The weekend had come, it had gone, and it had been a bust. On Saturday, the rain had returned, and it had brought hail along with it. At the large garage along Shelter Valley Way, a few miles north-northeast of the large city of South Plains, the pastel yellow mouse woman Michelle Frelang had found the resulting noise being too loud for her to film any footage for the series of videos she was making for her Youtube channel on the restoring of the 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle. The noise of the weather peaked out the sound levels of the cameras and made it impossible to add any spoken commentary.
She had planned to do a full rebuild of the 350ci V8 engine for the car, but with the clatter of the rain and hail drowning out everything else, that plan had to be postponed. A couple of parts still not having arrived didn't help, either. Still, the vanilla-hued mousette didn't waste the day; she just used it to do all the preliminaries that would be too boring or too repetitive to show on video, but which would still take hours and hours of work because it had to be done very meticulously, such as the filing of the gaps of the sets of piston rings, and the thorough cleaning of the engine block and the cylinder heads. At least that would give her plenty of time to put the engine together by the time the weather had abated.
The Sunday was always a day off and set aside for editing video footage. It was still raining on Sunday, but at least the hail had stopped by then and as the editing was done at her own house, there was much less noise overall. And all the editing work could be done at leisure and in the nude, to make it much more comfortable. Plus, with her cream and white skunkette lover Fanni staying over for the weekend as had become a habit, a lot of contented and relaxed cuddling was also enjoyed throughout the rainy Sunday.
Monday was the second day of the weekend Missy had established for herself, as she worked on Saturdays. And Mondays were for going to the female-only nudist gym in town with Fanni for their weekly workout routine, followed by lunch at the homey little diner called The Patty Place. By then the rain had let off enough to allow for some leisurely strolling down the commercial streets after lunch, eventually drop by the garage to check on the fluffy Maine Coon shop cat Salmon and give her a bunch of pets and some fresh food and water, and return home again for more relaxed naked cuddling.
And with that, it was Tuesday. The new work week had started, the weather had improved, the rain had dissolved into a morning mist that hung around until almost lunchtime, and new footage had to be filmed. Missy might have been planning on continuing work on the body of the car on Tuesday, but the engine still had to be built. The last few needed parts had been delivered on Monday, some of the boring, repetitive work had already been done, everything had been laid out, so nothing stood in the way of getting the power plant for the car put back together and make an entertaining and informative video out of it.
With the on-site morning routine of feeding and petting Salmon, unlocking doors, switching on some lights and checking for messages both online and on the answering machine taken care of, and all the lights and cameras already set up in the clean-room, all Missy had to do was to switch them on and lean in sideways from the side of the frame from very close by as if to check whether the camera was running.
"Alright, we live? We-e-e're live. Hey ho, all you wonderful people out there in Youtube land! Missy here from Mousie Motorworks, ready to take you along on another adventure! It's Tuesday now, and I had planned to work on the body of the Chevelle, but I fell a bit behind. The weather has been atrocious over the weekend and we had quite some hail on Saturday, so I could not film any work on building the engine. Not to mention I was still missing some parts which only arrived yesterday. So instead of giving the body a last smoothing and its final coats of paint, today's video will actually be on the building of the engine. Exciting though! So grab yourself a beverage, sit back, and follow right along with yet another interesting episode, right here at Mousie Motorworks!"
One... two... three... editing point. Taking the main camera from its tripod, the vanilla-colored mousette panned through the clean-room, showing the fresh blue engine block sitting on an engine stand, the cylinder heads in the same blue color sitting on a rolling tool chest, all eight pistons with their connecting rods already attached sitting upside down in two rows of four on a small table next to the engine stand with next to them a sheet of cardboard with eight circles drawn on it, some numbers scribbled in each circle, and sets of piston rings laying on each circle, plus all the assorted parts and boxes laid out on the workbenches against the rear wall. Returning the camera to its tripod, she stood in front of it and sent the camera a cheery smile.
