The trouble with working on rare and desirable vehicles is that I always get a raging case of the "I wants". Every time I drive to and from Malc's in my incredibly reliable, practical and boring Insignia I often feel a bit down. Nearly all my life I have had an obsession with nice cars, it started when I was 8 years old and my eldest Brother, John, came home with a brand new 4.2 litre Jag XJ6 in leaky botty brown. It had leather and electric windows and this thing called air conditioning. It was nearly silent, rode like a magic carpet and went like nothing else my developing brain had ever experienced before - my folks had a 1300 Cortina at the time. I still remember the number plate - JPL444K. I also remember the time he parked it outside his house and it caught fire, they took the remains away and gave him another one. Anyway, I digress, I have had a number of Jags since then, a series 2 XJ, a couple or 3 XJ40's, a 4.2 S Type, a disastrous xf diesel and my peak Jag - a 2001 XJR supercharged monster. That one was Paramount Performance tuned with a straight through exhaust and smaller supercharger pulley, it had the 155 MPH speed limiter disabled and was tuned to about 440 BHP. I have had a couple of Range Rovers and a Porsche Cayenne 455 BHP twin turbo job that delighted at every prod of the throttle. Perhaps the most fun car I ever owned was an MG Montego turbo that had been very heavily modified and would humiliate just about anything and everything. Now I have an Insignia diesel. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good car. I have owned it for 18 months, it cost just 2 grand, it has never let me down, the last mot needed just two shocks at 50 quid and a pair of tyres. It's quiet, comfortable, easy to drive, it does everything you could want of a car and with tax at just 35 quid per year and over 60 MPG on a run it is the most sensible car I could possibly own right now.

Regular readers will know that input to this blog has been sporadic due to a house move. The downsizing from our 4 bed farm house with 2 51ft long barns to a small 3 bed bungalow has taken about 9 exhausting months but it has finally happened. the move itself was a disaster, thanks to my ill advised decision to use AnyVan instead of a professional and organised house moving company. I wouldn't normally name and shame any company but what they did was entirely unacceptable, more on that shortly. I won't have time for any of my normal project type stuff on cars or bikes but I will do a bit on converting the double garage in to a workshop. It's piled high with stuff at the moment, I couldn't move in there initially but it's slowly getting there already, I boarded the rafters so I could get some stuff out the way quickly. I need to put a consumer unit in there and then wire in circuits for my tools and lighting - it had just one single energy saving bulb in there that was about as bright as David Lammy.

I have had quite a few messages recently enquiring as to whether I am still about, many folk have noticed that I haven't done many updates at all over the last 2 or 3 months. It's all down to this house move really, it has taken up a hell of a lot of time and has had a massively negative impact on my mental health. I am holding it together just about but at times have found it hard. Anyway, this blog isn't about that, this bit is to just update on some projects that I started talking about some time back and seemingly did no more on.

When I first got my V8 3.5 10.5:1 compression engine the valve guides were all a bit worn and were letting a fair bit of oil in to the combustion chambers - not a good thing. I did a fair bit of reading up and found there were numerous different heads available, perhaps not too surprising when you think how long this engine has been in production and how many people have used it. Generally speaking they have got better and better over the years with the very latest ones having bigger valves, better port shaping, hardened seats, seals on both inlet and outlet and wasted valve stems. The combustion chamber size has also been decreased from the 36cc of the early units to something like 29cc of the later ones. You have to watch you don't go too high on the compression ratio as that will give pre ignition or pinking so if using a later head on early pistons you must use composite gaskets, which are thicker than the thin steel ones used in earlier applications.

I always thought that we would never leave our current property, it was our dream home with massive outbuildings and in a near perfect location. Just recently though it has become too much for us, the business has failed, it doesn't make sense to be here any more. No doubt about it, the time has come to look for something a lot smaller, more manageable and nearer other people, we never see anybody out here because nobody is near.