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Old 07-10-2021, 01:41 PM
Russianblue Russianblue is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Charlotte, NC
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I thought I would report it here first. The head is ON, torqued and holding fast!

Overboost came over and after surviving a incident involving the hood crashing on his head, he expertly assisted me in lowering the head in. I absolutely could NOT have done this without his help. So...three (cheers or) beers for Overboost!! He's also one of those folks who is like "we hit a snag, no big...we'll figure something out!" That was helpful when we were having trouble getting the gasket to sit flat due to the fact that I had buggered an alignment dowel. That is a TIGHT, precision fit into the gasket. And I couldn't get the dowel to pass thru the gasket. It was EVERY SO SLIGHTLY out of round and had a small burr on it. Ultimately I took the dowel and the gasket to the workbench and used a rubber mallet to tap the dowel thru. I hope we didn't scar up black seals on the gasket too badly. it had a couple of marks but was still in tact.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no possible way to do this (at home, with the exhaust attached) without incurring a bit of risk to the head, block and head gasket. it's just too heavy and unwieldy, engine bar or crane notwithstanding. I cut a custom piece of wood to serve as a guard, and it did a good job. But who knows, there could be some sawdust or splinters in the combustion chamber. There may be an aluminum shard or two or three in the engine somewhere from the heli-coil and timesert process. I may have nicked the cyl head surface when we were lowering it on the dowels. The cats were rammed against the block dozens of times trying to wedge them in. Hopefully my piece of wood did it's job. Impossible to say really. You just can't SEE anything.

As much as I would like every single part of this to be clean-room precise...it's not. I can only hope (and do think) that given the successes of some people on this board and elsewhere, that there IS some room for error. I suppose we will find out in the not so far off future.

Here's my luggage scale 'damn near tree hunnid' torque wrench - btw, I would be PERFECTLY happy using the flywheel pin again for this. it was rock solid. I think the torque on this bolt is a little bit less than some other engines where it deforms the pin and/our housing.


This was actually a trial run. I strapped it a bit differently this morning.


All torqued up with no place to go!
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