Regular readers will know that input to this blog has been sporadic due to a house move. The downsizing from our 4 bed farm house with 2 51ft long barns to a small 3 bed bungalow has taken about 9 exhausting months but it has finally happened. the move itself was a disaster, thanks to my ill advised decision to use AnyVan instead of a professional and organised house moving company. I wouldn't normally name and shame any company but what they did was entirely unacceptable, more on that shortly. I won't have time for any of my normal project type stuff on cars or bikes but I will do a bit on converting the double garage in to a workshop. It's piled high with stuff at the moment, I couldn't move in there initially but it's slowly getting there already, I boarded the rafters so I could get some stuff out the way quickly. I need to put a consumer unit in there and then wire in circuits for my tools and lighting - it had just one single energy saving bulb in there that was about as bright as David Lammy.

I have had quite a few messages recently enquiring as to whether I am still about, many folk have noticed that I haven't done many updates at all over the last 2 or 3 months. It's all down to this house move really, it has taken up a hell of a lot of time and has had a massively negative impact on my mental health. I am holding it together just about but at times have found it hard. Anyway, this blog isn't about that, this bit is to just update on some projects that I started talking about some time back and seemingly did no more on.

When I first got my V8 3.5 10.5:1 compression engine the valve guides were all a bit worn and were letting a fair bit of oil in to the combustion chambers - not a good thing. I did a fair bit of reading up and found there were numerous different heads available, perhaps not too surprising when you think how long this engine has been in production and how many people have used it. Generally speaking they have got better and better over the years with the very latest ones having bigger valves, better port shaping, hardened seats, seals on both inlet and outlet and wasted valve stems. The combustion chamber size has also been decreased from the 36cc of the early units to something like 29cc of the later ones. You have to watch you don't go too high on the compression ratio as that will give pre ignition or pinking so if using a later head on early pistons you must use composite gaskets, which are thicker than the thin steel ones used in earlier applications.

I always thought that we would never leave our current property, it was our dream home with massive outbuildings and in a near perfect location. Just recently though it has become too much for us, the business has failed, it doesn't make sense to be here any more. No doubt about it, the time has come to look for something a lot smaller, more manageable and nearer other people, we never see anybody out here because nobody is near.

I had an hour or so yesterday to have a look at the Rover 4.0 V8 I bought while under the influence of Stella and made some interesting discoveries. While the block is still similar in many ways to my 1973 3.5 litre example it's clear to see just how much things have moved on from there. It's now a digital fuel injected world, the days of carbs and mechanical distributors are long gone, clearly swapping 50 year old technology for 20 year old technology is challenging. Pretty much everything will need to be changed to match the engine including the cooling system, fuel system - it needs a much higher pressure pump and a return pipe running back to the tank - the exhaust needs lambda sensor take offs on both sides, the list is quite extensive. Even small things like an engine management light need to be considered. It came without a flywheel I have bought one so I can crank the engine for testing at least but I have since discovered my engine needs a different crank position sensor as the engine came out of an automatic and they are different. 

Very little done this last month, it's amazing how much work is involved getting rid of 15 years of accumulated junk - much of it very large lumps. Definitely getting there though so thought a few hours of relaxation working on the car would be a good thing. It was all of 5 minutes before I realised that tidying up and getting rid of stuff I definitely wouldn't need any more would ensure that my day off would be anything but relaxing. Can't find a bloody thing now and every 5 minute job is taking forever. The first thing I couldn't find was my reel of solder - the reel that I have had since I was 17 years old but still has plenty on it. I found it eventually, hiding behind a can of paint on the shelf, exactly where I had put it a couple of weeks back. Sadly I had put the soldering iron somewhere different - not even in the same workshop. The problem with this sort of thing is that I then spend ages looking and while doing so find things that I haven't seen for a while that need cleaning / playing with. Before I know it 3 or 4 hours have been wasted and I have completely forgotten what it was I was trying to do in the first place. I decided that the only way I was going to get around this nonsense was to do a list and stick to it.