Watch me make a stupid mistake - Peugeot 504 Break L

[stuboy]

20 minutes ago, meowmeow said:

i hope treats were duly offered

[meowmeow]

1 hour ago, stuboy said:

i hope treats were duly offered

haha no he is fat enough already

did give him a hug though, which was not appreciated

[Noel Tidybeard]

3 hours ago, stuboy said:

i hope treats were duly offered

shouldn't reward stupidity

[meowmeow]

more sacrificing from the old Golf bonnet

hoping it'll provide just enough metal for all the rust repairs except the cills and the boot floor - swear I'm not a cheapskate

patch installed, sealed, painted etc...

from the factory the primer is just lazily sprayed all over the engine bay - tried to replicate this with whatever I had, won't be very noticeable once the engine is back in

Brake and clutch master cylinders re-installed -

 

Cue upgrade for the work-bathroom cabinet. Can't believe it took me so long to be bothered to buy a vice

no more holding stuff to the ground with my feet to keep it still !

new brake lines for the front, also painted the cross-member with more lovely iron fence paint

Unfortunately (yet unsurprisingly) the bolt for the 5-way union snapped, so just drilled it out and popped a longer bolt through it

Keep telling myself I'll re-tap it properly at some point but...

also look carefully and joy of joys there's another rust hole in the other buttress thingy

only a baby one though

 

was busy trying to remove the O/S front caliper when I heard something on the roof:

a creature visits

caliper off, spiders included

brake discs weirdly have no lip whatsoever, and the bearings are good

lazy boy here will clean em up and reuse.

 

short interlude as mother's iron finally tripped the thermal fuse

tis a bit old says made in W.Germany on the side

pistons out - actually don't look too bad

but the same can't be said for the bleeder screw...

tool creation time

which promptly snapped off inside the caliper.

ok, let's try something else then:

which didn't work either, but did set fire to the cloth in this photo.

 

So I got fed up and returned to the only thing I'm good at - painting things with dubious paint the wrong colour:

  

  

 

Back to the task in hand, probably better to just drill the bugger out

what's that Blondie song? gonna get'cha get'cha get'cha get'cha

 

was feeling ok about this till I realised I'd forgotten the springs clips, and that I'd bloody painted them with non-heat-resistant paint

So stripped, repainted (properly this time) and reassembled...

 

So it didn't feel left out I got the Golf a shitty sticker

 

then the clutch cable snapped and I had to walk home

left the only tube of bearing grease I had in the boot so I can't reassemble the hub and refit the caliper on the 504 till next week

 

also i forgot last time to provide chicken tiles update:

  

 

and that back in March I checked insurance quotes for the 504 and got this:

for context the Golf is about £400 for me to insure

guess it pays to buy something weird - when was the last time someone crashed a Peugeot 504 estate?

 

[meowmeow]

On 10/08/2024 at 20:23, meowmeow said:

brake discs weirdly have no lip whatsoever, and the bearings are good

Ok first things first, that was a complete lie as it turns out:

 

Yeah, not supposed to do that is it

So replaced the bearings, re-greased and reassembled, with caliper and hoses:

 

Next, let's have a look at the clutch and pressure plate

 

toast.

Flywheel looked a bit sad as well but it'll clean up:

 

Painted the engine block while I waited for the new clutch disc to arrive in the post:

oil pan has a fat arse dent in the front so will have to come off and be repaired at some point.

also filed off the decades worth of baked on oil leak from the exhaust manifold:

and sorted that small rust hole in the other 'buttress', and painted to match the O/S:

 

PEOGOET ?

New pressure plate and clutch fitted:

something weird had happened to the grease on the pressure plate surface,  (guessing it had been in storage for well over 10 years before I bought it) - took ages to get it all off...

also quite difficult tightening bolts while the engine was swinging from the hoist

 

Had to buy another caliper for the N/S as the one on the car was fucked inside, so same process again

didn't take any pics as it's the same as the O/S one.

