I made a change in the engine today. I had 2 days off and the weekend and I just could not let those go to waste so I decided to use the 85mm pistons and cylinders instead of waiting until Tuesday to start with the 87mm ones. It is only a few HPs so it won’t make that much difference in the end for this engine.
Pistons and Cylinders
I’ll just throw the 87s in to the AR or AH case when I’m ready. Plus, if I get a single 87 cylinder, I’ll have two full sets to finish those cases.
Cylinders 3 and 4 went in perfect. Not problems at all and I put a head on with 2 nuts to keep them secure. I still have to seal the cylinder bases to the case.
The other side was a different story.
Cylinder 2 was fine but Cylinder 1 has issues.
Cylinder 2 was fine and the base aligned with the bore and went in fine.
Cylinder 1 however is off and the base of the cylinder won’t go in.
All of the wrist pins were somewhat difficult to get in regardless of how lubed they were. Piston 1 was perhaps the most difficult and looking under the piston skirt you can kind of see that there’s room for the piston to slide more towards the fly wheel for the cylinder base to clear but won’t.
I’ll pop this off tomorrow and try again.
Oil Pressure at Break-In
The small adapter and the VDO manual oil pressure gauge arrived.
Now this won’t be permanent and is only intended to be used when the engine is running on the stand during initial break-in. At least I’ll be able to see how the pump is working when I turn the engine over by hand prior to full ignition.
Lessons Learned Today
- No matter how clean you try to be, when you start working with having to lightly oil the cylinders and pistons eventually everything you are doing gets covered in oil. This then makes holding the ring compressor on the piston extremely difficult when ever single tool is then covered. I really don’t know see how it can be done in a less messy fashion. Perhaps it comes with experience.
- Black ring compressors look like practically a dozen other pieces of metal in the garage. It took me 30 minutes to find what I did with it and it was sitting right with the parts. However, I must have picked it up 2 or 3 times while looking for it.