Engine Build Part 1

Monday 7th July 2003 - Booked new garage, bought new parts

Booked the car club garage today, put in for an initial 2 weeks starting on Tuesday, this should allow me to move all the bits out of the garage for whenever we have to be out. It would appear that we have had a light reprieve for the garage move. From what I have been told, we have till the end of the month at least. Although this would be enough time to do the engine change, if anything went wrong it would leave me with a massive move bill at the end of the month.

Ordered all the new engine parts today, the bill came to a massive £800. I'm feeling slightly short pocketed at the mo. On the shopping list: b/e and mains shells, oil pump, duplex timing gears and chain, followers, roller tip rockers, gearbox gasket, head gaskets, engine gaskets, poly bush set, recon g/box, neg camber brackets front and rear, 6 blade fan, cam lube, head studs, top engine steady, fuel pressure regulator and a high capacity water pump.

They didn't have any rings for the pistons I had so they got left off the list for now.

Tuesday 8th July 2003 - Moved into garage

First day in the new garage today. Using the car club does mean that the bodywork repairs will have to take a back seat to the engine change, but with the reoccurring oil pressure problems I'm not so bothered.

Dropped off many of the engine bits to the garage, Dave helped giving lifts where possible as the mini was left outside the garage. Also borrowed a valve spring compressor from him. I had sourced some valve grinding paste from the club shop along with the tool to do the job. With the engine parts on order all I needed to do was finish cleaning the parts and get things ready for building.

One thing that we decided to buy was an engine stand, this proved invaluable even though we bought the really cheap one. It didn't fit properly and I had to source some bizarre bolts to affix the engine to the stand, but it was still a key piece of kit. It not only allowed me to rotate the engine 360° it took the block off the bench which released a lot of space which was quickly taken up. If we had bought a better stand it would have been much more beneficial and most probably worth the extra money.

After spending 10 awkward minutes trying to fix the engine to stand it became apparent that the bores would need honing. Apparently the kits were available from Halfords, so a kit would be sourced ASAP. This is something I hadn't planned upon.

Wednesday 9th July 2003 - Found rings, lapped and built head

I had a massive result today in the form of finding the correct rings for the pistons. Since I wasn't going to do a re-bore, only a hone, I went for standard sized rings. With any luck this is all I will need to finish off the engine rebuild and get it in the car. A quick trip to Halfords followed, some engine paint, exhaust paint and a honing tool were bought. I moved the mini into the garage in the evening as well.

Some engine parts had turned up in the afternoon, so I began with rebuilding the head. Mark was helping me. We got the valves lapped into their respective seats. Something that would have taken me a couple of evenings to do on my own, became something that was completed in a single evening with the pair of us working on it. In the confusion ordering so many parts from one supplier I had got the number of valve collets mixed up. Instead of ordering 8 pairs I had mistakenly ordered only 4, so the head was only half rebuilt. After getting so far, it was disappointing to end on such a bum note.