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1975 Renault 6TL - the fine line between brave and stupid

My brother reminded me that somewhere in the scant history that did come with the car that bearings were mentioned so I got the folder out and had a look tonight. Maybe it will help shed some light on potential problem, though I doubt it, there's not much to go on. Let's see if I can do some detective work with the tiny amount of info I have.

The V5C tells me that the number of previous owners is 2

The Renault warranty card tells me the following:
First owner's name
First owner's address in Llanelli
Delivery date: 8/4/75
Registration: HEP920N (this confirms the warranty card was at least originally for this car, so I assume the info on it is too)

18/4/75
Pinged Hill Garage (stamped, this lines up with the old sticker in the tailgate window)
First service at 571 miles

Note: owner I bought the car from acquired the car 20/02/1976 according to the V5. I have a copy of the V5 too from this change of ownership "duplicate issued as lost" is written on it and the car is listed as green. I wonder if that means it was painted at just a year old or, more likely, the blue bodyshell was a later replacement with the green panels being the originals to the car, meaning it was originally that nice metallic green. Who knows?

28/04/1976 - 8,200 miles
(no information written down)

10/1978 - 45,000 miles
New piston rings, bearings, clutch, etc.

08/1978 - 51,900 miles
(no information written down)
Note: I think they meant to write 1979 but wrote 1978 instead, it would make more sense.

I also have tax discs for 1984, 1985, 1988, 1992 and 1993.

There's a single piece of paper with notes on fuses, wiring and illegible hints of column/stalk problems. It might not even be for this car, though I suspect it is because it does look like it's been rewired front to back at some point, the loom doesn't look original.

From that I can see the first owner only kept the car for a year and did a reasonable 8,000 miles.
The second owner then whacked a massive 18,400 per year for two years leading to the car needing piston rings, bearings, clutch and whatever else etc is! I've never actually paid attention to the mileage figures but that's pretty amazing, I can't imagine driving the 6 that much over that short a period, it's no wonder it needed work.
I expect the next and last entry was supposed to be a 1979, it's the same handwriting, even looks like it was the same biro, and is a more reasonable 7,000ish miles.
After that there's nothing at all to hint at what was going on so it's anybody's guess.

The 5 digit odometer currently reads 32,000. I'm going to assume that it's actually 132,000, that seems quite likely. I'm also going to assume the car came off the road in 1993 which is when the last tax disc ran out. So that's 80,100 miles covered over 15 years, divide one by the other and it's an average annual mileage of 5,340 which is entirely believable.

That really tells me the car was probably run until it wouldn't run anymore. It had signs of head gasket failure and it clearly has some bottom end issues. The engine waterways were full of sediment and the oil was horrible old sludge that hadn't been changed in an age. So, more than anything, that's probably the cause of whatever the problem is.
 
Right so, we have the Renault back at home now rather than at the unit. This is really useful as I now have all the bits of the car in an easy to get to location next to internet access so I can tinker or do larger jobs at my leisure much easier. No more the 8 mile round trip just to do a quick five minute job! Today, Mike and I pushed the Renault out onto the drive so we could have a bit of a sort of the garage and I could get the hosepipe into the rear arches to clean them out properly, the water pressure at the unit is very low so I couldn't do a great job there. Front arches proved to be quite clean as I'd had excellent access when the wings were off to really scrub everything properly.



I wasn't really expecting quite as much mud as I found.

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What was nice was discovering just how solid everything really is. The trailing arms and some of the inner wings could do with a lick of paint and some protection to keep things this way but it's all remarkably good. Check out my green rear shocks that were previously just mud coloured.

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I pulled out the strips of aluminium that had been used as mud guards. I haven't binned these as they'd actually done a remarkably good job of keep the mud out of the upper reaches of the rear arches, there was barely anything above them.

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Repeat the hosing and scrubbing on the other side, remove yet more mud.

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Same story this side. You can see the metallic blue of the bodyshell (which I'm now fairly certain is a replacement) and just a hint of the car's original metallic green on the trailing arm mount.

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Again, the inner arch is in very good shape. What's confusing is that there appears to be no repairs or rust holes in the inner arch but there are substantially sized patches rivetted to the inside of the bodyshell. I had thought this was a single-skinned piece, perhaps it isn't?

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Filler neck looked quite new compared to everything else, I wonder if it was replaced or if they just last really well.

