GT

I can't believe I'm reading this. 1/ This has ZILCH to do with you, but you insist on putting your oar in repeatedly. (plus the new born was 5 years ago). It was her birthday in MAY. 2/ Contact parties that are handling stolen goods? What planet do you live on? let's get this straight, these cover it all quite adequately:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handling_stolen_goods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_to_defraud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWOC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishonesty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encouraging_or_assisting_a_crime_in_English_law So, you have to face up to your responsibility as adults, as the people involved in this are going to get prosecuted, whether extra-jurisdiction or not.

It was a short night. I've read the different excuses, and I'm really shocked. The foul taste is now so good at 7am (our time), recalling how a few months ago I have actually gone to the trouble of sending my own exhaust jig to you in Australia FOC, (which had cost me a further 400 quid), just to make sure Craig & Nick could get the best possible parts made. What staggers me in the whole sorry story, (which my wife was also reading at 3am).....what possible justification can there be for criminal behaviour? Why am I being slagged off, slandered & robbed when I've done absolutely nothing wrong. I mean, surely, if someone came across some spares of mine, which didn't belong to them, knowing Gareth was off absent, knowing full well why he is off with his wife taking unpaid leave, (after she had just had a baby in Russia while he was away working),- What possible justification can any sane, sensible, honest person NOT have for writing to me, saying "I have this part of yours" it doesn't belong to me, how can I get it collected or sent to you? It's not rocket science in today's connected world, yet here we see what I don't want to see, after I just heard all the lies on Russian TV about the responsibility (or lack of it) in the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17. I mean after living where I do, I start to know when people really are telling me porky pies, and what constitutes bent views of selective amnesia or justice. The worst thing is FINDING OUT, that you've had contacts with people you thought were scrupulously honest, and even done them a favour only to find out by accident in fact that what you thought was true, and a bunch of "nice guys" are behaving like petty criminals behind your back. I'm gutted. There's no words. It's the best possible send off to going back to work for a month away from my family (again).

I'm off to bed. Some people have no shame. I take a flight out of here in the morning. I will check my mail before I leave. If, by the time I fly out of here, there is no very rapid answer that gives full and complete satisfaction as to what that item of my inventory is doing on the other side of the world, with a complete summary of who supplied who, who paid what, and what will be done to make amends, nd being ready to give eveidence in court, PLUS when I can expect it back, the first port of call will be lodging of a claim with all the consequences it implies with the UK police this week. There are times when the cup truly runs over. That point was reached 2-3 years ago, after being robbed repeatedly. It's now time to make amends, and I don't care any more really who takes the fall for this sorry story. You have a few hours to sort it all out amongst yourselves like responsible adults. I'm ignoring Steve who will have to apologise to me once again in his own inimitable way.

Sorry everyone. THEFT is theft. I don't care what excuses or words are made to cover it up. If other people are capable of coming up with that sort of bollox here, then it gets murkier and murkier. I have done nothing wrong, so there's no apologies due. How weird it is to read what I am reading. It's all so deja vu! That manifold is BRAND NEW, let me ask how you would like it to see something you made specially not sitting on your shelf, but sitting in someone else's garage not evenb surrounded by red faces, but covered by loads of bollox and people who certainly couldn't look me in the eyes, and slagging it off. I'm dreaming... I'm dreaming of people I would like to meet, have a chat over a coffee, and have something in common with. HERE. NO.

if you don't believe me, what am I doing with it fitted to a Vitesse engine some 20 years ago, and why did I ask Baudoin in France to make it for me, and why would I be holding photos of it on my web server since 1st march 2006? I would also like to ask, why when e-mailed some days ago, you never owned up to having it in your possession some 10 000 miles away from where it was last seen.... It's a small world when 3000 Quid's worth of exhaust goes missing, and then people routinely lie and deceive to cover up criminality. I also would like you to come clean so as to present all relevant evidence to the UK police this week, as to how it got there, what route and who handled it, so as they can be prosecuted.

Now will you kindly return that BLUE 6-1 manifold which has been widlely circulated as STOLEN. It's listed in the back of my book as exactly that. As it stands I just download a copy of those photos, and that amounts to handling stolen property. I wondered where it had gone and where it might eventually turn up, as I last displayed it on a stand in the UK before it went missing....

