Hung out with my buddy who owns the 1966 bel air, he recently bought a Chevy 305 engine out a wrecked 1980s caprice for it. Helped him tear apart the bottom end of the engine, was in fairly nice shape except for the rod bearing on Cyl #7 having a big gash in it. He plans on doing a quick and dirty rebuild on the 305 and put it into the bel air while he works on rebuilding the original 283 with more performance oriented components. The 283 still runs fine, it's just a very tired motor at this point and it started to burn some decent amounts of oil. The 283 will go back in hopefully connected to a 4 speed manual of some kind.

I used a US spec 135w/180w LPS HX ballast, ran just fine. First HX ballast that I've seen with PF correction added on.

I'll look into those programs, thank you Ria. I also have all my other lights that deserve new photos. Over the summer I plan on doing a lamp census so I can figure out how much I have. (lots is the answer)  

What ballast did you use..?

For collages I tend to use LibreOffice Draw, but there's another program I use sometimes called PhotoCollage. It's ok but doesn't let you re-size the images once they're in the program, so can be a bit of a pain. Draw takes more time, but I think it gives you better results.

Last night I lit up the 180w LPS lamp that Tim gave me, holy cow those things are BRIGHT! I had sunglasses on and even still it felt a little too intense to stare at. I made the mistake of opening my bedroom window and I lit up the side of the neighbor's house with it. Pictures of it coming soon, I gotta figure out a good way to make a collage again.   

Sam has now been fettled, and once he has cooled down after a very successful test burn I will fit a new mantle and get him litted properly.

Picture up now.! 

Which will be photographed shortly, watch this space

Quite possibly, I've now got some stainless steel 'S' hooks that I can use to hang some of lanterns off.                  
But that lantern really wants to be displayed properly, and now that we've got a MAT/V lamp to show off in a display case...

Would this be why you don't have space for the coronation lamp?

There is now a new addition to the Tilley family, another X246B stormlight made in December 1977 at the Belfast factory, it had been sitting for goodness knows how long with some oily 'tuff in the tank, which is a very nice red, and when I undid the pump there was still some pressure in the tank.!
The night we brought him home, the oily lamp I have litted at my side of the bed began to go out through lack of oily 'tuff, and as I hadn't decanted any into the bottle I have for filling up, I used some of the old oily 'tuff, and it's still viable.!