Hub was making the most horrendous sound, turns out the disc shield was somehow bent:

Repaired the lip and painted:

And both calipers re-installed:

I have the clip thingy somewhere for the N/S caliper, will refit it at some point

 

Last hole to repair:

fucking stupid location - welding upside down with not enough space between the hoist legs, the floor of the car, the suspension, the wall of the garage, the increased size of my head with the welding mask on...

managed to set fire to the car, a sponge, the carpet, my shirt and my hair (it still smells weird now)

 

 

Anyway, with that out of the way, went to install the N/S front brake hose and was greeted by this weirdness:

That's not standard fit...

So removed it and tried to screw the hose directly into the caliper - doesn't fit !

Somehow the guy who rebuilt the caliper last has converted it to 3/8 pitch threads - on a French car !!!!

Looking at my sad M10 thread brake hose:

Don't fancy buying another hose so will chance it with an adapter and see how we get on...

 

[meowmeow]

On 26/08/2024 at 15:00, meowmeow said:

That's not standard fit...

correct myself again, turns out that is standard fit, but not on my car - apparently some Girling calipers had these weird banjo bolt thingies fitted for a while

quickly figured out why because when i went to attach the hose to the replacement caliper, the angle of the hole was such that without the fitting it would foul on the strut

so it stays.

why it's 3/8 thread though i have no idea...

 

Anyway, time to pop the engine back in

easy enough right?

apparently not.

Not enough space means the engine crane is to the side of the car, making it a right ballache to push the engine back to engage with the splines on the input shaft.

resorted to jacking up the legs one at a time, sliding a greased metal plate under and whacking them with a mallet to shuffle the bloody thing along the floor an inch at a time.

after an unspeakable amount of time however,

and using my phone as a shitty periscope to make sure everything was lined up:

success:

 

cleaned and re-attached the wiring, and clear-coated the n/s of the engine bay:

built the new clutch hydraulic line:

then took the fuel pump off to disassemble and inspect the diaphragm,

   

I actually have a replacement fuel pump which I've fitted for now, but it's horrid and cheap-feeling compared with the original, so will try and find a replacement diaphragm as this one's started cracking.

 

Ok, floor time. Am going to need to make a new accelerator pedal bracket, as there isn't much left of the original.

Can see how much of a bloody rust trap this part of the floor is as well, all the dirt gets wedged behind the bracket and dissolves the floor.

choppy choppy

which is very useful because now I can easily get to the accelerator cable to unhook it:

Would've loved to remove the door for better access but there just isn't enough room in the garage to open it wide enough to get to the hinges.

Fair amount of work behind this point to do:

 

Managed to source a floor panel, according to the sticker it was shipped from Buenos Aires to France, and then to me

For some reason the return on the outside edge was bent upwards rather then down, so that had to be fixed first:

I've roughed it in for now, will finish and tidy up the rough welds next week, once I've waited long enough that the neighbours won't get pissed off with grinder sounds

Repair panel is a bit short, so will need to create a patch to bridge the gap - luckily it's just flat from this point back.

 

Also, further evidence as to why I need a bigger car,

free oven acquired:

 

matches the £1 kitchen quite well I think

 

[Landy Mann]

Nice progress really enjoying this thread

[stuboy]

good pictures, keep it up

[chaseracer]

3 hours ago, meowmeow said:

Managed to source a floor panel, according to the sticker it was shipped from Buenos Aires to France, and then to me

For some reason the return on the outside edge was bent upwards rather then down, so that had to be fixed first:

Happy* memories of replacing the rear-quarter panel on the 2CV racer.  They'd got the radii of the double return bang on, just not in the right order...

[jim89]

5 hours ago, meowmeow said:

correct myself again, turns out that is standard fit, but not on my car - apparently some Girling calipers had these weird banjo bolt thingies fitted for a while

quickly figured out why because when i went to attach the hose to the replacement caliper, the angle of the hole was such that without the fitting it would foul on the strut

so it stays.

why it's 3/8 thread though i have no idea...

