A few weeks back, once I had all the parts, the cylinder head and all the new goodies were fitted. Once again helped by Gavin and Dave, the job didn't take long and pretty soon, we were ready for start up.
Unfortunately, start up didn't go well and we were greeted with a horrendous clacking sound that none of us could figure out where it was coming from.
We swapped the rocker shaft with an spare one in case it was something to do with the new rockers or rocker shaft that we had fitted, but this made no difference. with a feeling of dismay we shut the garage door (It was now approaching 6pm) and gave it up as a bad job.
The following Saturday, we started with a compression test and all cylinders turned out to be fine. We tried a few more things, but the more we investigated, the more evident it was that the head was going to have to come back off.
With the head removed and investigated it was clear that the problem wasn't cylinder head or valve based either.
Looking down one of the cam follower holes, it was looking like we had some serious wear on one of the lobes on the camshaft. Unfortuately, this being a Mk1, you can only remove the camshaft by removing the engine. (You cant get the camshaft out the front of the car because of the nose cone. You can on a Mk2, because of the bigger front grill)
So, seeing as there was three of us on hand, we removed the engine.
We then set about removing the camshaft and sure enough, the wear on one of the lobes was excessive to say the least. I think the previous problems with the valve seat recession had masked it, and now that everything was as it should be, was now highlighting the lobe problem.
So, fast forward a few weeks, I have now purchased a new camshaft and fitted it. I've also purchased a new timing chain, crankshaft cog and spacer and camshaft sprocket. The engine is also back in the car now, but it still needs to have the head and everything else refitted. Hopefully that will be the end of the current problems.
