Spent today cleaning up the hinges and some assorted other bits and pieces.
Paint stripper, a few applications were needed to remove all of the paint.
Some scraping and then washed with a degreaser.
Then used the heat gun to thoroughly dry the items then one coat of black POR 15.

Next step is to prime and paint the underside of the boot and the bonnet then I can attach the fittings and attach the boot and the bonnet ready for filling, priming, sanding and painting.

Bought a piece of cheap 12mm foam to go under the tunnel carpet just to pack out the ripples.

This came to me overnight and after weighing up the possible outcomes, one of which was breaking the car in half, I decided to give it a shot.
If you've been following my progress, you may remember the issue of the unequal door openings possibly caused by a rear end collision in the past.
I tried to jack the door opening apart when it was on the rotisserie without much success and it was apparent that I needed to try something else if I was going to improve the fit of the doors and front guards.

The plan involved bracing from the frame rail in the engine compartment and the frame rail at the rear wheel arch up to one of the overhead beams with some landscape sleepers and attaching the chainblock to another sleeper laid under the car. Winching the chainblock up against the other braces would hopefully bend the frame up in the middle widening the door opening a few millimetres.
The pic below shows the setup a bit clearer.
As it turned out I only used one brace at the rear and I winched against the weight of the front of the car.
I could only just lift the car at the extent of how hard I could work the winch so the weak link was the winch and I reached that without the forward brace.
It creaked a little but I couldn't measure any determinable change so I left it at that.
Well, I thought, I tried and at least the the car didn't snap in two.
I went back to plan 'A' and tried fiddling with the door and equalising the gap at the other end to try to get me some more room.
The door had plenty of adjustment at the top hinge but the bottom hinge was at it's full extent.
Closer examination of the hinges showed that essentially the top one was longer than the bottom one and if I swapped them around I may be able to get the door further back. David swapped the hinges and I tried the door again and I was able to creep a couple of millimetres. This coupled with the slight gain which was apparent with plan 'B' was enough to get the guard into 'almost' the correct position.
I checked and pushed and hit with a rubber mallet and I appeared to be able to achieve a satisfactory result.
I laid out the seam sealer on the joins and pushed the guard into position and put in the bolts.
It all went fairly well except that I broke off one of the captive nuts up under the dash.
But even this was easily fixed as I could get at it quite easily and removed the crossthreaded nut from the outside where the windscreen goes down. I'd drilled out the little cover previously and that allowed me access to the captive nuts.
The guard went on fairly easily and after I'd done that I also assembled the front skirt.
I still got a few things to put back together, the glovebox and a few dash bits, but the two guards and front skirt are ready to paint.
I want to check the positioning with the bonnet and the grill before I do that though.

While I was waiting for the panel to be blasted, I started on the carpet.
I've also ordered some under carpet insulation from this company in US,
http://www.lobucrod.com/.
Got the link from a guy, Joe, on the forum and it also came up when I did some local searches on the web for car insulation stuff.
Cost me about $60 inc. shipping and should be here in a few days.
I made some newspaper templates for the floor carpets and cut out one.
Tried it in the car and found it had some other cuts in the carpet.
What I had assumed were simply chalk marks on the bake of the carpet when it was being cut at the shop, turned out to be knife cuts right across the width in two places, going right through in some spots.
Needless to say I wasn't pleased but BIAS boating replaced the piece for me and ended up giving me the first bit free. So I've got lots of spare stuff.
The tunnel covering proved to be a little trickier, but I'd already decided not to cover the gearbox hole cover and paint it body colour so it wasn't too bad making the piece for the tunnel. I made a slight error, but it is under the cover so it shouldn't be a big deal.
On Wednesday I rang Jason from Coastal Abrasives and found that he'd done all the panels, but had an issue with the bonnet.
Appears that there is a lot of filler on the bonnet and Jason decided it would be best to leave it in place and I could just do a skim coat and sand it back to smooth.
I went and collected the panels and brought them all home.
Today I gave the backs of the two guards a coat of chassis black mixed with about 30% Penetrol. Made sure I got right into all the crevices and poured it into some of the deeper ones.
While it was drying I cut some more of the carpet panels and laid them in place. The inside sill strip was a bit challenging but I'm going to glue these and the tunnel down so I'm confident that they will fit well and look great. I've decided to put a little foam under parts of the tunnel to stop the creases where the curves are a bit complex.
Later today, after the paint had dried, I put the drivers guard on with some seam sealer between the mating seams.
Went ok but the bolts up under the dash were a nightmare. These should have gone on before the dash. I'm wondering how I'll go with the windscreen.
I'd almost given up on one bolt but decided to give it one more go and I managed to get the threads to catch. After tightening it a 12th turn at a time, I had just about had it. It was a huge relief when it finally went in.
The other side will be a little fiddly because of the shortening of the frame on that side and tried to realign the door to get me a little extra space for the guard.
That was only partially successful and It will need some more tweaking to get the door latch working as well as it did before.

