February 15th & 16th. Time to get on!

While making a short trip to the local scrap yard the other Saturday with a car load of old engine blocks, cranks, suspension parts and anything else that weighed loads and would make them give me money, I noticed that the suspension on the estate was sitting lower on the nearside than it was on the drivers side. The weight in the car was evenly distributed so I could only assume that I had a broken or weak spring.
So, after going through my spares cupboard I found a set of 520lb rear springs that would be ideal replacements.
There was no evidence of any cracks or anything on the ones I removed, so the nearside one must have just weakened over the years.

The replacement springs were fitted and a test drive showed that the back end has stiffened up somewhat. Better for carting about engines and stuff!...............................
Speaking of which, the following day I received a phone call saying that my engine was ready for collection. So the estate was press-ganged into action again and a trip over to Benfleet was arranged.

The engine now has six new pistons, rings, mains, big ends, core plugs and oil seals. It was already bored out to plus .40 thou, so it's now at plus .60 thou. (Plus it has some other nice mods as well!)  I'm looking forward to fitting it into Gertie, but this will have to wait for a few weeks yet, as I have other fish to fry.
The estate's MOT is due in a few weeks time and I've still to resolve my 'play in the steering' issues first. It's also developed an oil leak over the past few days as well, so this will also have to be rectified before the test.
Gertie is also booked in for the 'Chinese Rally' in Holland in four weeks time and I don't want to start pulling the 2000 engine out of it now and not being able to get the new engine fitted and running in time. (There's other stuff I want to do while I have an empty engine bay too)  So the plan is to leave Gertie as she is to do the Chinese rally, start on the engine swap when I get home and use the estate for the HCR. Then hopefully Gertie should be up and running again ready for the International Auto Ecosse at the end of May. Simples!