well, i found some garage time today to work on the motor. needless to say I'm extremity disappointed in the machine work. now i remember why my dad coerced me into doing this work in my teenage years. i'll start with the align hone. i knew where i needed the housing bores, instead of giving them a number i left one cap torqued as a reference. i said take this measurement and tighten it up 0.0004". well they were all as big or bigger than where the original measurement was except #1 cap. i knew i was in trouble when only two caps had looked to be sanded on, none of them were cut with a stone (as you would normally do). saving grace is its easy to make something smaller. #1 main i had 0.0030 clearance (perfect), the others were all around 0.0035. i can fix that, a good flat machined surface and some emery cloth, a few hours and i had 0.0030 across the board. my biggest hang up is the deck height, i measured the driver side. knew i would be out of the hole. told them bare minimum to clean but parallel both sides. was told they pulled only a few thousands off. looks to be true but its not parallel!!!! I'm +005 to +.006 out on the driver side. that's pretty close to where i figured it before i sent it out. i wasn't able to measure the passenger side before going to the machine shop. its currently zero deck on the back and -0.004 in the hole on the front (passenger side). so i have 0.010 discrepancy from side to side. now i would expect a few thousands having done this for a living back in the day, but 0.010 is completely unacceptable. i haven't ran a machine in 10 years and promise i could still do better work than this after drinking my lunch. any way here's a few pics, may take it back to the shop to get the decks fixed. issue is its over an hour away and i gotta spend a v day during the week if i want it corrected.
always save your old bearings, they are great for mock up
only tight spot, easy enough to remedy.
not being a true flat top, you have to rock the piston in the bore and take the difference as your deck height
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your best friends when building an engine. a squirt bottle of paint thinner and white paper towel. if your engine builder uses red shop rags you should run..
also a good time to identify any lifter stickiness before final cleaning. i had none
mains torqued for clearance check
sanding a cap on some emery cloth and a over sized 123 block to tighten up my clearance.
rods torqued up with the bearings. a little snugger than i like, if i was at a shop i would hone the housing bores a touch. currently not an option so i'll live with 0.0023-0.0024 on the rod clearance.
since all the crank journals are slightly different, i try to fit each rod to each journal to equalize the clearance.
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i'll let you guys know where i go on the decks. I'm really thinking about investing in some machines and doing this stuff part time in the near futrue. My **** is right on, it really pisses me off to spend good money for in-furrier work. even the pistons aren't fit to each bore. when i did this work, i didn't care if the engine was for your daily driver or your blown twin BBC off shore boat motors. i mic'd every piston and fit each one to a bore. then i numbered them with stamps. its nothing to see 0.0005 difference is piston skirts. and your bores should reflect that. rant over............:cussing:
Reading this thread about your block/motor prep is better than ****...lol.
