"Many hands make..."

Steve and Jason (whose hands feature in the photo) came over to work on the Zodiac this morning, and Phil and Bradley who are staying with us joined in. 

A moment of triumph when (thanks to Jason's approach of heating the spark plugs) we actually managed to get it started! The engine ran very roughly, though, and wouldn't keep going, and while we were hoping that having it running for the first time in many months might have improved the compression we were still seeing the same low readings for that. So we proceeded to take it apart...

When we got the cylinder heads off, we could see evidence of trouble with the valves and potentially the pistons (though we won't be able to determine their condition until we get the engine out completely and start probing its nether regions). Later we found a major issue with the timing gear, and it looks like that could be the root cause of all or most of the problems we've seen. 

So: parts to be ordered, heads to be worked on, and a future session to be scheduled to get the rest of the engine out. But a feeling that today we really made progress! :)