Thanks for the messages of encouragement. I have only embarked on the first half of the job so far, i.e. taking the head off, I imagine the other half will be much harder. What I can say is that I am by no means a qualified mechanic, yes I tinker with the MG, yes I know how everything works in principle but I have not rebuild 1000 engines or anything like that!! Taking the head off took about 11 hours in total and most of that was spent thinking (at different stages). The only thing that was remotely difficult was getting the bracket that supports the inlet manifold to the engine block off, it needed a bit of arm bending, everything else was quite straight forward. I would imagine all in all this would cost over £1500 for a garage to do (including the head rebuild) which would more than likely mean that most poeple would think of selling for spares (especially one like mine that isnt perfect and has no history). For me, all in all it will have cost about £500 (rebuild head, new gaskets, oil and filter changes, new head studs, new tensioners, new cam belt, cam locking tool) which is much more in the relms of it being worth putting the car back on the road. The car having cost me much less than £1000 means that I can justify spending £500 and a few weekends to put it back on the road.
Anyway, lets not get ahead of ourselves, it isnt running yet and I still have a long way to go but loving every minute of it so far! (apart from the initial engine noise when the tensioner fell to pieces!)
Regards
Chris