Dave, the pic happens to have caught a "dummy" piece of old pipe that's been bent into shape as a template for new ones each side

These were done "while we waited" on Saturday morning and are now wrapped and ready

I get it now, thanks

If it were me doing this sort of resurrection I would take out the carpet, and check under all the sound deadening stuff. It's a bit of a faff to remove, the worst bit I had was the bolt holding the round pad under the gas pedal not wanting to come out, plus a sneaky hidden screw on the foot rest, then when you remove the sound deadening stuff, the bitumen bit on top will likely split and the fluff stuff underneath may decide to stick to both the floor and the bitumen, leading to some sort of replacement being necessary (or just shove it all back as best you can) plus you need somewhere to put the monstrous one-piece carpet...

Indeed Dave the carpet was lifted some time ago and the floor inspected, the obstacles you describe all encountered and negotiated. There is still sound-deadening to "get out of the way" for when welding to the front wheel arches/front footwell area takes place, to avoid fire risk.

That should be a straightforward fix, that isn’t massively expensive

Cheers Jamie

Great that you’ve found the compression leak.
Why do you think the valves failed? Weak mixture caused by a duff injector or inlet gasket leak?
Are you going to test the other cylinder valves too?
Exciting stuff

The other cylinders are outputting close enough to 150 each so in theory we won't need to do much - our mate will no doubt take the opportunity to clean up anything he spots.

Cause? Difficult to say, but considering the scenario of its past (for the sake of those that can't be bothered to trawl through here, it was 13 years under a bush then 18 months in PJM's driveway until we took it on.

It had belonged to the couple's son until, we understand, he parked it up underneath this large bush in their garden and then detoured into a Porsche which his folks gave him

My feeling is he probably ragged it and pot 5 didn't take kindly to it.

I never bother removing the water rail bleed point, they're always seized for a start as you've discovered and secondly that point is high enough any trapped air gets pushed through to bleed back to the expansion bottle.

Hi Simon
How are getting on with the cam caps?
Did you figure out if they are all numbered the same on every engine?
Frazer

From the comparison of three, carmine's, yours and ours they were all different...

As you might expect from a CH skimmer/refurbishing company they had marked the inlet side 1-5 and the exhaust side similarly (though not initially noticed as it was quite discreet) so we are satisfied they are in the same order as when we dissembled it.

However there is a slight suspicion someone has been in there at an unknown stage in the past as some of the head bolts were little more than hand-tight; this was enough cause for concern that cam caps "might" not have been replaced correctly.

As mentioned above there could be related wear particular to each one which justifies keeping each one in the same position, but it's beyond our means to measure how much that wear has been over its 61.000 mile history.

Thanks both of you for the photos anyway which added to the knowledge-base

Sounds like a pretty good outcome though. Still a little hit and miss, but given the circumstances I think that you are good.

If it were me, I would fit 2 x caps to one cam and rotate it. If it feels OK then proceed to the next cap and so on. That would give you some piece of mind at least.

Yeah, our mobile/mate/mechanic seems to have a 'feel' for this and is happy with the re-installation so far (albeit with a couple of steps back as per our 61k project thread )