may be but I would at least drain the oil and check for metal, if you got something binding that hard you will have shavings in short order. Also I don't know how he is attempting to turn the engine by hand, using the fan would give you a lot of leverage, however if you are just using the balancer you won't get much, I also don't know how long it has ran, 2 minutes, or has it ran for hours. (total run time) I seem to recall he said he had redone the head,there is another place to look for problems. He said it came out of a running truck, and he has ran it for some indeterminate amount of time, leading me to believe the lower end is fine. and he said it hangs up about 1/8 of a turn, (or is it about 1/12 of a turn when the next valve spring starts to compress making it harder to turn by hand) I'm still going with the starter, timing or carburetor (regarding the idle issue) I also don't know how well it ran before he did the extraneous work. There are many situations during reassembly when things don't get done correctly, I spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what someone else has done to any number of machines at work, that aren't working up to par. By his own statements he has changed several things at one time. I would go back through everything that has been changed and check that out before I tear it out of the vehicle.
