So, after i finished my thesis, i got to work putting together my diesel engine with the parts i had bought earlier.
I carefully cleaned the bottom end of the engine, removing the old bearing journals and replacing with new, standard sized ones. I checked the clearances with some plastigauge, and it measured well. The new crankshaft from a 1.6l petrol engine (the bottom crankshaft in the photo below- remarkably exactly the same as the diesel one.) slotted in nicely, with plenty of oil splashed around for good measure, and strict adherance (within environmental limts) to the "cleanliness is next to godliness" rule.
The oil pump (checked and cleaned), slotted in nicely, and the flywheel and sump went back on.

The engine was timed, the timing belt installed and tensioned, and everything checked over thoroughly, ready for the installation.

This is a photo of the engine bay with the petrol engine installed.
The fuel lines required changing to larger ones (in order to allow good flow of the more viscous diesel fuel). This required the soldering in of a larger pickup line in the fuel tank, and changing the fuel lines to diesel spec ones (8mm).


And then, 8 hours of this (show below)


And she was a diesel!
Note the larger starting battery
And a new sticker on the top of the window!

This is a pic of my diesel golf on a rally with some other guys from the forum. My car was 5 years older than any of the cars present, and 20 years senior of most! This was the first real long run. It was a hard run (up the blue mountains and back via the bells line), but the engine still managed to do an excellent 5.3l/100km (including fuel leaks). Better than the souped up Mk4 GTIs which were doing only 400km on a 50l tank (15l/100?)

Methane: success

So the "methane plant" was recharged with the good stuff, and left for a few weeks, the tank has risen!!. Getting a sniff of that sweet success, Warwick decided to try to burn some of our fuel. WARWICK - edit this post and carry on from here!!

Methane : oh dear.

Methane: The rush comes back to bite us

So we finished it then we had to put a hole near the bottom to put in a out pipe so of cause it would only take a chisel and hammer.... but no, we moved up to a drill to weaken it and slowly very, very slowly we started getting somewhere. The conditions were terrible dust, noise & vibrations and all this in a hole less than a cubic metre quite a tight fit, at this stage i was really pissed off, we thought we were never going to get there.

methane: concreting

Quite proud of our hole - "Look Dad, we dug a hole" - ("well done son")

We now needed to form our methane vessel. After considering bricks, and realising we didn't have any PLUS, we are probably lousy brickies, we decided on concrete.

Concrete is the best stuff, it starts wet, and goes hard like rock! amazing stuff.

In the time between finishing the hole and getting an opportunity to do concreting there was time to think and prepare a few things. Not satisafied with a 44 gallon (205L) drum, Dad had exceeded himself, aquiring a stainless steel tank larger than a drum and with the benefit that it won't rust. A small tap was also sucessfully added the top (for the gas)

Concreting needed to be done to form a water and shit-proof vessle to hold the,.. shit..
Innovations included using a combination of carboard and glad-wrap to form an annulus around the tank to allow the tank to move up and down. - vertical strips of carboard rather than large panels were used to make removal of this "annulus" easier -

Mark and Dad being busy on the wheat harvest, and running out of time, we rushed a bit because of Adrian's wedding in 2 days, But his fiance being very understanding allowed us to get it done - the rush came back to bite us.

We all headed off to the wedding happy to have made progress.