Dug out the other panels on the weekend. The two guards, the boot, the bonnet and the front skirt.
I positioned them on the car just out of curiosity and they seemed to still fit ok.
Looks good and it's a good motivator to see the shape coming together.
Today, I pulled of all the fittings and trim and scraped some of the seam seamer off the back of the guards.
The passenger side guard appears to have a rust repair and lots of filler, like the rear doglegs, I fear.
Anyway, I packed them all into the back of the Patrol and took them off to Jason at 'Coastal Abrasive Blasting' at West Gosford.
He's the guy who did my wheels and the doors and I was happy with what he'd done there. We discussed the issues that may come up and I left them with him. Hopefully he'll have some of them done early next week and I'll pick them up as he does them.
I had to really pack them in the car to get them to fit and I'd like to collect them two pieces at a time. That seems to suit him better also.
I'll show you some pics when their done.
I picked up some marine carpet on the way home, black, and I hope to start on the interior while I'm waiting for the panels.
I'm at a bit of a loss to know what to put under the carpet. I found some insulation closed cell foam which was quite rigid and foil faced, but I could only buy it in 30mtr roll, about enough for 10 cars.
Yesterday, I called in at a motor trimmers who had done some work for a MG up the road and I asked about getting the seats rebuilt and covered. He needs to see them, but he seems to think that I should be able to get him to do it for about $300. I'll take them into him later and get a firm quote. That should see me with the last major expense before I can think about getting the car registered.
I'm getting a bit keener now to get on with it.

This entry does not really follow the previous entry, but is the last post in a series of post which appeared on the forum.
It's been a bit discouraging and I find it difficult to write here when things aren't going very well.
In time I may catch the story up here, but in the meantime here's the last episode:

I must thank everyone for their input, but none of you get the prize for pinpointing the main problem I had/have - ME!
It's a bit hard to explain but here goes.
The problem was, I unwittingly kept changing the problem and as the symptoms tended to be similar I wasn't aware that I was fixing problems and creating new problems as I went along.
The bad fuel tank set in motion a chain of events that presented opportunities for me to stuff up time and time again culminating in me not picking up that if I removed the jets AND the jet locking nut I would have to re-centre the needles when I put them back in again.

I had read that section in the manual a few times, but for some reason had determined that it didn't apply to my carburettors.

Last night, while mentally preparing myself for today's attack on the engine, I re-read the section on the pistons, jets and needles, almost skipping over that part again when something caught my eye and I started the read it.
The penny dropped and I grabbed my other manual and there it was also, plain as day, the procedure for centreing the needles and the problems that can occur if they are not centred.

Today I took the carbs off, again, went through the process carefully and the pistons now move up and down just like it says in the book.

I tidied up a few other things that I had undone while fiddling about over the last week, replaced the plugs, I'd broken a new one not being careful enough with them the other day and replaced some cable ties that I'd cut off also.

Readjusted the carbs, put a new battery in the battery bay and sorted out the ground cable. All the things I should have been able to do a fortnight ago.

Fired it up and it burst into life and after warming it up checked the timing, the dwell and tinkered with the idle screws to get a fast idle of about 1000rpm.

It ran the best it's run ever and I was able to start and stop it at will. I still think it can do better, but given the quality of the distributor and my lack of carburettor tuning skills it will do at present. I am confident that I can go out there and start it easily and after a warmup it will run and stop when I want it to, not when it feels like it.

About bloody time!

Edit: Has been a few posts about head gasket failure soon after engine rebuild and the consensus seemed to be a failure to re-torque head nuts. So I decided to check mine. Went to 45lbs all over with little change then went to 50lbs with some change to some of them.
Redid the valve clearance to 15thou and came across some variation there. Ran the motor and thought I'd have a look at the spark strength.
Well, a plesant surprise - an good healthy spark which would jump 10mm easily. Obviously when its running the spark is good just not so good when it's cranking.

Today I spent a lot of time redoing stuff I'd done before.
Started with the new tank and I scrubbed it with POR15 solvent to get rid of the waxy oil that was on it.
Them I scrubbed MetalReady over it and spent a fair bit of time getting rid of any rough patches on the tank.
Before I washed off the MetalReady, I scrubbed it with a degreaser and then hosed it off.
Using the heat gun, I dried it thoroughly and laid out some newspaper to paint it on. That turned out to be a disaster as I turned it over to paint the bottom side. I assumed that the tank would rest on two points only, but after finishing the painting and when I picked it up to hang up to dry, all the paper clung to the painted surface like a magnet.
There must have been a static charge in the tank because the paper just lifted and stuck to the newly painted surface.
What a mess!
I couldn't get it all off so what I couldn't get off, I painted over.
Luckily it was the top side so it won't be seen.

While I waited for the POR15 to dry, I went about draining the old tank and put the 15 litres into the Patrol. I used the fuel pump to pump most of the petrol out so the lines were pretty well flushed by the time we'd finished.
By the time I had the tank empty, the new one was dry enough to install. The old one came off fairly easily and quickly and David helped me put the new one on and It went on pretty easily.

I had to then go and get some fresh petrol.
When I came back, I put 20 Litres in the tank and this time I pumped the first litre into a clear bottle to check the quality.
All looked good.

Then it was time to try and start.
In a nutshell, it was no go again. I'm almost at my wits end, I can only see that it MUST be electrical. The spark is very weak - almost non existent.
We fiddled about with the carbs and with the electrics in the hope that there may have been a simple fix. But this was found not to be the case and there appears to be the same issues that we had before.