"So here were are, in the clean-room. This is the place where I take apart and put together engines, and sometimes gearboxes. As you can see, everything is sitting ready to be put together, so let's have a look-see at what we have here. First and foremost," she gestured at the blue engine block sitting on the engine stand, "we have the original engine block that came out of the car; the three hundred fifty cubic inch V-eight Corvette motor that someone had swapped into the Chevelle. You may still remember what an ungodly amount of disgusting goop I pulled out of that engine, and if you don't, look at..." She pointed at a spot to the right above her, "...the video linked right there. Due to the scratching on the cylinder walls, I had to get them honed, and in deliberation with South Planes, the machine shop where I had all the work done, we decided to bore them thirty-over, as that is the most common size to overbore an engine to. That obviously means new pistons were needed, and you can see them sitting over there; I had the machine shop test the original con rods, because they're four-bolt, and they were found in perfect working order so I had them press those on the new pistons, which are, obviously, thirty-over, and they used new wrist pins. They also tested the original crankshaft, and it had a bit of scarring so they turned it for me, ten-ten, which means ten thousandths off the mains and ten thousandths off the rods. That means I will need oversized bearings, and as you can see here, this paper they gave me, it has several recommendations for bearings. The camshaft, as you may remember, was wiped so I had to get a replacement one, and I went with an as close to stock, very mild street cam." She lifted the new plastic-wrapped camshaft from its narrow box. "This is a Summit Racing SBC cam and lifter kit; it's a normal hydraulic flat tappet camshaft with a two-sixty duration and a point four twenty-seven lift, so it's a very mild, low-end street cam." She lifted a small box. "Bearings are King HP-series thirty-over main bearings, and I also got a set of King rod bearings. Piston rings you can see over there, and those are Hastings plasma-moly thirty-over rings. Pushrods are a set of Edelbrock chromoly restrictor rods, and the rockers are Comp High Energy stud-mount, stamped rockers with a one point seven ratio. All of that stuff; cam and lifter kit, pushrods, rockers, bearings, rings, everything comes from Summit Racing and has been generously sponsored by them, and I'll put all the part numbers in the description."
Taking the camera from its tripod again, Missy started slowly panning along the tool chest with the cylinder heads on it, and the engine block sitting on the stand.
"Now, one thing that immediately is very obvious; the block and the heads are blue. Sharply noticed, folks. I had the fine crew at South Planes prepare as much of the motor for me as possible, so they magnafluxed the block, planed it, bored it thirty over, and as you can see, they pressed in the cam journals and the freeze plugs for me, and they also cleaned and tested the heads, fluxed them, planed them and assembled them with all-new hardened valves, valve seats, valve guides, heavy-duty springs and retainers. I also left them a set of new valve covers, a new oil pan, a valley pan and the intake, and I asked them to ceramicoat the whole thing for me in GM Corporate Blue." She set the camera down and grinned at it while raising her arms. "I know, I know! Wrong year! GM only started using Corporate Blue on their motors from nineteen seventy-seven onwards, and this is a seventy-two. But hey, it's gonna be a yellow and blue Chevelle, so I opted to put in a blue motor, okay? I know it's the wrong color for the year, I'm well aware of that, but it is my choice simply because I think it will look much better. So no need for any of you to climb into your keyboard and leave comments on how a seventy-two Chevelle never had a Corporate Blue engine, I know it hadn't, but I chose that color based on aesthetics. Now, it's very, very important that when you have an engine block honed or bored over and you pick it up from the machine shop, that you clean it very thoroughly, dry it off, and protect it, because those cylinder bores will start flash-rusting within minutes. I have already done that last Saturday, and it's really simple. Just spritz the whole thing done with whatever degreasing cleaning agent you want to use, let it sit for a minute or two, and rinse it off with clean water. Then take your air hose with a blower nozzle and blow off all the water, and make sure to blow it out of alllll those little passages and galleries and little nooks and crannies. And you want to take some kind of oil, and it really doesn't matter what kind; WD-forty, PB Blaster, White Elephant, Kroil - although you might want to think twice about that one because it's kinda expensive - but really any kind of oil will do, even some motor oil. Just put some on a lint-free rag and wipe down the inside of the cylinder bores, and make sure to cover every single spot in them, just to leave a thin film of oil on the surface to keep the water away so they won't flash-rust. As I said, I already did that last Saturday, so this block here is all ready to be assembled. So where do you start?" The light yellow mousette smiled at the camera and gave a light shrug. "To be fair, it doesn't really matter where you start. I personally start with installing the camshaft. Let me show you why."
