Well, what an emotional week!

Once I'd removed the engine from the car, it was clear to see that there was a neat 10-12mm hole in the block above the water pump housing. I had fitted the spacer that fits under that head bolt ok, but I must have run the bolt too far down the thread when I was whizzing the bolts up and down to polish the threads before the head went on. Terrible mistake, and god knows I paid for it! The hole was so neat, that Colin was quickly able to machine up a two piece plug that could clamp either side of the hole with a small bolt through it. With the aid of some high temp Epoxy to seal it, the repair was made and I crossed my fingers, prayed a bit (kind of) and gulped hard, hoping that the repair would work.
A couple more days to get it back in and working again took us up to yesterday, when I filled it up with coolant and waited for leaks that thankfully, didn't appear! Finally got to run the cams in properly and very pleased with how it was going, left it last night.
This morning Colin towed it down to the rollers at SRD for me and After waiting nervously for Mark to finish one of his stock car Pintos, I was able to strap the 306 into the rollers and get started. I started with 90mm trumpets and had the 40mm ones handy to try.
The map seemed to flow quite well on the lower speeds sites, remarkably vice free really and no crazy spikes of fuel or ignition were needed to make it work, which is always encouraging and usually a sign of a well matched set up. It took remarkably little advance to make best power which is also something that makes me feel positive, because it invariably means it's working efficiently.
As we worked through the full throttle sites and gradually built the revs up, the figures seemed to be very strong from around 3500rpm, I'd been worried before hand that the engine might need a chunk of revs to deliver good power, but it already appeared to be making stonking power (without analysing it at this stage). At 6000rpm, it was struggling to get traction on the rollers, so we had to crank down the straps much harder than normal to get a stable power reading (which increases the losses) and at 7000rpm it peaked at 182bhp at the wheels, which considering the extra loss, equates to about 215-218bhp at the flywheel. Working back through the figures revealed a remarkable peak torque of approximately 173lbft at 6000rpm (97lbft/litre, the best XU specific NA torque I've seen yet) I was expecting around 150-155 lbft realistically, so this came as a real shock. If I hadn't seen so many engines correlate so precisely in these rollers lately, I wouldn't have believed it, but it was there and repeatable! When I spoke to John Read (who's cam profiles and exhaust manifold geometry I used) about it later, he didn't seem overly surprised, he's seen similar results from his XEs and Duratecs before.
I was delighted with the torque, but couldn't help wondering if I'd overdone the tract length and was perhaps curbing the peak power slightly, so I swapped the trumpets over to the shorter ones to see.
Very low down, the shorter trumpets worked better, but from 4500 upwards it was losing around 20bhp at the wheels on every site and the fuelling had to be corrected by a corresponding amount, so at 6000rpm we decided it was a waste of time, it was potentially going to make more power at the top (possibly), but the loss of mid range would have made the car much harder to drive, in fact the results with the shorter trumpets were more like I was expecting the engine to give before I ran it!
After switching back to the longer trumpets and trimming the detail, I was able to take the car out of the rollers and breathe a deep sigh of relief! Followed by the joy of telling Alan all was well (I'd kept quiet since "Black Tuesday").
Here are the results (estimated flywheel figures) in a crude plot, as per my usual:


I don't think i'll feel fully confident about the engine until I have proof it's reliable, but making the grunt so early on as it does, will certainly help by keeping the revs down! I look forward to hearing it and seeing it out there most of all.

I must thank Alan for his patience, understanding and perseverance, along with my other customers who have been equally brilliant. Most of all though I must thank the Sandy Brown Sympathy Network:
Colin Satchell (Still not entirely sure why he puts up with me), Mark Shillaber, Neil Shilling, Pete Willis, John "Readophile" Read, Anne, Atters, Edwins, Jimbo, and all.

dont forget your gti6.com stickers are you gonna be racing at silverstone?? if you are let me know the date and ill pop along for some support