Long time, lots of news...

Not all of it good, I'm sorry to say...

So it turns out (surprise surprise!) I wasn't as far along as I thought. It turned out that the engine being extremely difficult to turn after assembly was NOT normal (I had kinda figured). At this point, my conjecture is that I probably swapped at least one if not more of the caps around on the rods.

However, it also turned out that I was given the wrong torque spec for the rod bolts. I actually had no idea until, working with Jeremy at Ireland Engineering, we decided that the best thing to do would be to have JMS Engines re-check all the machine work. They were the ones who discovered that not only had the bolts been overstretched, but also, one of them had snapped inside a rod!

Yes, it was a big step back to dismantle the whole engine again, but at least I saved most of the parts from severe damage by not trying to fire up that engine! The folks at JMS and Ireland Engineering have been really great about helping me out. Specially Ireland went above and beyond their call of duty in this case and provided me with lots of additional parts! Can't say enough good things about these guys!

At this point, I decided that it would be best to have JMS assemble the short block for me. I got the assembled short block back last Friday and on Saturday I started putting the engine back together again. I turned the crank a little after getting it back, it turned with minimal resistance, so that's a big part of the worry off my list!

I now have the oil filter carrier back on, as well as the front seal carrier, which houses both the front crank seal and the intermediate shaft seal. JMS was kind enough to actually seal and install the rear seal carrier for me, which was really nice of them! Next up, water pump, then probably the oil pump!