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OK small update but at least its moving forward again.

Some of the valve tips were looking a bit ordinary especially where someone appears to have got carried away bevelling the edges. I bought the heads with the valves many years ago and haven't really touched them. So I figured I may as well replace the valves while I was at it and bought some new ones.. only to discover the old ones had 5 thou oversize stems, apparently an old Yella Terra trick to avoid replacing guides. Which meant k-lining the guides, which meant re-cutting the valve seats. Finally some very cautious tidying up of the chambers around the freshly cut seats and I was eventually back to square one!

Cut the spring seats to 1.550" and the guides to 0.500":


Used an internal locator seat 0.060" thick and some nice small diameter stem seals:


Locks are -0.050" to give me 1.750" installed height so I have the option to change to 1.800" easily in future and can run a reasonable diameter spring with these seats too.

Heavy-duty cycle in the kitchen-based parts washer (CRC immediately afterwards to prevent rust) to get rid of the last of the swarf and ready for assembly.

Those came up great.

yes quality work

Great read mate, Love your car keep up the good work.

Thanks guys, heads and manifold are back on, hopefully more to report this week

OK so its finally running again, here is one of the contributors to the delay - changing to a single serpentine belt.

First we needed some pulleys in the correct diameter and offset. Alternator was easy as it came with one, for the rest I just starting looking on Trademe for likely candidates.

Power steering pulley is from a Toyota Estima, removed the studs and bored out the centre hole to a suitable diameter for press-fit onto the Saginaw pump:


Crank pulley is from a 302 Ford, I cut and shut it to significantly reduce the offset, bored the centre hole a little larger and changed the bolt circle:


Water pump pulley is a combination of standard (long pump) pulley and VZ Commodore V6 machined down and welded together:

(I also had to add some lightening holes because it weighed more than the original, actually quite handy for aligning the bolts)

Added two 70mm flat idler pulleys (04-13 Statesman V6), which are mounted to/through the timing cover. Each has a three-bolt mount for strength and to allow shimming in every direction for alignment:


The main bolt for each idler also doubles as the retainer:


When you put it all together and spend many hours adjusting pulley alignment, you get this:

(Belt is a 6PK1600)

Tension adjustment is fixed, via the alternator using a custom turnbuckle:


Had it out for a quick drive this afternoon for the first time in around four months, feels good!

NICE!

plenty of work in that but good result!

Thanks guys, so far so good

Signs of me getting old, minor vibrations that used to part of the car's character are now just annoying. Used a phone app to measure frequencies, the worst of it seems to be a resonance between the driveshaft and the exhaust. With the 3.9 diff the driveshaft is approaching 3000rpm at open road speeds so any small issue is magnified.

The rear section had iffy replacement weights that were drilled and riveted on instead of welded, but being completely stock VN I just replaced it with the besting looking one from the stockpile, installed a new solid Spicer uni joint and painted it.

The original front section is so short now I managed to get mounted in my little lathe with the slip yoke removed, runout was around 0.015" and it didn't seem to be perfectly straight. Back to the stockpile for a better piece, machined the yoke and tacked in place on the lathe. For some reason this one gave me far more grief than usual, tacks would move it 0.005" or more and I ended up having to take runout measurements on the car then set up the lathe to mirror these as something about the flange yoke or uni I used was misaligned, but eventually got it down to around 0.002" runout.

(Before final weld and paint)

New front uni as well, replaced the centre bearing and CV joint, reassembled and reinstalled. Much better!