A little recap

 It's more of an aide memore for me actually.

Since the garage has arrived it's been too cold to do anything constructive, several half arsed attempts at a few things but no real progress. As I type this the snow lies deep and crisp and even so I'm keeping indoors nice and toasty warm.

A list of to do's in no particular order :-

Gather enough pallet wood strips to cover internal wall joins of garage.

Buy insulation materials for above.

Buy plasterboards/ hardboard for above.

Arrange for electrician to come and wire up garage with lights ( many) and sockets.

Remove starter motor to find out why it's being noisy/ grating/ whirring/ silent.

Fix wiring problem with RH indicator

Ditto horns

Flush rad to see why It spewed into overflow tank( twice)

Fit heater Bowden cable to engine side and interior dial ( bought a Halfords bike gear change item).

Fit heater pipes to inside of heater and dash vent manifold

Find large thin nut holding above to dash binnacle

Make solid workbench for tools etc

Sand and paint rear screen rusty edges around rubber

Check compression

Tidy up.

Trying to put that lot in order of importance, possibility, difficulty, cost and motivation is what is occupying my thoughts mostly.

But what I have done is

1/. Fitted draught excluder to base of garage door. Just in time really as 2 days later the snow arrived and the temperature has really dropped.

2/. Bought a compression tester from Temu. I said I'd never buy from them again after the failures of the vacuum gauge, drills, cordless ratchet, spanner set et al. But when you're desperate and skint  it's hard not to. Like a car crash, you know you shouldn't look but you can't help it. I feel terrible about this. I've vowed that in summer I will scour the car boots for old but good British made things.

My big worry is that I have blown the head gasket. Done when I was musing over the firing order and leads/ distributor position, hence the compression tester purchase. It cost £11.35 delivered. I don't hold up high hopes of it working accurately but we will see..............but when though ? 

Probably nearer spring unless we get a typical British winter with a mini heatwave in December.

More as it happens, don't hold your breath...but you never know.