A morning at the airfield saw the Spanner used in anger. It worked a treat! We could only get at 4 nuts on the whole engine due to the tightness of space. I think spanner mk II will be slightly different, remade from guage plate so it can be hardened.

Looking at the "Good" engine was hard work. Everything is very tightly packed, like a Chinese puzzle where each part requires removal of the next to get it off. We managed to get a couple of manifolds off and peered inside. The sleeves we could see were rusty, not a good sign. We might only salvage a piston and ball joint, but we’ll see.

Graham has a couple of weeks holiday now, so we have time to remake the Spanner. I might get some alloy so we can start to make the conrod too. Nick is ploughing on with his coreXY plotter robot, and Bob is finalising issue 2 of the design.

I’ll return the nut we borrowed and research the CNC plasma cutter in more detail.