All the steel bits were painted with Kurust to kill the rust and this shows up in the photos as black.
I installed the head and rebuilt the dynamo, installing the new (modified) contact points. Then I set up the pull-start cord on it's new spring and bolted it to the main engine. At this point, with no spark plug, I could easily turn the engine over on the starter cord.
The carb was stripped and cleaned out...then I put the engine back on its frame and mounted it in the vice, installed the sparky & attached the exhaust pipe and a fuel pipe with a funnel. I reckoned on having a small amount of fuel in the carb, pipe, filter & funnel, just enough to run the engine for a few seconds.
With my son holding the engine to stop it rocking about too much I started pulling on the cord and it eventually fired up and ran!
Unfortunately there was fuel dripping out of the carb so I researched on the internet and found Tillotson service manuals, diagrams, forums, etc (see links on main page). It looks like when the engine stopped the previous owner had tweaked the carb settings, opened up the setting screws too far and it was flooding the carb.
I've re-adjusted the two screws and this will need some more testing/tweaking when the engine's finally installed.
With the hull upside down and the duct overhanging the rear of the trailer I cut some squares of plywood, glued them on and sealed the edges to patch some 'soft' spots where the hull had beed scraped. Also a couple of scratches were strengthened with glass-fibre matting & resin.
I sealed all of the joints with glass fibre tape and resin. The whole planing surface was then painted with primer-undercoat and finally with a Matt Black enamel...alledgedy used on boats as it's 'waterproof'.
I cut some new plywood for the deck and this was attached with wood-glue, screws every 6 inches and pins every 2 inches.
Then the seams were all sealed with tape & resin and the deck was painted with primer-undercoat & a nice Sky Blue enamel.
I removed the rudder 'bridge' from over the duct and glassed a couple of scuffs in the duct wall, then applied a fine glass-fibre top coat and a Pillar Box Red synthetic paint inside & out.
The bridge was painted Sky Blue and re-attached with glass-fibre paste, then glass-mat & resin to help the three screws to hold it in place. It's a foam-glass fibre laminate with a wood strip for the rudders to screw to so it's extremely light but also pretty strong.
To finish the painting I applied the Matt Black enamel to the cockpit floor and the horizontal & vertical splitters (the plywood pieces in the duct, to split off the air flow between thrust and skirt)
The engine now looks more like I wanted it to!
The dynamo side of the engine before I installed the new points & 'magnet' cover.
The repaired hull...
primed with sealer-undercoat...
and then the Matt Black enamel.
Primed with sealer-undercoat. The four holes in the deck will have inspection ports screwed in eventually. This is to check that the foam 'bouyancy' is intact and there's no water in the plenum (the hull void space).
Top coated deck and duct but before the rudder 'bridge' was re-fitted. You can also see the extra 'ply' that I added to strengthen the deck for the grand-kids to crawl in & out.
almost finished...
just the seat to fit...
and the fuel tank & pipe!