 

Anyway, time to pop the engine back in

easy enough right?

apparently not.

Not enough space means the engine crane is to the side of the car, making it a right ballache to push the engine back to engage with the splines on the input shaft.

resorted to jacking up the legs one at a time, sliding a greased metal plate under and whacking them with a mallet to shuffle the bloody thing along the floor an inch at a time.

after an unspeakable amount of time however,

and using my phone as a shitty periscope to make sure everything was lined up:

success:

 

cleaned and re-attached the wiring, and clear-coated the n/s of the engine bay:

built the new clutch hydraulic line:

then took the fuel pump off to disassemble and inspect the diaphragm,

   

I actually have a replacement fuel pump which I've fitted for now, but it's horrid and cheap-feeling compared with the original, so will try and find a replacement diaphragm as this one's started cracking.

 

Ok, floor time. Am going to need to make a new accelerator pedal bracket, as there isn't much left of the original.

Can see how much of a bloody rust trap this part of the floor is as well, all the dirt gets wedged behind the bracket and dissolves the floor.

choppy choppy

which is very useful because now I can easily get to the accelerator cable to unhook it:

Would've loved to remove the door for better access but there just isn't enough room in the garage to open it wide enough to get to the hinges.

Fair amount of work behind this point to do:

 

Managed to source a floor panel, according to the sticker it was shipped from Buenos Aires to France, and then to me

For some reason the return on the outside edge was bent upwards rather then down, so that had to be fixed first:

I've roughed it in for now, will finish and tidy up the rough welds next week, once I've waited long enough that the neighbours won't get pissed off with grinder sounds

Repair panel is a bit short, so will need to create a patch to bridge the gap - luckily it's just flat from this point back.

 

Also, further evidence as to why I need a bigger car,

free oven acquired:

 

matches the £1 kitchen quite well I think

 

Retro o o 👍🏻

[meowmeow]

good news, I quit my job so now I have a lot more time to spend on this

bad news, I quit my job so now I have no money to spend on this

We'll see how I get on

 

All boring welding pics this time sorry

next hole to sort:

 

Near-enough shape made from the bonnet of the Golf again, fits ok:

 

and roughed in:

 

Pedal bracket time:

Had some weird kind of self-tapping philips head screws to connect the pedal to the bracket before - hateful things that completely stripped when I tried to remove them

So have replaced with bolts (no I didn't leave them this long!)

Suitably shoddy work but nobody's gonna see it so I'm sure it's fine (note that before I made the silly decision of buying this car I'd never touched a welding set, so we're not expecting miracles)

The bolt holes are wonky, but weirdly traced exactly from the pedal, so I guess that wasn't straight either?

Welded in place, will clean up later

Irritatingly the channel in the replacement floor goes slightly too far forwards and under where the bracket mounts (not sure if this is a pickup thing, as the pedal isn't hinged from the floor on those so there's no such bracket)

Promise it's not my stupidity, as the pressing lines up exactly with the drain hole and cutout

So I'll be filling that gap with a hell of a lot of seal sealer or something probably...

 

Next are the bottom pieces from the cross member - somehow they rusted to almost exactly the same shape on either side, so I could reuse my card template

More welding:

   

and much the same the other side:

 

Final big floor hole now - old piccy as a reminder

Cut out the floor and found that many other bits were rusty and sad:

Doesn't look too bad at first, but the inner cill, outer cill, and base of where the seatbelt mounts are gone.

Bit more investigation revealed this sadness:

 

 

Which leaves me with a dilemma - any more cutting and this part of the car is going to be very bendy...

Evident in this photo how little is actually left, helpfully right above the B pillar:

 

It's going to all have to be replaced, but would be great to have some advice on how best to go about doing this without causing the car to start folding in half

 

For now I've put the seatbelt bracket back on just to give it some rigidity

 

Oddly enough, the rest of the o/s cill is, for a 70s car, really quite good:

 

[bangernomics]

You can brace up using some box section or angle welded to the corners if they are present.