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After all the gunge and sludge had been flushed out as best I could we pushed the car down the drive to clean up and I put the other screw into the driver's door arm rest so it stays in place when you use it now.

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I also found out that the missing switch is for the rear screen demister. So I'll need one of those since mine appears to be wired up, there's just no switch present.

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I wondered if there's supposed to be a cap or a plug for the trailing arm mount. I flushed all the mud and rust flakes I could out of the hole. Everything appears quite solid just devoid of paint. I'll get this area cleaned up and given a coat of something to keep it solid, I've been told this is one of the main weak points on these cars and I'd like to keep mine as solid as I can. They look a bit flakey in the photograph but they're really not, I gave them a good poke and it's just the remnants of underseal, mud and detritus stained with some surface corrosion.

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No expense spent on the one not-Michelin tyre. How cheap must this have been in the mid-90s? Marshal 777

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The tracking on the front is off, I think this is because there's no engine or gearbox in there. Lots and lots of toe in and positive camber which can make the car difficult to push to begin with. All the hubs spin quite freely though the brand new brakes on the front definitely need to bed in a bit.

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Replaced the bolts fixing the ball joints to the wishbones that had got bent and installed them the correct way around. These are high tensile steel so should be fine. I was surprised the brake dust shields were still servicable as they're made from wafer thin steel.

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The floor is remarkably sound, well undersealed for the most part and relatively free of mud. This is a good thing.

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I have enough space in the garage to walk all the way around the car and work on the engine. I'd forgotten about my little blue trolley, it's ideal for moving the engine about. Didn't get as far as doing any measuring today, it was all about getting the Renault settled into its new house.

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Hello Vulgalour, nice progress you've made.

You should definitely take a wire brush to get the flaky rust off and then paint it with something like Hammerite which kills the remaining rust. Or have you already planned to do that?
 
You seem to have more faith in Hammerite than I have, never had success with that stuff, wether on new or old steel. It just doesn't seem to last no matter how well I've prepared the surface, with no primer, Hammerite primer or iron oxide primer, it just won't do what it says on the tin! It's messy but I think Waxoil is a better solution!
 
I will second that , the new hammerite is useless with two coats,the old original stuff when you only put one thick coat on worked quite well ,i supose they have taken the active ingredients out.
 
To be honest I don't use it either, but last night (11.20pm) I didn't feel like going into the workshop to check on the name of the stuff that I use. It's got a picture of a deep sea diver on the side.

That's why I said "something like Hammerite"

However, the last time I did use it, which was about 10 years ago in South Africa, it worked perfectly with no problems
 
OK here's the stuff that I use after a good wire brush
View attachment 16954
Now that's something else, I don't know what it does but, if it's fairly thin and can be brushed into the cleaned rust surface and any cavities and does some good, it has to be an improvement on Hammerite. But I would like to know more about what it is supposed to do. To be honest over the years I've not had success with any so called rust treatment. When ever I used them without much confidence I always thought that the manufacturers would not stand by there claims by saying that my preparation and methods were not what they recommended.
 
Plan is to clean everything back as much as possible and paint it with the green synthetic enamel I've got. I will treat any rusty bits with Kurust in more awkward areas, I've found this to be fairly successful. Once that's done it'll get a coat of underseal to keep it all solid and then I'll avoid using the car if it's really wet out or if they've been chucking salt on everything. Where the old underseal has come away on the rear chassis legs it does look like galvanised metal which would account for part of the reason things are so solid underneath. Measuring engine stuff didn't happen today as my brother needed my help swapping a tailgate on a modern car which took way longer than expected due to all the electric gubbinz. I've also currently got the Renault's gearbox sat on the back seat of the Rover, I managed to hurt my back so lifting it out of the car has to wait until tomorrow when I'll have some help.

Getting there though, I've got all the tools I need to measure the bottom end of the Renault's engine, I just have to be a bit careful over the next few days and try not to move heavy things like engines around if I can help it.
 
Right, first bit of news from the engine shop I dropped the Renault's engine off with at the end of last week (turned out the tools I had were too large to measure things with). That's much quicker than I was expecting, tbh. On their first inspection they suspect muddled caps - NOT MY FAULT! They're in the order they were when I dismantled everything - to be the reason for the crank locking when everything is torqued up. They want to be extra sure that it's not something else so were asking my permission to take the head off.

