i've spent the last few days trying to think of another pun but i'm stumped, haha.

Well what an epic story, i'll give you the short story... ended up getting it all together ready to start then the battery was flat. #OOPS#. next morning i came out to start after a charge up and after a plugless fuelless crankup to try and get oil pressure the light on the dash was still on but i decided that that might not mean anything. strated her up and she fired but with a big knock knock knock and then died WTF? tried again and same thing. ok back to get some oil pressure into it pull the plugs and crank her over. knock knock knock.

Pulled the oil filter off and it was dry. Decided to drop the crossmember and all the steering and take the sump off. checked oil pickup, pulled big end caps off, turned over by hand a million times to see if i could spot anything and checked flywheel all checked out fine. then checked the head, thinking maybe it was a pushrod with massive clearance all good in the head. Gave it a crank with no rocker cover or sump and noise was gone.

oil pickup was a slightly different length so changed that over cleaned all the sump and block surfaces again and reinstalled the sump. tried a crank just to check... knock knock knock. had a mate crank it while i held my hands either side of the sump... tap tap tap.

the moral of the story after a painstaking search for the problem is that an a15 sump has to be used with an a15 as otherwise the extra stroke takes the rods out to ever so slightly touch the upper side of the sump!

will be hopefully back out there tomorrow to make it run!