Highs and lows

Well I last let the project mumbling and grumbling to my self. Today I researched allsorts of engine re building stages, did lots of checking, oh and may have split the engine and box. My word the block is still bloody heavy! There was a very brief moment I thought 2 things may happen, A I might follow through, B is my back really going to take this and what happens if I get half way and it does go when I left my steel toe cap boots inside! Luckily I managed it.

Splitting the block was a bit of a big thing for me, as I said, never gone that far before and all to aware of the need for specialist tools to re assemble quite a lot of the parts exposed if they did have to come off. After a lot of checking the gear box was given the all clear and after a massive amount of checking, thinking and then double checking with the father in law I have gone for the far easier option and going to chance the crank with a bit of a gnarled end. We are convinced through trial fitting of the clutch parts and the mechanics of the assembled parts we can get it to work.
With that finally decided, I could then actually do something other than price up a vast amount of parts! The bottom half of the conrod was taken apart and the piston pushed out to check the piston rings, this was on one of the pistons that had very quickly lost the wd40 we sprayed into it when the head came off. A slight tell tale of something wrong with the bore or rings, the bores looked good so as the block was split I had to suck it in and go for it. Well it all checked out good, good rings and all free also crank bearings all good as well.

So after a very slow reluctant start today we seem to have ended the day on a high, well apart from the growing list of parts in the shopping basket. I seem to have forgotten about engine and subframe mounts let alone the clutch kit, oil seals, gasket set for engine re assembly oh and a clutch slave cylinder as it will probably be useful at some point! But this will make a fairly well overhauled engine and better play ball aka no arsing me around for at least 10 000 miles ...you would have thought ? It is a mini though, so expect the unexpected.
Looks like I have a few days of cleaning gaskets off, booooo