I'm not precious about my work on this one, it's my first attempt at an engine rebuild and they've done lots and lots so it'll be reassuring to know everything is as it ought to be. Bill so far is £70-80, it's uncomfortable not really knowing how much things like this are going to cost until they're done but needs must.

Fingers crossed it really does just need new bearings and possibly a crank regrind, then I've got very little to do to sort this little monster out.
 
With the Renault outside waiting for the engine to come back, the weather decided to help me with some more leak hunting. Here we go then, a tour of the leaks and what I think I need to do to fix them.



To start with, the boot is still letting water in, as evidenced by this puddle on the parcel shelf.

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Taken me a while to figure this one out entirely but it looks like it's getting past the boot seal itself which has certainly seen better days. Looks like a generic profile on the seal so shouldn't be too bad to replace. It's coming in through the rear screen seal as well but nowhere near as badly as through the main boot seal.

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The other puddle is this one.

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That's caused by the side windows which also don't seal well, partly because the seals are too short. They just need a blob more sealant where the gap is to sort this. Looks like it's getting through just at the bottom edge of the sealant bridge. Really I should fit new seals to these rear windows to resolve this and again they look like a generic profile so I might do that in the future.

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Next, this big old lake under the passenger seat. Here's where we get into the territory of difficult to locate leaks because on the passenger side there's a lot of them.

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Most of it is coming through the top of the rear door.

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Mainly because the stick-on seal (factory standard as far as I can tell) is knackered on all the doors and more knackered than the rest on this one. Admittedly, having gutters on the car would help lessen this as the water would be channeled away from them and I have priced up replacement universal guttering to do just that. Door seals will help too anyway in keeping the water out on the move.

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The windscreen had appeared to have stopped leaking. Unfortunately that isn't the case and it is still letting water in along the top edge. I'm going to squidge more sealant into the top of the windscreen seal as was done when I got the car. At least with a cloth headlining I can see where it's coming in and have some idea of where to put the sealant. So, passenger side first which again is the worst side.

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The door seal on the front door is also shot, the door doesn't fit as well as the others either, and that's letting water get in at the sill.

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What was confusing me was that water did just appear in the footwell on the passenger side and I could never figure out how. Liberal poofing about of talcum powder highlighted just how it's doing it. Water is running down the outside of the bulkhead and then seeping through the body-to-chassis seam and into the car. That's more difficult to resolve, to do it properly it's going to be a body-off job so I can put some proper sealant/tape on before bolting the body back to the chassis. The bulkhead above this seam is completely dry.

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Driver's side of the windscreen is also letting a small amount of water in.

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As with the passenger door, the seal is shot and water is getting in and pooling on the sill. There is another drip from under the dash somewhere just to the right of the pedals and I've not figured that one out yet. I might have to fix the other leaks to find it. There is a small splash to the right of the pedal that highlights the leak, it's not massively clear in the photograph.

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None of these leaks are a huge worry for now, I've emptied the car of anything that might be damaged by the water and since it's at home I can mop it out regularly. Once the engine is fitted I can get the car back in the garage out of the weather. Your recommendations for where to obtain generic seals are welcome, just remember the ones on the doors are a self-adhesive foam strip type, there's not channel to fix a conventional seal to.
 
You could try Woolies they do all trim and seals,or maybe some are the same as R4 on the doors,try Melun Retro
 
I did try Woolies and they came good, as you'll see in this update :)

---

It finally stopped raining today! Time to crack on with some sealing jobs on the Renault. I was going to squidge some more sealant into the windscreen seal but it sits in so snugly I can't, instead I ran the tidiest bead of sealant I could manage over the edges of the seal where it seems to be letting water into the car and we'll see if it does the trick. If not, I can clean it back and try and different approach. That was fairly quick to do, if a little messy, and left me lots of time to get on with the next bit.

I'd put a shout out on various fora for suggestions on where to get some door seals and after looking at the various wares on offer, it was http://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/ who came up trumps with their larger arrowhead profile foam door seals. This isn't self adhesive so sealant is required to fit. 12.5 metres were needed in total for all four doors, I bought 13 because you can only buy in 1 metre multiples and it's always best to have a little bit extra, just in case.

