I guess some updates are due. I haven't been taking many pictures but here are a few y'all may find interesting.
After taking the head off, I found lots of "yuck" in there, especially a large amount of carbon build-up in the intake area. I had some peculiar symptoms with this engine and finally found out why. Whoever rebuilt the engine last time left all the valve stem seals out, and then assembled the spring assemblies incorrectly so rather than deflecting oil, they were literally scooping it into the valve guides. I lapped a few valves myself and then decided there was more damage than I was comfortable lapping out, so I tore the head down and delivered it to a machine shop to be cleaned and ground.

- XPAG Cylinder Head
- head.jpg (82.17 KiB) Viewed 74864 times
Next I rigged up a hoist to pull the rest of the lump out of the car. Worked pretty well, but I have some ideas to improve it for next time. I think it will be better than a "real" engine hoist when I'm done.

- Pulling MG TC Engine
- hoist.jpg (56.24 KiB) Viewed 74864 times
The top end also showed a bit of yuck so I set about cleaning that up. There is some scoring in one of the cylinders but I've decided that I would rather not do a complete rebuild, and compression was good in that cylinder anyway, so I'm going to ignore it.

- XPAG Engine
- top.jpg (42.7 KiB) Viewed 74864 times
Here's something you may not have seen before. Pistons with positive deck clearance, PLUS a raised center section of probably 3/16". This gives a rather large compression boost but watch those valve clearances!

- XPAG High Compression Piston
- piston.jpg (35.73 KiB) Viewed 74864 times
Moving down to the bottom end, the first scary thing I found was more than half of the cotter pins missing from the rod and cap nuts. Thank goodness they all stayed tight! Most of the bearings looked fine, but one showed corrosion and light scoring on the crank shaft. At this point the damage has been done and will not continue to get worse, so I will most likely leave everything as-is. Maybe I'll replace the rod bearings, but that would be as far as I'd go. Again, I don't want to so a full rebuild unless there's a strong reason to do so!

- XPAG Engine
- bottom.jpg (50.63 KiB) Viewed 74864 times
The camshaft looks ok but I will measure that when I pull it out, and since I got a great deal on some timing gears I'll replace those at the same time along with a new chain. It won't be long before I'm on the reassembly stage, but I still have to replace the gearbox and rebuild the drive shaft before I can drop the lump back in. I'm trying to get this all done in the next two weeks, work permitting.