Bench Work

With everything painted I began the re-assembly process.  I started with the newly painted and seated cylinder head.  The new valves also had new valve guides which I had inserted earlier.  The guy who seated the valves said there was a slight burr in one of them that he reamed out.  I did not notice it so it must have been very slight or I don't know what to look for.  Probably the later.

I also installed new valve oil seals over the new guides.  I reassembled the springs, retainers, etc. and then set aside until ready for assembly

 I had picked up an inexpensive piston ring pliers at Harbor Freight.  Not the best quality tools but for one off jobs like this it keeps the costs down on specialty tools.  I will admit I couldn't figure it out until I watched a video on how they actually worked.  I then carefully set the three rings in place on my cleaned piston.  The piston, pins and arm were all within spec so I reused them all.  I made a piston ring compressor out of a small piece of plastic and some hose clamps.  I was then able to tap the piston into place from the top of the black after coating the cylinder wall with oil.  It went in pretty smoothly and I cranked it down to the bottom so i could bolt the arm onto the crank.

It felt really tight as I tried to rotate the crank by hand.  there was also this horrible clanking sound when it hit the bottom.  I went on the assumption that this would all improve as I continued the installation.  I just wanted to make sure it ran through the full rotation.  I added the gasket and some blue engine seal to the oil pan and bolted the oil pan onto the bottom of the block.

Cylinder at TDC