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I worked on one door at a time, stripping off the old seal and fitting the new one. The drivers side was still sealing fairly well so I could have probably got away with not doing it, but I'd rather fit new all round. The old seals were quite tired.
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Remember, these are the GOOD old seals. It's no wonder the rain was getting in really.
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One thing I did learn is that a lot of the glue holding the old seals on had also failed so water was getting in not just around where the old seals were shrunken but also where they just hadn't bonded to the door frame. Not any use to anyone so in the bin they go.
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To make sure I had enough seals to go around, I applied the polyurethane sealant to the door frame and then fed the new seal on from the roll I'd bought. Starting at the centre of the bottom edge so the join was in the least visible place and least likely to cause sealing problems, I worked my way around the door frame, holding the seal in place with tape. I swear I ended up with more sealant on me than on the door and this stuff only seems to clean off with thinners. Got there in the end.
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Here we see a rare display of a Renault 6 "peacocking" in a vain attempt to attract a mate.
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There wasn't much seal left over.
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Ages ago when I jacked up the car, water came out and we couldn't figure out how it had got in to where it was coming out as there didn't seem to be an obvious point of ingress.
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On rolling the back seat forward and lifting the floor mat to check for water to mop out - it rained LOADS yesterday - I noticed the blanking plate over the fuel sender was loose and quite a lot of water had got in underneath.
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The boot seal is next on my jobs for replacement, look how flat this is.
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It got a bit cold so I'm hoping the sealant cures okay, if not I can always reglue things. The doors are more difficult to shut now than they were and you can see the seals are squishing into the places they need to so I'm cautiously optimistic.
 
Renault's new boot seal arrived today, again ordered from Woolies. The Laguna one that might have been available suddenly wasn't so I ordered a length of suitable edge seal from Woolies which arrived today. Really easy to fit you just peel the old one off and push the new one on, trimming to size where the lock latch is.

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Flat old one can go in the bin.

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Again, not a lot left over. I needed just shy of 4 metres to do this and I wish I'd done it ages ago.

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It doesn't make that odd crunchy noise when closing the tailgate now and it feels like it seals, the test will be when it rains. Mike had been kind enough to clean up the access plate from under the back seat. I need to glue some sort of strip seal to it and clean up the car side so this makes a good seal when reattached. I'll likely drill an extra hole in it too so it can be clamped down better, there's no visible hole to screw it into the floor that matches that on the plate itself.

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Next thing then was to check how the doors had actually sealed. We've had a small amount of rain and I had noticed the car wasn't fogging up as much so I was hopeful the new seals were working. Started with the best sealing door and yep, that seal is working lovely. The door made that satisfying new seal noise when the door was opened too and there wasn't signs of moisture in the door opening. Good job!

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Front door on the driver's side not as good. I really should have removed the mirror before putting the seal on so I have a small section that needs resealing once I've done that. I didn't have my allen keys to hand when fitting the new seals and thought I could get away with it. The leading edge of the door where it joins the lower A pillar also hasn't stuck so I need to reglue that too. Not the end of the world, just niggles and easily remedied. The good thing is that there wasn't really any obvious water ingress on the floor this side now.

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The worst door, that being rear passenger side, is still causing problems. Water is still getting past the seal here but it's not clear how. The seal is channeling the water as it should but a small amount is still getting down the back of it. I may have to just push the top of the door frame in a bit like I did on the front door this side so that it meets the bodyshell better. The doors on this car are quite flimsy things.

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I did find a small hole. At first I thought it was just black paint. That will need some attention and I'm not sure how I missed it when I did the gutter removal.

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I also noticed the headlining at the windscreen edge was dry now so I may have sealed that succesfully. With the exception of the rear passenger door, the cabin was dry inside so I've certainly significantly reduced the water ingress problem. I can't do anything on the Renault's engine today as I have none of my tools at home and my loan car was taken back a couple of days ago so I haven't the transport to go and get them in a timely fashion. I can pick them up on the weekend as I'll hopefully be helping Mike put the Rover back together.
 
Had a poke around at the door seals today to see if I can figure out why that little bit of water is getting in and found that the seals haven't glued fully in a few places. I was worried this might happen as it got very cold while I was doing the job. They're good enough for now to keep most of the weather out and certainly a vast improvement over where we were. If we get a warm-for-winter day I'll redo the bits that need it, if not I'll wait until after the MoT and do it at the unit where I have enough indoor partially heated space. That can wait.



