The long weekend, as it turned out, afforded me no additional time to work on the CMP.
Saturday was entirely consumed between hours spent in the morning, searching for a new daily driver, and locating a blockage in a septic tank at the mother-in-laws farm, in the afternoon. Finding the block was one thing, clearing it was another story all together, but fixed it by nightfall. I will NEVER enjoy gravy again. The smell of a freshly opened septic tank is an insult to the olfactory system that will outlast religion. I can still smell it now.
Sunday was dedicated to a nice drive to the beach. Far too cold and windy to actually enjoy the beach, but at least we got to see it and bring back memories of when it was warmer.
Today, I was determined, would be 'truck day'. I got my piston/rod sets back from the engine rebuild shop on Friday, and they did a rather good job. When I did initial assembly of oil pump to pickup I managed to strip a thread. Didn't know why, at the time, but the engine shop guys tell me it was because another bolt hole which intersected the one that stripped caused mangling of the thread I damaged. Apparently it was going to happen regardless. Thank you very much, Melling manufacturing folks.
As mentioned previously, due to the extra girth of the rod big ends (literally) I had to sink the pistons from the crank case side. This was not a bad idea anyway, because the relief between cylinder and valves meant that there would be a length of ring not compressed by the installation tool. The first piston I installed went in without a problem, and just as I was thinking things would go smoothly, I hit a major problem. Imagine my surprise when I tried to put the second piston in, only to discover that the additional metal that strengthened the crank bearing bosses made it absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for the piston to be dropped in from that side. Typical! The piston would have needed to go in at a 10-15 degree angle, and that wouldn't have been good! I took a closer look, and saw that every second piston would encounter this same issue. Bloody French! In light of the above, I now had 4 pistons which had to be seperated from their rod, put in from above, pushed through until the rod pin was clear, and attach the rod from below, paying VERY close attention to checking locking clips and compressing the bottom piston ring (now out of the cylinder again) prior to sliding the piston into the cylinder properly. Quite a sod of a job, I can tell you! Got em all done by tea time though. Those pistons are quite difficult to slide up & down by hand, despite lashings of assembly grease.
Very nearly carried on to put the crank back in, but thought better of it with light and motivation failing. Because of how the pistons & rods now sit, I will need the arms of an Indian god to keep em all out of the way of the crank, as I lower it in. I have a cunning plan for that little glimpse of hades. If my approach doesn't work, I'll wait until my Son comes home in a fortnights time. That will give me one person to mind each bank of rods, while I lower the crank into place. Sounds easy, don't it? Fingers will be scarred, tempers will be raised, words will be said.
