"If it ain't broke - Don't fix it"

Discovered that Carrie had a leaky exhaust manifold stud some time ago and it turned out that some previous owner had drilled out a stud and had fitted an oversize bolt without cutting a proper thread. The only proper remedy was to remove the head and have a helicoil insert put in. My friend Lee of the Marlin Owner's Club offered to do it for me and check the camshaft out and do any necessary adjustments.

So I thought I would tidy up the engine bay while I was at it - first mistake. I thought it was reasonably clean but it was quite a mission cleaning the aluminium side panels, and the block, the chassis, removing and derusting the battery tray, removing cleaning and painting the alternator and starter, cleaning the carbs, removing the radiator and all the hoses, tidying the wiring etc etc. Now I don't mind doing the work but I had a real issue getting the starter to function again - it looked really pretty but it just wouldn't stop. Had I wired it wrong?

I don't think so but I had it in and out about half a dozen times before taking it in to my local auto electrician and lo and behold it had developed a fault and it was cheaper to buy an old stock recon unit for £15 than have him strip and rebuild it. Problem solved , well not quite, I had another surprise in store. She still wouldn't fire up so I assumed that I hadn't set the camshaft timing correctly so - off with the covers and the belt and start again and ... no it wasn't that. Maybe the distributor ... a bit out. Perhaps it would be more sensible to see if Lee can help.... so.... Lee starts from scratch and checks everything again. It turns out that the main problem lay with the carb. A bit of an internal clean seems to have done the trick. Thanks to Lee she's running nicely and I can now get on with the bodywork stripdown prior to a repaint.

I don't suppose the following has helped the starting process much either!