I wanted to get further with the engine, I'm eager to get it back in the car and tried out. First job was to get the boxes of bits out and lay them out on my useful table in my bombsite of a garage. Unfortunately I have lots of bits of Renault and nowhere to really store any of it while things are on and off the car. This is slightly compounded by having my tools and the engine crane at home after Mike and I fetched them from the unit so space is something of a premium as it's quite a narrow garage and not really designed to be a working one, just a car storing one.

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There's not a huge amount to go back on. My goal before the head gasket arrives is to get the sump and gearbox attached to the engine. I can't set the timing or put the other bits on until I've fitted the new headgasket.

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Got the sump on and the engine stood up again. The crank turns easily now, you can do it by hand without tools. Didn't get the gearbox on, the engine isn't really stable enough to do it on my own so Mike and I will likely have a crack at that tomorrow. Valve cover plonked on just to keep anything from falling into the top.

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Eagle eyed viewers may notice one of the studs for the rocker assembly and rocker cover are missing in the above picture. The other thing that's gone walkabout are the bolts and special washers for the timing chain cover. These will no doubt be in the same box together, all of the Renault engine is in the garage, it's just that my garage is a bit of a mess at the moment, and some of the boxes of bits are under other bits of Renault. Progress is progress though, even if it's only a tiny little bit.
 
I once had the same problem with a new tin of adhesive. I thought it was faulty until I read the instructions and it said that the glue wouldn't set properly in temperatures less than 5 degrees.
You might want to look at the position of your distributor. The position of your vacuum advance means that you might have a problem getting to Number 2 spark plug and also it might be in the way of your oil dipstick.
Angel has given the correct setting on the following post:
http://www.renault4.co.uk/forum/threads/how-to-insert-ignition-timing-gear.8137/#post-53030
 
Yep, still got to set that properly. I'll be getting together as much as I can today and then I'll be stuck until the new head gasket arrives.
 
It's pretty annoying that I have to take the car apart to put it together again. Mike lent me a hand today getting the front end undone and then it rained and meant we couldn't finish the job. I need to remove the bumper to get the face and bonnet off so the weather meant I had to leave the car looking like this.

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On the plus side, I can now see that the car is definitely leaking a lot less. The new boot seal appears to be working to keep a lot of water out, I just need to redo the side windows properly as that is now the main point of ingress at the back. The weather has been quite annoying today, just showers on and off so I called it quits. I hate working in the rain.

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The last thing Mike helped with was getting the gearbox located onto the engine. We've got it held on with two nuts for now. The stud for the rocker bar turned up... in the rocker bar. I still can't find the bolts and washers for the timing chain cover which is annoying me as I've got everything else and I'm not sure how they've got misplaced given that all the components were kept together.

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These boxes no longer have bits of engine in them. That's good.

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The boot is staying dry enough for me to keep what few spares I do have in it so the garage isn't so cluttered. This is also good.

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My table of nuts and bolts and such is emptying. Another good thing.

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The engine is looking like an engine properly, which is really the best thing.

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Today, I got lots of things back on the engine. The sump bolts are all tightened up, the gearbox is bolted on properly, the engine-to-gearbox braces are done up and the bellhousing guard thing is bolted on. Alternator was taken off when I removed the head to fit the new gasket, then refitted once the head was torqued down as per the instructions in the workshop manual. While the alternator was off I put the spark plugs in the holes more so I don't misplace them than anything at this stage. The rocker bar was bolted on except for the outer two bolts which require a 11mm spanner which I don't have at home. Likewise, I haven't set the distributor properly as that also needs an 11mm spanner. The straightened pushrods were put back in their holes and the camshaft pulley bolted back on.



There's not a huge amount to do:

- fit timing chain tensioner

- fit timing chain

- set timing, both static and ignition

- fit timing chain cover

- bolt down rocker bar

- set tappet/rocker clearances

- fit belts

- fit any hoses with new jubilees that are going to be difficult to do with the engine fitted, like the fuel pump hoses.



Once that's all done I can plonk it back in the engine bay after the bumper and whatnot has been removed. Nearly there, I'm most likely to be held up by the short daylight hours as I need Mike to be a second pair of hands when it comes to removing bodywork and fitting the engine and he's only available in the evenings and weekends.



Quite anxious about the engine going in and firing it up. I'm fully expecting it to all go horribly wrong somehow and have to come out again at which point I may just lose the will with this car. We shall see what happens.
 
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