Well lets see where were we. Ah yes, test driving.
It didnt go well. Started an intermittant miss, and as I was diagnosing (Cylinder 1, as it turned out) it started leaking. Ominous.
Then it went kaboom. Fully dropped a cylinder, clouds of white smoke out the back, coolant all over the shop.
NOT IDEAL. But hey ho, whaddya do... just crack on and fix it. As you can see in the image below the HG was absolutely hanging, three breach points in the fire rings and generally falling apart. I think when it was refitted it wasn;t retorqued after run-up, as the bolts didnt feel the right tightness when I undid them. When I examined the head after the skim, I found most of the small coolant channels were blocked with salt, the block had an inch of silt in it at the back too.
I had it apart pretty fast.
Dropped the head off for a skim, when that was done I cleaned all the deposits off the valves and other general cleaning related stuff, mating surfaces for manifolds and that.
After several attempts to extract the broken exhaust studs (2 of), I gave up and drilled them, and retapped. Fitted 9 shiny new studs.
Not budging!
Drilling & keeping it straight and level.
