ITS ALIVE!! Xf survives heart surgery

[Kryton]

well for those that care, the XF is once again alive. put the head back on today along with all new gaskets. wasnt real sure if i had ****ed it all when i put the tappets back on. book said that if you dont do the TDC thingy right then its broken pushrods and its game over. well i did what i thought was right and then put everything else back on. god there some bolts that are just ****s to get back on.
about 5:30pm i filled the radiator back up and bled the cooling system.
turned the key waiting for some lovely metal breaking snap sounds and it just turned over nicely instead!
marvelous, just what the doctor ordered! few pumps of the pedal and it fired to life, purring along at idle just nicely.
let it warm up and went to move it around the otherside of the shed when i found that i had a rock hard brake pedal and NO brakes....ooppps forgot the vacuum hose from the brake booster. fixed that and all is good.
will drive it tomorrow and see if all is well. hopefully the water will stay in the radiator now.
oh...no more knocking sounds either!!
anyway enough crapping on but as you can tell im thrilled to know that i have done this all myself with a bit of help from some answered questions here.
thanks guys!

[MotherNature]

Congrats matey ...... Job well done ........ lets hope the test drive goes as smoothly ;)