[High Jetter]

People pay for welding...

[meowmeow]

Good news, I am stupid (as usual).

There is in fact a very thick piece of metal in this exact location that holds everything together, which explains why nothing fell apart when the cill started rusting away

Can't really see it in this pic, it's behind the inner cill bit:

Anyway, 5 different little pieces to make to repair all of the rot, forgot to take pictures of a lot of this as I just wanted it over and done with.

 

O/S floor now done, welds ground back and painted.

and sealed:

And from underneath (sorry this photo is truely awful but you get the idea)

 

Would seem like a good time to sweep some more of the garage floor up since I was done with the welding for the time being.

 

Next, clutch slave cylinder installed.

Thin layer of grease on the inside of the gearbox casing this time to at least attempt to stop the disaster of what happened with the old slave cylinder.

May remember it ended up being sawed into about 4 different pieces to get it out.

Steering rack next:

Which of course fouled on the clutch hydraulic line because I have no memory of where everything goes

So that got modified a bit to clear the boot:

And finally back on the ground:

 

Next a somewhat over-engineered throttle cable assembly.

Cable gets removed from the sheath, threaded through the spring, inside of which is a collett, through that other cylindrical thing that attaches it to the pedal lever, the washer to press against the spring, then the spring gets compressed and the lever pops through the hole:

Took quite a while to get the spring to behave itself and compress enough, and it got dark outside so I couldn't see much, which didn't help

But eventually...

Rear N/S floor got sanded and painted

And I poked a few more small holes in the N/S front floor for good measure

I'll deal with these later, am sick of welding at the minute!

 

All being said though, the N/S floor is unbelievably solid considering what the cill looks like...

. . .

 

Then, because I am incredibly sad, I wasted a lot of money on colour-matched (ish) paint for the floor, which nobody will ever see.

I'm in two minds about whether to drill out the drain holes in the patch panel; would be 'correct', but I am short of a few bungs, and the only ones I can find online don't look great.

 

Last bits for now, cleaned up the underside of the driver's floor mat:

Has a bit of a hole in the middle, I'll find some rubber cement and make a patch as I doubt I'll be finding replacement L spec floor mats anytime soon.

Reinstalled the driver's seat and popped some of the mats back in just to tidy up a bit

Also cleaned the interior a tiny bit as everything was covered in ginder dust.

Painted the rear N/S rear floor to match as well

Rubber floor mats will go back in once I've sorted the bung problem - knowing my brain if I put them back in now I'll forget there are open holes in the floor and cause future me a world of pain

 

Next steps - rear brakes, lines and possibly the fuel tank.

 

And for something different, stereo stopped working in the Golf.

It's getting on a bit now, so the belt had stretched slightly with age and come off the motor pulley - ordered weird size replacement from China, in the meantime just boiled the original on the hob for a few mins to shrink it a bit and popped it back in:

Also cleaned the tape path since it was hideously dirty

The belt doesn't just drive the tape mech, it deals with the finicky but very cool door thing as well:

And now working properly:

 

[MorrisItalSLX]

That stereo is fantastic! I’ve never seen anything like it!

[Matty]

If you need a bit of positivity

 Keep doing it. All of this is awesome!

[DSdriver]

That seat looks like it needs one of those beaded seat covers. Very period accessory 🤣

[meowmeow]

8 hours ago, DSdriver said:

That seat looks like it needs one of those beaded seat covers. Very period accessory 🤣

Thinking of getting something like this:

Some of the bits of seat vinyl are quite brittle and like to stab me in the arse...

[meowmeow]

Ok, rear bits next.

Bum up, shoes off

First to diffuse a bomb:

Drums are big bois (more about these later)

Also exhibiting the very cool double-coil suspension setup:

Removed the fuel tank, and in doing so filled my mouth and ears with ancient mud

sit-rep; it's fucked, and about 1/4 full of solidified horrid varnishy stuff

Removed the sender, it's err... not great admittedly

but it's £45 for a new one so I'll see what I can do

Left it soaking in some acetone

and went back to the brakes

Got the drums off, everything is brand new inside!

