Head's back, but no extractors = no scrutineering.

Today's opening shot is brought to you by the rear of Booger Mobile...

Damian headed up to the shed to wait for Dave to arrive, and attend to some preliminary work, such as removing the old radiator.  This is the water that drained from the radiator, along with a layer of sludge in the bottom of the bucket...  Perhaps the radiator wasn't as healthy as it appeared...

Out with the old, and prepping the new!!

In his travels, Damian headed to the auto store to buy some engine paint.  While there, he bought a replacement positive lead for the battery (to go to the starter motor).  The old one is on the right - the new one on the left...  Perhaps this was the cause of the clickety click click of the starter motor???

The radiator was removed, and the car dropped down off the engine stands for easy reaching by Dave!

Dave arrived with the repaired head...  It was welded up inside the exhaust port that you can see there... as well as repaired up and over the top...

More patching up - the poor old head must surely be feeling loved now!!  The repair looks pretty...

But you can see how much needed to be fixed...

The new blue engine paint wasn't the same brand as the original paint (noone stocks the other brand any longer - typical!), so it's slightly a different colour...  Noone will notice though!!

Couple of coats and it's ready to rock and roll!!

The block was cleaned down ready for the new head...

Dave also checked out the new electronic distributor...  it fit nicely!!  :-D

The head gasket and head were sat on, with the bolts helping to keep each lined up.

Dave puts a little oil under the head of each bolt...  why?  Who knows... but apparently it's important!!

Time to spin down the bolts on the head.  If you've never seen it done before, check out the short video below as Dave shows us how it's done!!






And the head's bolted down.  Time to tension it up!

Next goes on the rocker shaft...

Followed by the tappet cover!  The carby is being left off at this stage, as it will be one less thing to avoid when the extractors go back on.

Speaking of the extractors... where are they?  Turns out that they haven't been finished yet (getting their heat proof coating), so sadly this means Booger Mobile will be missing scrutineering...  So close, yet so far away!!

Next step was to reverse flush the engine.  Booger Mobile was pushed out of the shed, then a hose shoved into the block where the top hose connects.

Lots of water comes out...

As you can see, the water goes in at the top, and out the bottom radiator hose at the bottom!  This is to wash out any gunge that may have been trapped in the engine from the old radiator.

On goes the newly adjusted white fan...

Then Booger Mobile was pushed back into the shed.  Time for Dave to head off (he had another car to go work on), while Damian set about installing the new radiator.

Through the magic of the interwebs... here it is!!

Shiny and new...  hopefully it will keep the engine cooler!!

Damian had to drill some holes to attach the top shroud (to keep the air flowing through the radiator), and having noone there to take pics, managed to set the timer to catch an action shot!!

And the shroud is attached...

So Booger Mobile's engine is back together, pending the extractors coming back from getting their heat proof coating...

As it said earlier in the blog, sadly this means that Damian can't take Booger Mobile to scrutineering on Sunday...  an awesome effort was put in by Dave to get the head ready in time, only to have something out of their control jump in and cause havoc...  typical!!