The UK experience is much the same or worse even, it is dissapointing that Oz is the same, we see that continent as still a pioneering frontier and all manner of our lost skills and practices available there to keep stuff going in the far reaches.

Trying to find a firm who can still do run-up babbit metal big-ends and mains properly and with the line boring necessary has become a huge problem for us.

I've just seen how many thousands went into a certain Morris-Commercial OH engine for a CDSW in-build; as new it is and would bring tears to your eyes adding up the bills.

Of course you're quite right about replacing seats or indeed valves in a Ford V8, at least several will have huge gaps and here we turn to the old Black & Decker Vibrocentric seat grinder - a virtually extinct tool here and we were lucky to find one in a garage tip-out.

The trend here is that hardened seats tend to be the domain of the 50s - 60s car people, easy job as you illustrate when its an OHV; the MV people tend to use an additive. It is known that VSR only occurs at a nominal 3000rpm and upwards and is a far lesser problem in WWII chuggers than post war OHV revvers.

I did a test with Dave's F15 by lashing-up a block of 6V lantern cells to drive a spare, calibrated, Stalwart rev counter and commanded him to drive me around and thrash it to his cringe-point. Now I know this is coloured with the horrendous fan roar of the CMP V8 but the best I saw was 2750rpm.

I have a handy insight with a contact in Ass. Octel, formerly Ass. Ethyl, the people who sent F R Banks to Woolston and then formulated the horrendous fire-water that put the S.6 on top. They actually make the stuff for badge-engineering and this chemist races old Alvis vehicles.

Perhaps we are fortunate in that the FBHVC http://www.fbhvc.co.uk/ has set up a formal lab test to prove what works and what doesn't for VSR since there are a lot of expensive snake oils out there. Most of us use Castrol Valvemaster (Ass. Octel) which was the first here with FBHVC approval and bench proven to be totally efficatious; now I understand this has been available to you and the Kiwis for the past 10 years or so. (Currently I buy the stuff by the crate for our local club as I have a trade account with the outlet.)

The lab test engine they use is a BLMC A Series, from the original Mini et al. This is still available in quantity together with parts and is known as the worst VSR sufferer we have showing 1 thou per 5 mins at an equivalent 60 mph road speed on standard pump unleaded.

The Ford CMP Manual has some interesting insights into fuel and oil for that matter since it deals with the internal engine presentation of leaded fuels introduced during WWII, inferring unleaded was used previously plus there is a defined date and chassis number when detergent oil (HD 30) was introduced at the factory.

Although my B81 has hardened stuff of a very hard nature indeed; having the time, interest and facilities we did do a fair amount of research into the fuel/oil questions which proved both fascinating and illuminating.

If you can get it done then hard seats are the way but a lot of miles on a F15 and a M-C PU has shown the FBHVC to be right in the additive approvals; this is a very easy and cheap option.

R.