Well, it's sure taken it's time but assembly has finally started. The rotating assembly was extremely pain free, the clearances were all good, gapped the rings and it all went together quite easily. The LeMans rods that were in the engine had worn small end bushes. The owner had a set of NOS LeMans rods in his inventory and for the life of me, I couldn't get on of the original rod bolts out, we had to get it machined out!!! Rods went through normal prep and new ARP rod bolts were installed.
sohc1 by
Chunga Gomez, on Flickr
sohc2 by
Chunga Gomez, on Flickr
While checking piston to valve clearance I noticed that the primary drive gear on the stub cam had some radial movement. Disassembled the sub cam assembly and found that the woodruff key was worn and the Milodon gear was loosee on the shaft.
sohc3 by
Chunga Gomez, on Flickr
I took it to our local machinist and he is going to double key the gear onto the stub cam and make a new hub for the Milodon gear as the hub is removable.
Had to drop the heads and camshafts off to him as the camshafts had no end float. Local camshafts, made by Crow Cams, purchased from Paul Munro while he was a free man.
sohc4 by
Chunga Gomez, on Flickr
When I checked the combustion chamber volume, it cam in at 109cc, which is down about 10-11cc according to a post I found from Jay on his forum. This was going to raise the compression a significant amount which would be too much for our crappy fuel. Thick Cometic headgaskets were used to get compression down to 10.7:1.
Heads have been installed as well as the backing plate. Just waiting for stub cam to show up from machinist and the cam timing can be done. Then front cover and sump.
sohc5 by
Chunga Gomez, on Flickr
sohc6 by
Chunga Gomez, on Flickr
When this engine came into the country in 1980ish it was installed in a 1963 Galaxie. The owner, when he put it in his hot rod, acquired a home made tunnel ram. This was on the engine for quite a while before he put the stock 2X4 back on. He wants the tunnel ram back on, so hopefully it aligns pretty well with the thick headgaskets.
Tell ya what, these things consume some time when you don't build them fairly often!!!!!
Thanks to Brent for the pistons and Jay for the gasket set.