Not sure why you'd do a brake job then leave the thing parked for 40 years but looks like I'll only have the replace the knackered wheel cylinders:

Not so fast

Shit news, both drums seem to have hairline cracks on the surface so I wasn't comfortable reusing them:

Fair enough I says, just pop on the internet and see if I can order some, can't be difficult can it?

Ok, out of stock on Autodoc, let's see elsewhere

Right, NLA anywhere in Europe...

 

Ok, lemme ring a guy I know - says he hasn't got any but perhaps try the Peugeot Club or eBay France?

Already tried eBay literally everywhere and nothing

Found a parts shop in Australia that has some! Protracted conversation by email across timezones and turns out they don't ship abroad anymore.

Tried Made-in-China.com - they only want to sell me 200 of them, don't think I have space for that...

Fine, email Peugeot Club, get a response back: None of their sources have any pairs in stock...

Eventually found a company in the US that would manufacture them for $40 a piece - not terrible but of course I got destroyed by shipping costs...

 

In the meantime, I cleaned up the tank sender, resoldered the wiper to the arm and tested with the multi-meter - all good and behaving itself miraculously:

Replaced the wheel cylinders on both sides (yes the top spring is installed incorrectly, fixed that after I noticed how loose everything was...)

 

New brake lines for the rear:

  

New flexi to the compensator - it's acutally from a Peugeot Boxer or something I can't remember but was cheap, close enough size and Eurocarparts also deliver next day cause the depot is near my house

Also replaced the diff fluid - actually didn't look that bad but might as well since I'm under here:

The rear N/S window mech broke first time I tried to very gently roll the window down, so took it out to investigate

Pin has snapped unfortunately. Seeing as a replacement mech is about £35, didn't really see the point in trying to bodge something to replace the weird cast pin

Have kept the mech anyway in case I ever find some way of repairing it

Removed and painted the spare wheel carrier:

 

Purists will curse me as I think it was body colour before, but behold my marvellous selection of weird paints that I must get through by the time this car is back on the road:

Speaking of which, I cleaned up and painted the back panel of the bum.

There was also a small rust hole in this which was welded up.

Still trying to find things to do waiting for the brake drums, I upgraded the bathroom cabinet bench as the chipboard surface had completely disintegrated:

 

After 2 and a bit weeks, my blessed delivery has arrived:

Nice and shiny

O/S drum was misbehaving, so readjusted the handbrake and all was well

Workshop manual labelled the locking nut as a "screw" which did confuse me for a second...

 

 

Ok, lets connect the front bits to the back bits then.

Removed the hard line clamps very carefully - doesn't look fun to replace these studs:

Offending items out:

They don't look terrible but no point replacing everything else and leaving this stuff as it is

Cleaned up the underside of the N/S floor and painted the rusty bits, then sealed:

   

Haven't put underseal right up the edge yet as eventually a new outer cill is being welded on so didn't want it to melt or become compromised.

New steel fuel line:

eh close enough

Lucky as they only ship max of 3m in one length, and after bending to shape this is all that was left:

New brake and fuel line installed

Managed to scratch a bit of the underseal off so will go back and touch that up later

 

Got dark again, and I was reminded about my lack of working lightbulb in the garage

The photo is a pretty accurate representation of how little I can actually see when I'm working

 

Now the bit you're really here for - what useless free thing did I pick up off the street this time?

Free fan!

Not working properly of course - keeps speeding up by itself regardless of what setting you turn the dimmer switch to

Previous owner left me some more tasks inside:

 

 

Took the thing apart, featuring old-school botch with weird rubberised tape and string, which I rectified a little cleaner with shrink tubing

Was relieved that this is what was meant by "coil wires damaged" - was expecting a repair on the coil itself.

Swivel mech was just misaligned from the last time the previous owner took it apart

Scoured the internet to determine its correct orientation, and discovered a whole world of people obsessed with collecting fans?

