What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Steve kay]

What I did this afternoon was say some rude words. As part of offering everything up before bolting the engine together and dropping  it into the machine, I tried the valve cover. Could not the knurled screws to line up, no amount of gentle juggling worked. Finally decided that serious research was required, so screwed in some threaded rod to slide on the valve cover. Which immediately showed that the holes in the cover did not align with the bosses on the block, being significantly higher. Was this just an odd  valve cover recently unearthed from the "stores"? The answer is no. Another cover was also rejected by that block, and both were quite happy when offered up to the spare blocks littering my stores as much as everybody has some blocks. So why, and how many, blocks have different placed holes, and is there a suitable valve cover easily to be found.