Been a while, so I thought I'd do an update.
720 miles in now and she is a MONSTER!!!!
After a few initial problems getting the carbs to go rich enough, I took her to CCK Historic for a base tune. Really great garage that I would recommend in a heartbeat. They spent about 2-3 hours on the rolling road re-profiling the SM needles and sorting out timing etc.
The best £300 ever spent, it brought the low to mid range to life - they didn't take it past 4K rpm and will do the upper end once run-in period is over.
The guy doing the tuning looked up and said, "when this engine is ran in, it's gonna make a LOT of power"! While tuning she did 95bhp at the wheels at 3.5k rpm which is pretty much what smokie was achieving as peak power.
http://www.cckhistoric.com
Compression test was pretty healthy at 150 miles - 205psi max and equal or 3 psi difference all round.
My "fish tank" clearly did its job and a fuel tank flush is in order ...
Checked / redid the valve clearances at 300, 500 and 700 miles and each time the engine felt significantly easier to turn by hand. The head bolt torque also fine and only at 700 miles did the head bolts move a tiny smidge.
Both PMAC and CCK recommended I pipe away breather pipes into a catch tank. Here is my effort. I used an existing hole in the strut tower. The dodgy angle is for the photo and it stands vertical. I may need to move it over as the filter at the top just touches the bottom of the airbox. Used the existing crank case breather pipe and made a new one for the valve cover.
With the car squatting down harder under acceleration, the rear tyres rub more often than they used to. The offset on the wheels is a tiny bit too much.
I have two options: 1. Camber bushes, 2. New wheelies!
Not decided yet but tending to the new wheels option - thanks to franky and his ambitions on spending my money for me, this may be an expensive one [emoji1]
Also considered going triples but quite like having SUs. 2" SU was clearly an option but I wanted to see if the Hitachis would be man enough - so I wrote to ZT about bored out HSUs and the reply was quite interesting!!
While getting old smokie ready for storage, I had a closer look at the head. It appears someone had given it a lot of time and love!! Which possibly explains why she went so well despite reduced compression.
Also made a crate / trolley to move the bottom end and it fits perfectly into the shed now.
Interestingly, without the head on it I could "just" lift it up onto my crate but it's pretty heavy! I estimate about 120Kg. So smokie has been reunited with its head, lathered in grease and covered up in case I ever choose to sell the car and someone wants the original block or if I ever choose to do something with it again.
Now to get some more miles on!