Lubricated the bearings, greased the swivel mech and reassembled everything.

Finally, seems the triac was the cause of the speed problem

so sourced a replacement TXAL 226B and some new capacitors, and now it's behaving itself:

 

Next bits on the 504 - I need to sort the engine out - it's got a few stuck valves from sitting so the head's coming off

Will probably rebuild the carb as well

I am armed with my NOS spark-plug tool because of course the wells are ever so slightly too small to fit a standard socket down...

 

[Landy Mann]

Looks good nice update 

[Asimo]

25 minutes ago, meowmeow said:

eventually found a company in the US that would manufacture them for $40 a piece

Custom brake drums for a 40 year old Peugeot at $40 each is bargain of the year!  Amazing!!

[meowmeow]

6 minutes ago, Asimo said:

Custom brake drums for a 40 year old Peugeot at $40 each is bargain of the year!  Amazing!!

Price was pretty amazing to be fair, but was a bit sketchy not really knowing if I was being messed about or not - was given absolutely no indication of lead time and they just blanked my messages asking about this, rang the distributor and they just said "uuh we don't know"

So was half expecting them to never show up, or take 6 months + to arrive

[Matty]

Just wow. Hat off wow. 🫡

[Dyslexic Viking]

Do you have a link to the company that made the brake drums?

As it may come useful for others here.

[meowmeow]

2 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

Do you have a link to the company that made the brake drums?

As it may come useful for others here.

Good point

It's called Dynamic Friction Company

https://www.dynamicfriction.com/

Relatively new company by the looks of it

AFAIK you can only order what's in their catalogue, but it's a pretty wide range of stuff - they just make them to order based on measurements they have on-file I assume

[meowmeow]

Been a bit slow with this, lost 2 weeks because of christmas/new year but here's what's happened since.

First thing, drained and refilled the gearbox - just takes 10w40 so that's nice and cheap

Bit sparkly but I think we'll be fine.

Found a replacement, similar enough diaphragm for the original fuel pump

One of the screws on the top of the fuel pump was incredibly stubborn.

Guessing that all the fuel had long since evaporated so nothing was going to explode, welded a nut onto the end of it:

And all cleaned up ready for reassembly:

Disassembled the carburettor

First weirdness, gasket has been doubled up by someone a long time ago

Not hideously dirty, considering what the fuel pump and tank looked like inside:

Base looked to be a bit warped, so sorted that out as well (photo is prior to 'sorting', I forgot to take an after pic)

cleaned and reassembled with new gaskets etc... ready to go back on at some point

no idea if it's adjusted correctly, just popped the adjustments back in as they were before...

 

Next, fitted the replacement window mech

Sourced some trim clips with slightly smaller pointy ends, but larger flat bits (if that makes sense?) so that they would pop in and out of the door a bit easier, but also grab onto the door card board better, as it's starting to go soft in a few places.

Welded up the holes at the bottom of the door

   

Then rust-proofed the inside, painted, then popped the door card back on:

 

 

Next, time to get the cylinder head off.

I was intending on getting the water pump off first (more leverage whilst the head's installed), but seems like someone's been here before me and realised what a ballache of a job it was going to be

The nuts were all already loose, and the bolt top right has been sheared off. Fun times

Ok, better to just remove the head with it still attached then

What's left of the wiper arm came in handy holding the page down:

Head off, everything looking pretty ok in here:

And on the bench, where I started diassembly.

It's bloody disgusting. Everything on this engine was proper caked in oil, like someone ran it for years with a valve cover leak

It's not supposed to be black (or if it is, there's no paint left on it)

7 of the 8 valves came out ok, though they were all rank and covered in brownness:

But the last one was a tight bugger and I had to leave it soaking in penetrant for a day before very gently tapping it out.

Cleaned up some other bits that were also completely black

Inlet manifold and the oil feed pipe (more about that later)

 

For some reason there were two types of valve stem oil seal installed, not sure what that's about

One with a collar, and the other with a spring:

Dreaded task time, water pump removal.

