The car is now ready to go for an MOT! The only thing I think it may fail on is the rear radius rod bushes which I haven't replaced yet and the indicators which are rather slow (bad earth?), I'll probably do them tomorrow as it's a bank holiday so I can't MOT till then.
The problem with the starter spinning but not engaging was down to the solenoid not being linked with the arm going through the push rod. The Haynes manual wasn't clear in it's diagram about this but the one in the Leyland workshop manual was a lot better. I'll know better next time
I removed the carbs, stripped them down and boiled them in lime juice which was really effective which are now refitted along with everything else. On refitting I found that the linkages were badly out of adjustment and the cables bunged up. The throttle was only opening up to about 70% as well so it should be a bit quicker now! I sprayed grease into the cables and lubricated all of the springs and linkages which has made the peddle much smoother - before it was very stiff.
On refitting the spark plugs I found two are partially cross threaded and were quite difficult to get in on the proper threads. I'm guessing I'll just have to be very careful until I have time to get the head off and helicoil it or replace it with the spare 1850 head I have. I am assuming that 1850 and 2.0 heads are interchangeable.
I topped the rad up with plenty of antifreeze and turned the key, after a few turns to refill the float chambers it fired up and ran really rather nicely. The no charge light is solved now which is good. I may swap the old battery in tomorrow to find out if it's the new diode pack of a duff battery that solved that issue. My guess is it's the battery.
The other problem is the fan - I think it must be a TR7 fan because it's too big to fit with the radiator bolted in. I'll give it another go tomorrow but I'm seriously considering an electric fan conversion.
As far as lights go I'm going to stick with the 'standard' setup for now as the halogens seem pretty good and I don't know how far I trust the original loom!
Pictures to come tomorrow...
James