Time for an update on this thing I suppose.
After doing the head gasket + valve stem seals a few months ago, the oil consumption hasn't improved... It was actually getting worse, which tells me the piston rings are farked.
Rather than fix it, I've ripped a motor out of a mates EB and will be rebuilding it before swapping it with my current shit motor.
The plans for the new short block is to have it machined, with at least 010" off the bore along with a hone and few thou off the deck for a touch more compression. I'll mike up the crank once it is out and determine if it needs a grind + oversized bearings. Either way i'll be getting it balanced.
Internally it'll be getting a ACL rebuild kit, with new pistons, rings & bearings. I'm aiming for about 10:1 compression.
I'll be sending the cylinder head off to be cleaned, face machined and mildly ported. I'm considering oversized valves, crow springs and a wade 977b cam with the 110 degree LSA for its top end.
On the outside i'll be staying with the current pacemaker extractors and ED intake manifold, but I'm going to try and find an XH tensioner so I can do a serp conversion with the older manifold. I'll be ditching the clutch fan for thermos too.
I've done a rough Dyno2000 simulation and it reckons it'll make 217 flywheel kW @ 5500rpm and 432NM flywheel torque at 4000rpm...
I'm more interested in the torque curve between 2000 & 4000rpm than peak power, as there is where most of my driving takes place.

The block, just after the head was lifted.

The cylinder head and rocker gear. The rocker arms have some strange machining on the top of them which I have never seen before. Any ideas as to why this was done?

Since I'm taking my time doing this stuff, I've been tidying up a few of the under bonnet pieces such as rocker cover and intake manifold.
Rocker cover : Stripped and sanded with 80 grit and then 600 wet & dry.

There are a few bits of stubborn paint on the exhaust side, which I'll get around to removing later.

And the intake manifold, which I haven't started sanding yet. So far i'm half way through stripping it.

Thats about it on the progress of this thing... Pretty slow at the moment, but it should pick up pretty quick once my tax return comes back!