time for a gloomy update
simon(STT) came around last night to give me a hand as im on quite a tight schedual to get the car finished for mot before the weekend, as i will not have time after the weekend as im back at work.
the list of jobs was not that long re-ring the block and then just fit a new head on, this is a standard head untill i can fit my new engine between rs combe and tvl then i would have tonight for any finishing jobs/mot bits then for mot on thursday.
once simon was down we pulled out the pistons and gave the bores a quick hone with a bore deglazer to help the rings bed in, while simon was cleaning and checking the ring groves on the pistons i pulled out a ring to see if they needed gapping
and there was a big problem staring us in the face

ummmm thats a little large lol
so i decided to give it a measure

2.04mm now to those that dont built engines that figure wont mean much so ill tell you what it should be, it should be somewhere in the region of 0.3-0.4mm.
it was quite obvious straight away what had happened and a quick look at the box confimed it i had been send 86mm not 86.5mm rings, have spoken to steve who could not apoligise enough and is sending a set of 86.5mm rings out today special delivery so ill have them tommorow morning (fingers crossed)
this will give me just tommorow to get the car built and ready for an mot on friday so fingers crossed it passes first time.
i had a second bad bit of news last night aswell the cheap pro alloy radiator i bought is going to make a wonderfull door stop, the repair that had been carried out on leaked, but not only did that row leak when we reapaired that one we found another 7!!!! that leaked meaning far to much of the rad is going to be sealed up to stop it leaking and if that many leak already it aint going to be long till more do, so its back to the drawing board on the rad front.
this problem spured me on to make another change to the car ive been thinking about for a while make the slam pannel removable, to change the rad in my car i have to remove the turbo, manifold and external wastegate, this as you can imagine is a pain in the arse, and with the current rad problem i have no choice but to fit the corsa rad to get me to mot and look for something else to fit next week.
so out came the tape, a hacksaw and a simon few cuts later and we were left with



this should make removing the rad alot easier, i dont think im going to use the standard metal back in the whole as it weighs alot for something that now does nothing so im prob going to make a simple alloy one for the time being with maybe a carbon one at a later date
going out tonight to put the front supension back together and make sure the car is in a possition that its just a head gasket rebuilt tommorow night, simon is hoping to come down again tommorow to help and is going to see if one of his mates is free aswell so it will be all hands on deck lol.