Update

Well I have been busy with the spitty spending most of my spare time in the garage tinkering about.
Took her over to my friend George on Saturday 14th for head gasket change to cure a leak, George suggested we de-coke at the same time which made a lot of sense. Started at about 10:00 and by 11:30 the head was ready to come off but It was not shifting, no amount of slapping the 4x2 was making it move, cranking the engine over did release it somewhat, and after an hour of pissing about we manage to remove the head. It has welded itself to the gasket o.0
This was the most mechanical I had ever been with a car and the first time I had even attempted anything like this.
George set about re-cutting the valve seats, whilst I cleaned the gasket remains from the top of the block and got rid of the muck off the piston tops (noticed once they were clean they had been stamped +30 so I know my engine has had a re-bore and is recessed, then I got to use his lathe and drill press to clean the valves up using some wirewool and a bit of emery paper they came up very nice.
George then showed me how to lap the valves in using a dowel with suction cup and two grades of cutting paste.
Once this had all been done it was time to put everything back together, this proved a little awkward, particularly when re-fitting the carbs, I was fighting against pipes and other stuff so ended up stipping them all off to make the fit easier and reduce my swearing :)
Once we had it back together both George and myself set the valve gaps and checked the compression, we got 160psi on all four cylinders which was quite nice. I fired her up and on the first turn of the key she purred like a kitten. We decided to take a little test run and after about 50 yards there was an awful squeeling and we returned to investigate, puzzled by the noise it was eventually found that a small stone had become lodged between the passended brake disk and shield, once removed all was good so off we set again. After a few hundred yards we hit an incline and the car was sounding terrible and had no power. we returned and re-checked timing carbs and even slackened off the valves since they were the only thing adjusted during the days activities and still there was no power.
I decided that I would head off home and pull over in a onvenient place to call breakdown but en route I decided to limp home the 20 miles and had to use choke several times to get up any hills or inclines, once I was on a decent stretch of road I was able to get up speed (albeit slowly) and after I hit 80mph she was sounding much smoother and felt very much more responsive.
I can only think that when the carbs were off they were upside down at some point, in fact I know they were. This must have allowed muck to get where it shouldn't and caused the problems. The good old Italian tune up soon sorted that out though.
So what should have been a 6 hour job turned into a 13 hour day and poor George was convinced he had done something and was searching for a new engine.
Although the day had not gone to plan it was a very very enjoyable but tiring day and I learnt an awful lot.
Many thanks to George for being a very good friend, teacher and mentor.
The only bad thing about the day was not taking any pictures.