A little word or two of advice:- If you are intent on doing a flowed head, the Herald 1300 heads seem to have much better casting depths. The thinnest (worst) seem to be the TKC1155, often machined badly and thin at one end. There appear to be 3 distinct castings...the old Herald/Spitfire ones pre 71, 515xx3, the ones up to about 1975 with the 21814x numbers/Dolomite, and then those TKC numbers. You need a good quality casting because if you want to get a highish CR on a 1300 it's going to be less than 2.900", whereas a modified 1500 head for a 1500 is somewhere around the 2.960-2.970 area. (so 2mm or so thinner), that's very much limit on a TKC1155 head. The thinnest I've ever skimmed a 1300 head was 2.835", and not many heads will go there. If you understand that most of them start at 3.050-3.150" that's one HECK of a lot of metal to remove (more than 1/4"!) Also now this particular problem is causing a lot of aggro nowadays, and it basically doesn't show up until you've stuck it on a serdi or mira.... So this was August's pile of scrap iron..... After that you will have plenty of fun enlarging the seats from the small Herald size to the largest Spitfire size....

Here's what you can do:- Go look for "Herald 1200" engines on EBAY. Most people treat them as worthless scrap metal. Get a late one,(crank oil seal type if poss) throw most of it away keeping the crank*, rods*, pulley*, camshaft*, main caps*, flywheel. Most early herald cams fit with cam bearings, regrind it to whatever profile you want, use the set of rods, and flog the head, or reuse the crank. It will likely cost you about 20-30 quid and because the Herald 12/50 makes a fat lot of power, very often the whole lot will be as good as new with minimal wear. It's what I've done over the years to keep those sought after FD blocks running, the 1200 bits*, saved many a 1300 engine. (Don't forget, when you have to supply them as exchange engines in France/Germany, on a regular basis what you get back most of the time is a real sorry mess. You wouldn't believe the state some of them are in!)

Have you ever been near an engine dyno or an engine TRULY making the kind of power figures you are claiming? I doubt it. I can smell the BS at 50kms, when I hear claims of making the kind of performance you are claiming from 1600cc reliably when most 2L Cosworth/Opel engines don't do it. one hundred and fifty one POINT TWO horsepower? Oh dear. Are you aware not even an engine dyno cell is capable of realising this kind of precision repeatedly? Please go and visit some guys like SRE, Minster, SBE or Dunnell* learn some. *He's very good & knowledgable you know as he used to work with Reid at Holbay, but there, you are talking 15 grand's worth of all steel race engine and decades of development.. http://www.dunnellengines.com/zetec_inj_optionkits_7.php or very good value for money at 4K:- http://www.dunnellengines.com/zetec_e.php (it's a 2L, and it's not revving to smiths!). If we had had 100s of 1000s worth of investment from a major OEM, then sure, there's many engines that would work properly, be light, cheap and powerful in a brilliant race developed chassis. I mean even the Hillman imp had an engine designed and developed at Coventry Climax. That's why they make Radical and Davrians, chap, not a 1950s designed Herald or Spitfire. I'll stop now, this makes no sense or relevance any more.

Broken camshaft, a mega rarity. The bits dropped down into the sump as the crank was whirling round & round (3000rpm) and hey presto,- large air cooled engine block. The crank seems undamaged but 2 conrods and pistons had a bad time, so it's having a replacement block and set of rods/ pistons from another box of bits. Most of it survived but made a nasty "torry canyon style mess" on a French country road.

Do you call a scrap yard engine with non standard inlet system, non standard exhaust and no catalytic convertor totally stock? I don't. 150bhp from 1600cc I doubt it very much, it's in all probability more like 130 (which is not bad after all). FYI on a proper ENGINE DYNO:- The Jaguar 3.0L V6 "totally stock" knocks out 240bhp, but if you drop it into a single seater, dry sump it, change the exhaust and inlets it makes 300bhp (as a crated X type engine). That's what the palmer (zeus) sport is. Now also kindly tell me dynojet rolling roads actually measure something other than fantasy, then it would make more sense. It still doesn't rest my point, the guy here is trying to rebuild a herald engine with 2v per cylinder & 3 main bearings, from a pile of old bits. Those engines are very good, (especially considering how ancient they are) and able to make as much power as your 16V from 1300cc, but not so much torque, because they are smaller.

