22 June 2000

Today I installed the crankshaft into the engine. The parts were cleaned thoroughly and given a light coat of oil. Here's the crankshaft, main caps, bolts , bearings and windage tray:

Here's the bare block:

And here's the block with the main bearing tops installed:

After a coat of oil, the crankshaft is carefully lowered into the block:

Next, to check bearing clearances, plastigage is used. Plastigage is a thin piece of an oil-soluable waxlike substance that is placed on the bearing like this( it's hard to see in this picture, but look for a small pink line on the crankshaft):

This is what the main bearing caps and bearings look like:

Then the bearing caps are installed and torqued to spec, removed, and the smashed plastigage is compared to the scale provided:

In this case, 0.002" clearance is called for, and the scale reads 0.002". It's not the most accurate way of measuring clearances, but it will indicate if anything is grossly wrong.

The plastigage is cleaned off the bearings and crank, and a liberal coating of oil is applied to the crank and bearings:

Then the main caps are re-installed and torqued to spec:

At this time, the crankshaft should rotate freely without binding, and it does!

The oil pump, oil pump drive and pickup are bolted onto the engine:

I'll put the windage tray on when the pistons and rods have been installed, but first, I've got to assemble the pistons, rings, wristpin/rod assembly. Here's what they look like unassembled:

All the parts have been numbered for their respective bores and balanced to within a gram.

First I installed the piston rings:

Then the wrist pins and connecting rods:

Note the piston weight written on the piston - 415.1grams. The wrist pins are held in place by 'spirolocks' and they are the work of the devil. Evil little spiral springs that must fit into a groove in the wrist pin bore. Grrrrrr.

The complete piston and rod assembly:

That's all for now, I need a ring compressor to insert the pistons into the engine - another one of those things on back order. Next time I'll be installing the pistons, bolting on the windage tray and oil pan.

Aloha