The studs had corroded and expanded, and nothing was going to move

I'd wanted to keep the original water pump and replace the bearing, but pretty quickly looked like that was not going to happen:

Eventually (read "after 2 days"), it did come off, some 47 years after being stuck to its friend:

You can see how messed up the studs were.  Again I had to weld nuts onto these and very gently back them out so as not to wreck the threads in the head.

Finally cleaned the rust off the heads of the valves with whatever this terribly out of date looking stuff I found in the kitchen cupboard is:

Seemed to work ok though.

Then sent the head off to be machined.

 

Christmas time-wasting, popped some of the front end on to try and figure out where all of the missing wiring is supposed to go:

When it was driven into something in the 80s, looks like someone helpfully cut the wiring to the headlights, horn and indicators:

I have a replacement loom that I bought for all of £10 (!), can't actually use it because it's from an earlier car with the 2-pin indicator sockets, but it was useful enough for cross-referencing.

Did I actually fix the wiring? No, was too bloody cold to solder, and Christmas, and I'd forgotten to order any wire before the holidays...

But at least I know what goes where now

 

Hung the n/s wing as well temporarily, one because I'm sick of seeing a faceless car, and two because I wanted to know just how squished in the face was:

Headlight should be a few mm from the wing - got some work to do then...

Then a Christmas miracle, found a free lamp with a very short cable at the side of the road:

 

Got the head back from the machine shop,

Valve-grinding in the kitchen was not well received

All cleaned up, valves, new water pump installed:

The bolt for the water pump was a pretty weird size, M7 and some odd length that I had to specifically order.

 

On to the rocker assembly.

Following the theme, it was disgusting too. Again, it's not supposed to be black.

Was initially going to be lazy and not take it apart, but glad I did.

Notice the completely clogged oil feed hole, and build-up of sludge under the spring:

Blew through the rocker shafts and all manner of nasty shit came out:

Started cleaning up everything, and was feeling pretty ok, till I felt something odd on the underside of the intake shaft.

Yeah that's absolutely shagged isn't it

 

Rocker appears to have died a sad death also:

Everything else is perfect though...

Can only imagine the last person to drive it wasn't too fussed about changing the oil, and the oil delivery port to this valve just completely clogged.

Then again if it was constantly pissing oil out of the valve cover (and assuming they were topping it up to replace what was smothered down the outside of the engine), wouldn't it always be very nice new oil?? Who knows...

 

Yes even the rods were black and sludgy:

 

Later on I had a look at the oil delivery setup on the head, to try and work out why the rocker shaft got chewed up.

Excuse the shitty Paint arrows, comes up the aforementioned feed pipe from the block, and through these holes:

Looked inside them with a torch, they were of course hideous.

Blew them out and a lovely blob of whatever plopped onto the floor, natural reaction of course to take a photo:

Either way that at least partially explains it...

 

So, trying to source a replacement intake side rocker shaft at the moment, then will put the head back on and get to work sorting the rest of the bodywork nightmare out.

 

[mk2_craig]

Amazing work! Much appreciate the comprehensive update, keep up the heroic efforts. 

[Asimo]

That sludgy black muck on everything was the norm when I started taking old car engines apart. Lead in the fuel ruined the oil which was nowhere near as good as today's oil.

[N Dentressangle]

10 hours ago, Asimo said:

That sludgy black muck on everything was the norm when I started taking old car engines apart. Lead in the fuel ruined the oil which was nowhere near as good as today's oil.

Most of the old engines I've taken apart have been like that. All just needs a good struggle cuddle with the parts cleaner

[cobblers]

That engine looks mega familiar from when I had my Talbot Express!! Quite pleasant old lumps. 

Do these suffer with mega warping exhaust manifolds like the talbots do? Be worth putting a straight edge on it before you bolt it all back together. The iron is v soft, I lapped mine flat with a couple of sheets of emery cloth spray glued to some 22mm mdf