Three out of Four

Yesterday I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of engine work. I set about the cylinders with my rubber mallet. The first to yield to my combination of hammering, heating and hernia inducing pulling was good old cylinder number 1. I then moved onto number 3, which looked the worst, but it slipped off with surprising ease (which is why I flew across the garage in a slapstick manner). Here's a picture of me working on cylinder number 4:

This cylinder turned out to be quite sticky. Initially the piston lifted with the cylinder which means the engine has officially turned for the first time in 27 years! A nice side effect of this was that number 2 cylinder also lifted itself out of the case (as pistons 2 & 4 mirror each others movement). Finally, after about 40 mins (careful) hammering number 3 popped off. I spent a short while trying to move cylinder number 2 but it wouldn't shift and my hands were too tired for a concerted effort. So I sprayed loads of penetrant into the cylinder and called it a day. Here is how I left things: