Looking for advice, please can you help?

Is that the gearbox bloke???

 

Another Paul W who thinks he knows what he's doing.

 

If you don't have an MOT your vehicle still has to be roadworthy .so an MOT will prove if it's roadworthy ,at the time of testing

 

You used to talk so highly of him, even after the engine woes.

Maybe your point was he’s a nice guy, likes to try and please but fails miserably.

 

Yes that as my point, he was being painted as a shady crook at the time which wasn't the fellow I'd known for several decades.

Over confident in his depth of knowledge - one combination of things works once = each of those separate things is valid in all circumstances. A classic is "modern fuels can take 10:1 CR" - yeah - with a cam with huge overlap but not as a general rule for building any engine. "I've always done it this way" hmmm, well maybe you have but it does not follow either that it's the right way or that there is no better way of doing it. etc etc.

A good engineer always doubts the extent of his/her knowledge - it is not possible to know that you know everything because those things you are unaware of are invisible to you - how can you know about something you're unaware of? There's no shame in ignorance, but denying yourself the possibility that you are is stupid. I never got into building engines because each thing you learn reveals ten things you don't know enough about.

 

"Unconscious incompetence"

But when someone points it out to you it (should) become "conscious incompetence"

 

That's the one - when the reply is, "I know what I'm doing, I've always done it this way", it's time to bail out.

 

And that's the thing. If that bloke had pmd me regarding the differences in the gears, I'd have gladly shared the info but his attitude was appalling.

I'd also been the subject of an aggressive, assumptive and abusive series of private messages sent to one of our members which were totally unjustified and a bit disturbing to be honest.
Hopefully it's over for now and we can get back to just supporting and helping each other in what is essentially a hobby, not a matter of life and death!