Yes you've succeeded in posting the same stuff everywhere all over the internet, plus reams and reams of non technical data about it, as well as your internal arguments over correct mapping and the intimate internecine disputes of every single supplier. It begs the question. Why do you do it? What's the hidden agenda? People's own projects are not some sort of judo match. This bloke is talking about rebuilding his Herald engine, and he has a right to impartial advice not a lecture on "how stupid he is to try". Also not to put too fine a point on it, there is no way in the world you can prove in any shape or form how much power or torque you have as you never put your "modern 16V" on an engine dyno to prove it. Go do it, come back with the REAL torque curve and the corner weights of the car and the castor/camber angles/spring rates/proper circuit times, then people have a little more than mere hearsay. I have a philosophy too. You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear, but all we had from you most of the time 3yrs ago was how good Chic Doig is, and how you wanted initially to get an 8 port 1200 engine from unobtanium, because it was "the right engine for the car". Then suddenly the Zetec 16V (which is now a rather old Ford engine), became the flavour of the day as some sort of "anti-hero" 200 quid solution to all problems. It is you after all that have gone to the trouble of making some 200 web pages about the reconstruction of this car of yours, warts and all. There is nothing wrong with that, but there's a lot wrong with using all that to start giving lessons to other people what they should be doing with their own motors.... ....and I am (thankfully) nothing to do with the moderation of this place!

Exactly. Before I attempted to make up some conrod sets (I pay someone to do that), I had dismantled about 6-10 engines, many of which were TR6 or Spitfire 1500, all with 1 or 2 knacked rods in each set. The TR6 knacked sets go to make a set of 4 for a Spitfire 1500, then all the sets of 3s or odd ones out from 5 go into a box for sorting out. Out of about 40-50 conrods I then managed to make about 3-4 sets of 6, so YES half of them are so far out you simply can't take the right weight off one end or the other to make a "set". This is particularly true of the 1200/1300 conrod sets, because as you can see in the photo the 1200 rod weighs about 100g less than the 1300. It's really small and spindly! Funnily enough, the 1200 rods appear to be able to stand 100bhp/L no worries at all, and maybe they even have less windage? I managed to buy some NOS 1200 rods on ebay for silly money and even a good low mileage Herald 13/60 head for a fiver at a show. Luckily lots of people don't value Herald stuff and still sell it cheap...but those are exceptions to the rule. (once bought 5, 1200 engines for £100, which salvaged me a pile of perfect cranks, rods, and cams, the biggest problem being actually fitting them all in my estate car! That kept me in 1300 cranks for a year, and I even TIG weld the scroll seal over now and modify them for the Mk3 oil seal and large GT6 flywheel bolts...) Having said that, I'm not doing any more thanks. That's because of the arrival of this, this summer!

That lot sitting there, after buying them, balancing them and fitting new small ends is £600+. As they are almost impossible to find in good sets without one knackered rod or smashed up on one side because someone has dropped the thrusts... Then I have to go through the depressing routine of doing a load of good ones, buying NOS & when I have found enough of them, throwing money away by keeping them in stock for years at a time.... Same for NOS heads, decent crankshafts without worn out thrusts, decent blocks without dropped thrusts or with main caps requiring line boring,- all dead money and almost impossible to find now, then people always want a top quality engine delivered "YESTERDAY", without even being able to provide an exchange that's any good. The last Mk3 engine I did in July, needed ALL of the above, as well as a camshaft, so the COST price on most of the bits hit 1500 quid. So:- NON exchange crank, block, rods, fit set of spare caps to a block because PO (exchange block) had "lost" them...(line boring cost 300 EUROS), find set of 010/010 Vandervell bearings, tufftride crank, fully balanced with unobtainium NOS Stanpart clutch cover & s/h flywheel, modify crank to use GT6 flywheel bolts....decent quality NOS oil pump, decent quality chain, decent quality tensioner, decent NOS pistons....good s/h original 212164 camshaft, decent followers... the list goes on & on! You get it now, why I'm not building them any more for people.....

If you have a rod where the bush falls out (has gone loose), the rod is SCRAP. That means you only have a set of 3 rods, which means the entire SET is scrap. You need to find another set of (good) rods, been there many many times especially on the Mk3 Spitfire, which is why I spend so much good money on them.