Minor Update

Time for another brief update. Well hopefully tomorrow evening the Puma is being picked up buy it's new owner which is good news. In the meantime I picked up a new head for the engine which is shown below. Its been lightly skimmed and pressure tested by the previous owner. Looks very clean and in much better condition for that matter. It needs a new cam which is on the shopping list anyway.

I'll let the pics do the rest of the talking. Hopefully the next update will include the Ka which will be used :)

Valvey Goodness

Another small update here. We took the cylinder head apart last night to see what sort of state it was in. Not good is the verdict. We removed the rockers, lifters, valve springs and finally the valves themselves. The lifters whilst looking fairly new - were very coarse around the bottom edge. The barrels/chambers they sit in were also scored (1 quite badly).

All the valves look fine and the stem seals will be replaced when it comes to piecing it back together. Unfortunately the cam also took a bit of a beating and some of the hardened outer has worn away - this will want replacing too.

We may require a new head (it's looking quite likely) though we will get a second opinion from Dave before we do so.

If we do get a new head then we will get an EFi version as this is the route we want to go down.

Valves all lined up after removal:



All in all it was a little disappointing but certainly not the end of the world!

Small update...

Just a brief update today. Spent an hour at most just making final preparations to the engine before it goes for a clean. This wont happen until either A) I sell the Puma or B) I come into some money. The former is certainly more likely!

Basically a couple of bolts sheared while we were taking apart the drive pulley/timing pully which we heated up for a couple of minutes using a blow torch and then using grips to twist them out. We also took the water pump off and removed the headgasket.

Another task at some point is to take the head apart to examine the cam and likely give that a clean up too. I took a quick picture of the head today in it's current state - nothing terribly exciting but it makes the page look more interesting until the good stuff starts happening!



Basically you're looking at the rockers and valve springs. The cam pulley is toward the right of the picture (as is the water pump to the far right).