened. This was probably more to do with lack of confidence in what I was about to do (i.e. rebuild an engine for the first time ever) than it was any kind of real considered thought process, but I shudder to think what would have happened if I HAD done that. Rather than explain any more, the pictures really do speak 1000 words here.

Water in the bores
Rocker cover

Head

Rocker

Pitted valve
This is one extremely ill engine. It's not pinin,' it's passed on! This engine is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late engine! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its mechanical processes are of interest only to historians! It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-ENGINE! (with sincere apologies to Python....)

Actually once the whole thing had been taken apart, (and that is an extremely glib statement which hides no end of grief trying to free rusted parts, undo bolts, tap out stripped threads and separate bits that appeared to have been super-welded together), the overall picture was not as bad as it at first seemed. Most amazingly of all (and I still don't understand this) the piston liners weren't pitted. I looked for damage, I really did - but there wasn't any. Amazing.

A friend knew a mechanic who had a washer - quite literally a dishwasher, but for car parts. I just threw everything into the washer and waited for what came out. What was useless was binned, what was cleaned was thoroughly checked and used/serviced. Then a large order went into RPi engineering (Chris Crane - see acknowledgements section - is a great bloke who gave me loads of help) and Rimmer Brothers and I waited. The fun was about to begin.

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