Another pay day for someone else

Mon.09.03.09. Paul has finally confirmed the cost of the work on the engine. To my horror it is £817.71p. I immediately descended into ‘meltdown’. The price was explained as the cost of the parts that creep up slowly. “I always prefer to inform the client the true cost of ‘bits’ so that it isn’t a sudden shock to the system, but Chris told me just to press on with it!” this was a reasoned argument. Having later verified the cost of equivalent prices from Paddocks the figures stacked up.

£150.00 the cost to re-polishing of the head.

£147.00 to re-sighting the valves.

£200.00 to re-grind, re-bore and skim the block

£108.00 the cost of the pistons, rings and gudgeon pins

£50.00 for the bearings.

£45.00 for a complete gasket set

£107.00 for the dreaded Vat. Which cannot be lost.

Nevertheless this a bitter pill to swallow. Justifiably Jo is extremely upset. The project is again haemorrhaging money. Brockbank has completed the job once before, should he be trusted not to fuck up again, maybe, Chris also screwed up by tampering, incorrectly with the ‘stage 2 head’ during the re-assemble? The fuck ups cannot be simply shrugged off anymore with “if we had only known earlier, we should have learned our lesson by now, we have made too many mistakes!” that at least is something that is correct! This amount of cash seems less and less appropriate more than 3 years into the re-build. I am more than pissed off. I retired to bed early with a raging headache, I wonder why?

Weds.11.03.09. I have collected the engine bits: ‘bits’ being the operative word. Several boxes contained pistons with rings, main and big end bearings, seals, gasket sets, the re-bored block, re-ground crankshaft, re-modified, re-assembled head in addition there was even a charge for carriage. All these items were delivered to Westmead for Colin to work his magic building the engine properly this time. I leave for France tomorrow staying at Gemmas’ for a couple of nights to see Sam. On Saturday morning we fly from Gatwick to Marseille to prepare the house for sale from April 1^st.