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Art, the half bearing on the sump cradle side has a small pin soldered in, similar to the con rod bearings. I didn't do the block side as the oil way will be in this position. With the bearings being quite thick and stiff they hold themselves in place quite well anyway, so next time I probably...

Hi Bill, the cast iron was from Reeves in the UK. It was just plain extruded bar, not tube. I had some more extruded cast which I think was from Chronos tools, which I've just used to make the piston rings. That was good stuff too. The rubbish cast iron was from another place.

Had a good Xmas in the shed. I did the cast iron liners first. I ordered some cast iron to do a test. This was obviously poured in a mould. It was a bit rough to machine but gave a reasonable finish in the bore. Then I noticed a bit of porosity in the bore, so this was scrap. I tried some more...

Well, my plans change all the time, but at the moment the plan is to get it running, with some form of forced induction, and then make a mini dyno and do a bit of proper testing on it under load. After that I'm not sure. Ideal thing would be to get offered a massive amount of money for it...

Paul, I'm as surprised as anyone that the dividing head is so rigid, although it is a hefty beast. Some more progress........continuing my theme of trying things I've not seen on models before, I made a bottom cradle, rather than individual main bearing caps. Machining the...

Yes, 4 jaw chuck method would work just as good. I started the block recently. I'm going to use the dividing head to machine 90% of the block. It worked great on the V8, so no need to change technique. The block of ally looked a bit big on it at first, but no problems with the overhang...

I've not seen this method of making the bearing shells too often, so I decided to photograph every step. Apologies if everyone already knows this stuff. First step was to rough turn and bore the phosphor bronze bar. Then the tube was split And then soft soldered back together the new...

John, from my understanding of it, balancing the crank alone wouldn't achieve anything useful. The crank needs to be balanced with some dummy weights fastened to the journals, to represent the mass of the conrod and piston, etc. This would normally be all of the rotating weight, ie the big end...

Journals are protected from shot by cloth tape, or duct tape. Not worth tooling up for a one off. Polishing was done in the lathe with strips of emery paper. 600 grade first, then 1500, then 2500. I may do another polish with the felt wheel later. I'll try and take a pic of the offset grinding...

Got the crank finished. I ended up milling most of it with the dividing head. It worked a treat. I milled it down to plus 10 thou and then ground it to size with the grinding attachment I knocked up for the V8 cams. I'm a big fan of grinding now. If I can get another small lathe I'd like to make...

I suppose the first thing to do with the turbo would be to work out the amount of gas coming out of the exhaust and convert that to a cfm and pressure so I can use my compressor to do some testing with different types of turbine wheel/housings. It's probably 12 months away when I'll start that...

Started the crankshaft. I don't think the pics will be in order as I'm doing this on the ipad for the first time and it's all a bit weird at the moment. I made 2 ends first which have two sets of 5 locating pins. The big end journals will be split by 10 degrees as I want it to be even firing...

Garry, the finish on the rods is done by hand in a blast cabinet at work. The rods were finished using a ceramic media, but only because that's what was in the machine at the time. The finish from glass beads is pretty much the same. I have done similar jobs at home, just using my compressor...

At the moment I just have a wish list of stuff I'd like on the new engine. I don't anticipate making another one after this, so this has got to be the very best I can manage, given my equipment and cash available. Twin turbos are on the list, but they have to work, in a fashion, rather than just...

Art, I don't really know what the engine will look like yet, or what sort of induction system I'll use. My problem is I only get about 20mins a day on the cad at work, so I start with stuff I know, like conrods, and the rest just follows. It would be great to sit down for a month and draw...

Right, here we go again! I've decided on a V10 this time, just to be different. And I'm going up a scale, as with the V8 everything seemed to be just slightly too small to make a proper job. Maybe my eyesight is going, or I need smaller fingers. Bore will be 1", capacity about 125cc. I...

Right, just a couple more pics and then I'll wrap this one up. As some of you will have picked up on, I'm doing a V10 next, which means I probably won't get much more finished on the V8, unless things change. I've obviously learnt a lot over the past 3 years, and I'll pass everything on during...

Blimey, that was quick. I only finished their questionnaire midday yesterday. Hope I didn't come across as some sort of weirdo? Some of the questions they asked were a bit odd. No £££ tho. Yes V10 next. I'll start a new thread soon for that one. Cheers.

Hi all, there's not much missed out, I gave up on it for a while after the Megasquirt problems, and did something else for a while. Last week I got my old laptop out and tried that on the Megasquirt, and amazingly it worked, ie. no lost communication between Msquirt and laptop. So then I just...