Slow progress is better than no progress

I was out of action for most of the weekend but managed to get a couple of small things done in the spirit of keep going forwards:

I started going through my box of parts, and have fitted a harmonic balancer, power steering bracket and distributor to the engine.

Unfortunately the block I'm using has a snapped water pump bolt in one of the four holes. I know when it was used in one of our cars some time back, this never caused any leakage issues, so I'm going to pack the bolt hole with form-in-place-gasket when I fit the water pump to the motor and see how it pans out.

I'm not sure that I've got a tensioner in decent nick to use. I have a tensioner but it looks like one of the pulleys is stuffed. We'll see how it goes I guess.

Starting to resemble a whole motor...

Timing gear, cover installed

Cutting out rust

Trans tunnel done

Finally got around to doing the trans tunnel. It's been so long since the car had a full floor that it's surreal looking at it now!

I still have to weld the seam at the top but I'll do that from the engine bay with the motor out.

Firewall/trans tunnel progress shot

Progress. Slow as usual.

So I've got a few little jobs done on the car lately.

Welded up a few access holes in the floor, cut up an old bonnet I had sitting around for the right gauge steel (and in keeping with the low/no budget theme of this build!) so now I just have to make a template for the firewall area and weld that in. I was originally going to cut each of the angles I need and weld them together but that could prove to be a total pain. I'll see how I go making a template, even if it means I only make a couple of templates and still have to weld in two or three pieces.

I've also put a standard cam and rocker gear into the motor so I can at the very least set up the timing. I have to find a cam bolt and some rocker cover bolts, then I can start putting the timing chain on. Once that's done, I can refit the sump!