Squiffy’s engine

The van passed its MOT with flying colours today! No need to say much more than that! :o) A good day for L2S! Oh, and… Read More »Joy!

Good news at last! The engine is complete and now needs some serious miles under its belt BEFORE we head off on the road to Sydney. A rebuilt engine needs to be ‘driven in’ and then re-tuned and given several oil changes. Hopefully we should be able to do about 2000 miles in the van… Read More »The Engine’s Final Chapter

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The best laid plans of mice and men… Which ever sayings you prefer, the fact remains that the toast doesn’t always fall butter-side up. Sometimes it’s a sticky wicket and you’ve just got to play the dead bat and get yourself in. Having thought that the engine… Read More »The best laid plans…

Well, we didn’t hear it running, but today was a successful day for the London2Sydney household. After picking up some fuel hose and T-bar, myself and Andy got over to LA Performance for about 9am. With Andy having to leave and catch a flight back to the States a little later, we only had a… Read More »The penultimate chapter of the long-awaited finale

An early start saw us at L.A. Performance once again to begin the final preparations before Squiffy’s engine would be ready to be reunited with Squiffy herself. Nick and I set to work sorting through the jigsaw of tinware pieces (exchanging many quizzical glances and shrugs–it’s quite an exercise in spatial reasoning!). Meanwhile, Lee put… Read More »An unexpected prelude to the long-awaited finale

It’s been a successful weekend. Andy’s been back from America and we’ve worked solidly on preparing the ‘tinware’ for the new engine. For the uninitiated, the tinware are the sheets of metal shrouding which to funnel air over the engine – thus creating the ‘air-cooled’ effect. Due to Squiffy’s previous oil leak, much of this… Read More »The engine saga enters its finale

Andy will be back in the UK for the weekend and (all running smoothly) we shall be putting the engine back in the van. Meanwhile, with all the talk of engines, petrol and carburettors, this is one picture we hope not to be taking when on our way to Sydney… :o)

The process of rebuilding Squiffy’s engine is virtually complete. A set of downdraft carburettors arrived today from Italy and will be built directly onto the engine. After that it will merely be a matter of adding a few bits and pieces here and there, including the tinware which funnels air over the engine in order… Read More »Engine Update

The main engine block is now with Lee at http://www.laperformance.co.uk/ and refurbishment is well under way. Lee’s been great to us and has also promised to take some pictures of the various stages as the engine gets rebuilt. I’ll post up a ‘parts list’ in the next few days and keep watching this space for… Read More »The engine saga continues…

With all the efforts going into Squiffy’s interior, we didn’t want to neglect the most important part of our van: the engine. We were going to be asking a lot of it come July, so we wanted to make sure that Squiffy was being propelled by an engine that was up to the challenge. Despite… Read More »The engine saga begins…