Toyvo, since you're a relative newcomer to this thread, let me bring you up to speed on what's happening.
This situation began with a broken rod bolt on reassembly, and has steadily gone downhill from there. The side play issue is only the latest problem in a comedy of errors that would have any professional machinist climbing the walls. A set of ARP high strength rod bolts were forced into place with some sort of Rube Goldberg rig involving a bench vise and C-clamps, and then the rods were not checked for size and out-of-round like several of us reccomended. Then the engine was assembled with mismatched bearing shells from several rods, using old parts. So many basic common-sense engine building rules have been violated during the job that most of us will be surprised if the thing runs for more than 10 minutes without burning out a bunch of bearings. Anyone who's not trying to fudge the flat rate system for a few more hours a week does not cut corners on engine assembly, and he will double-check everything about a rotating assembly, including all the clearances. Plastigage is a minimum check for people who are more interested in saving time than doing the job right. To do it properly, the rods and bearings need to be assembled and measured off the crankshaft, then the diameters are compared to get actual clearances. Ditto on main bearings. If I've got less than 50 hours involved in setting up a customer's rotating assembly, I'm shortchanging him, but then the average engine I build costs at least $15,000.00. It's guaranteed to start- - - - -once it's running, it's all yours!
Jerry
Last edited by Hotrod Lincoln; 11/21/2008 3:18 PM.
