Thanks Marty.

Have rebuilt plenty of pintos over the years, however for some reason, my first little kent has me a bit spooked.

In other good news.

I managed to track down the son of the previous owner...!!!

He remembers the wagon and is going look through some old family photo albums in the hope of locating some old photos of the car.

Not holding my breath however I'd love to see some if they exist.

Shaun.

If he can get you a pic or two that would be pretty cool.

A friend and I have embarked on restoring a 1 owner 77 Rally Pack 2dr 2ltr, the widow of the owner is hoping we can get it back on the road in pristine condition in a year or so she (83yo) can see the car again in its glory again and have her pic taken leaning on the door as she did back in 77 like being new owner again.

Lost power yesterday in the storm here in Victoria, so spent the day in the shed with a few lights powered by the generator cleaning up then began work on wagon block again.

Cleaned the rust off the bores using a 3 stone hone then went over with a ball hone.

Little but of work still to get the cross hatching correct however it's a 1000x better than it was.

Should at least get it in a running state.

Nice to be back at it.

Shaun

sounds like you guys got hit pretty hard.
We had some wind,  but nothing like all of the outages around your way.
 
I guess we can expect higher insurance permiums again no doubt.
A good excuse for shed time though.

That hone looks as good you'll get anywhere, it'll be a few thou bigger now not that it'll be a problem..

I heard Vic was heading for a storm, being in Adel we don't care about any other state ! We had a summer storm a few years ago, hail the size of plumbs and it just missed our house but demolished my rental property 5kms up the road causing nearly $12k damage , all covered by Shannons , lucky they cover acts of god and flooding . I said if they crank the payments up, I'll be moving on, which they didn't.

I'll have another crack at this as somehow I managed to lose my last post.

Had a mixed day yesterday.

After a long week of preping the bottom end, cleaning out ring lands and oil passages, I was all set to assemble things.

First thing was to gap the rings. F@#K !!!! Something was clearly wrong. Huuuuuuge gap. Check the box and it was the wrong size...

Checked the order/invoice and yep. I must have got it wrong??? Not quite sure how, was sure I ordered the right part, oh well. It meant the parts were covered up again and a new, double checked order was put in for the right size.....

Anyway, I had the morning spare so went to work on something that had been bugging me for a long time.

The handle on the rear hatch had never worked. I finally got a key to work however then the handle still wouldn't turn. Stuck shut. After lots of swearing I finally got it apart and found the problem. The cam from the lock barrel had broken off, most likely from someone trying to force the lock.

I had hoped the door lock might have had suitable parts to canabalse however unfortunately they are different.

Lots of googling later, (I now feel like a locksmith) and it appears that an old ford E83w may share the same internals.

Anglia and escort are not a match.

My other options (if I can't source a new lock barrel) include either removing the cam part so I can reassemble and the install and handle and it will work (but won't lock), or retro fit another 'T' handle from another make or model.




To be continued......

Had the morning off after nightshift so got a couple of hours in the shed. Was hoping the new piston rings would have arrived first, however it was not to be.

I set about tackling the head.

Removed the exhaust manifold. Only broke one stud.

Removed valves, springs and retainers.

Wow. My first look at the inside of a kent head. I thought pintos were bad. There are some huge steps in the thoats and and the inlet manifold transition.

I'm certainly no cylinder head porter, however I cant leave it like that. Will give it a slight going over with a few burrs, clean everything up, and re seat the valves.

Will update my progress in the next couple of days.

Yep that's called agricultural casting!
I haven't ported a Kent in ages so the only thing I remember is to not touch the bottom of the port, in effect your creating an eccentric tube raising upwards slightly, depends on how far you want to go with it, most of all, have fun..

so does anyone convert to hardened seat inserts anymore to cope with unleaded, or just use additive?
 
My 1600 Capri hasnt been done, but then I think the tanks still got Super in it! :)

I've never bothered with the escorts as unfortunately I don't do as many klms as I'd like.