Okay so I have some progress to report on the home front. (yes at some point I'll likely start a new thread for the '10 effort, but not yet).
We finally got caught up enough to do some work on the car today.
Amongst other things we did a leakdown (differential compression test if you prefer) and a cranking compression test.
#3 (French engine so the 2nd one from the "front") had 78% leakage coming out the crankcase breather, but at least it mustered 155 Psi on the cranking test.
Not quite so good when you figure the 2nd worst on cranking compression was 205 Psi.
Next we plan to verify where the ignition timing was set once we were done. It started going faster when we were pulling lead out, so we don't really know where it is now. As it managed 142 Mph with an 8 Mph headwind (as tired as it was) We figure the ignition timing has to be close to where it needs to be, so we are going to put some effort in finding where it is
before we take it apart.