Wombat,
Welcome back to the neighborhood and thanks for the offer. I can only work 3-4 at a time due to my injuries which is another reason it takes me so long to get stuff done. It wouldn't be worth it for you to drive over here. I'll just plog away at it and work on it ever couple of days til
I get it done. Plus I don't have heat in my garage other than a propane heater.

 

Well if you ever need it, or if you want to go wheelin' i'm up for that too! Or I dont know if you ride but i have a quad so theres that too... Haha.

 

Just a quick update so far. I am waiting for my timing chain to get here. The tracking number I have says it will be here on Wednesday. So I know what I will be doing on turkey day while the wife is cooking. Living in a small town has it's ups and downs. No one had a double roller set so I had to order it instead. I have just been trying to clean up some of the parts and covers. It is too cold to do any painting so that is going to have to wait.

I'll post pictures next week when I have done more.

 

Well my timing chain came in a day early so I went out to the garage today to start working on degreeing my cam and finishing up on installing the pistons. I had gotten all the pistons installed but hadn't torqued all the nuts down yet. Well when I get out to the garage I try turning the engine over and it won't turn. I had been turning the engine over as I installed each pair of pistons with the bolt for the hermonic balancer. Well the bolt was acting up and wasn't going into the crank like it should. So first I pulled the bolt back out and was not happy with what I found.


Then I looked at the crank snout and here is what my threads look like.


So I pulled all the pistons back out and the crank turns just fine. So I am not sure what I was doing wrong. Did I not lube cylinders enough? I lubed the heck out of the bearings so I don't think that was the issue but it wasn't until I started torquing stuff down that I had issues. I did also check clearances on each rod and they were good. So at this point I guess I just need to lube the cylinders better? Also I soaked each piston in a tub of oil before installing them into the cylinders. Did I not soak the rings long anough?
So I know I can get a new bolt but what about the crank? I know it is hard to tell in a picture but from what you can see do you think there is enough thread there? Or am I screwed and am going to need a new crank? Or is there a way to fix this?
Thanks for all your help and ideas.

 

Run a tap through the crank threads to clean them up, get a new bolt, and make sure its not cross tbreaded

 

When I built my engine I had no problem turning the crank by hand (grabbing it by the counterweights) with the pistons installed. Simple coat of oil on the cylinder walls and bearings. Are you sure the bearing clearences are good? Torque 1 down at a time and make sure everything still moves to find the culprit?

 

Hi guys,
Well I have not done anything to the engine since I last posted. I did figure out why it was turning so hard. I was using a pretty thick assembly lube and then it was only 30* or less in the garage. I'd turn my heater on but I think it just wasn't enough. So for now I am stopped and waiting for the temps to warm a little. I do think I am going to pull the crank back out and take it to a machine shop and have them look at it. I did buy a new bolt & washer. And now in my defense that old bolt I was just turning it into the crank. So I think the threads were galded up before hand. I'm sure I didn't cross thread the bolt when I did install it. And yes I was doing this by hand-No air tools.
So once the crank is checked out and the temps stay up over 40* then I'll start again. I did get a bunch of other parts ordered and the Brown Truck will be here tomorrow.

 

Well it has been a while since I last posted but not a lot has been going on. I did end up getting a new crank off Ebay. Got one that was still standard sizes bearing surfaces. Took the crank to the machine shop to have it hot tanked and polished. Also had them spec the crank to make sure it was standard size. Got the crank back yesterday and started putting the engine back together. Well today I installed the pistons which went fine. But when I started torqueing down the rods I ran into issues again. Once I had the rod caps torqued to spec I couldn't turn the engine over. So I pulled the number 1 & 2 pistons back out and sure enough some how I had gotten bearings that must be oversized. So I just got off the phone with NAPA and ordered new main and rod bearings. To say the least I am a little pissed but it has been too long to go back to the company I bought the rebuild kit from on Ebay to do anything about it now.

On a different subject I would like some advice on what everyone thinks a good cam for this engine would be? I want a good torque cam since this is going in a Jeep. Do I want to deal with Richard from HiPo Tek and get one of his custom ground cams or get one from Hughes Engines? Or just get a cam from Comp Cams or Crane or any of the other manufactures?

 

Whenever I need a cam for a build, and am not already sure which way to go...I just call Comp. They know cams better than most and their techs are easy and friendly to work with. They'll want to know things like engine, power goals, fuel type, transmission, rear gears...stuff like that. Then they'll recommend a cam for you that fits your needs. If they don't have one specifically, they do custom grinds affordably.

 

No for both your Q's that's my op on that.

Have a look at Crane-Cam's 2030 (same cam as Wn) or the Crane-Cam's HR-208/292-2S1-10 web page pdf http://www.cranecams.com/164-165.pdf other than that I would need more info from you. As suggested calling and talking with either Comp or Crane is a good idea, there are more cams than these two company's out there.

I would also replace the con-rod bolts on both cyld 1 & 2 just to be safe.