She turned the engine block over on the stand so it was sitting upside down and took one of the smaller cameras to look into the inside of the block.
"You can see all those holes there, with that shiny ring pressed into them. That's your cam journals, and those rings are the bearings." She waved a paw over the cradles at the bottom of the engine block. "Usually, this is where your crankshaft sits, with the piston rods connecting to it. But without all of that in the way, it's just so much easier to install the camshaft. It's a long stick, after all, and you maneuver it into place from the front here, through all those holes, and it's basically a long lever. Even the slightest bit of pressure on this side will cause you to mar up these cam bearings, and that's no good, then you'll have to get new bearings pressed in. So with all of the rotating assembly not being here, I can reach in from here and guide the camshaft to each of the journals and make sure it slides in nice and straight. Also, you put some assembly lube on the camshaft before you slide it in place, and by the time you get to about here, between these last two journals, most if not all of the lube will have been scraped off by the journals you already put it through, so now you can dab an extra little blob of lube on the camshaft and make sure everything is properly greased before you pop that baby home. Like this, observe."
Turning to the workbench, Missy took the plastic wrap off the camshaft and checked it over for a few moments, even taking a card from the box and holding it by one of the ends of the camshaft and checking it.
"It's important to always check your camshaft before installing it, to see if it didn't get any damage during transport or anything. And check the serial number and part number on the end here and make sure it matches up to your cam card that's in the box. And it does, good." She took a small oiling can and started dabbing oil onto the rings inside the engine block. "I'm just putting a dab of oil on each of the cam journals, that will give a bit of protection and make it easier for the camshaft to slide through them. This is just plain old motor oil, Rotella T-five to be exact, it's pretty affordable and it's really all you need." Setting the can down on the workbench, she took a plastic sachet from the long narrow box with the camshaft in it. "When you buy a camshaft, it always comes with this little pouch of assembly lube. That's also basically just oil, but it's a bit thicker and stickier so it stays in place much better. There's only about half an ounce in this, so I just save them up until I have about a cupful of the stuff and squeeze all of them into one of these oiling cans. Those pouches are way too small, I tend to be quite generous with this stuff so I never have enough in just one pouch." She took and held up a somewhat strange-shaped black bottle with a large red cap. "This is Maxima Assembly Lube, and as you can see splashed all over the front of the bottle, it has a two-times zinc formula. Now, it really doesn't matter what kind of assembly lube you use; I chose this one because it's compatible with all types of motor oil, and it smells pretty darn nice because it's cinnamon-scented. I also only lube part of the cam at a time, just these first two bearings, the distributor gear and the lobes in between. Don't forget to give that little gear here a good coating now! You wouldn't want to drop in your distributor and have it grinding or making any kind of unnerving noises. Also, this is the time to attach your cam gear, and just two of the three bolts is enough for now, and just snug them down finger-tight, no need to go torquing on them just yet." She took the camshaft and the bottle and sat down on a rolling stool, facing the upside-down engine block. "Now, just go nice and slow here, take your time, there's no hurry, and be very careful not to bump against your cam journals. Especially when you slide that distributor gear through, you can really scuff up those journals something terrible with that gear, so just take it easy, take your time, and be careful. Now we're getting to the next part, so I'm supporting the cam here, put some assembly lube on the next lobes, and just a light coating is enough, you don't need to go overboard with this stuff. Even what I'm doing here is being quite generous already. And on we go, maneuvering slowly and carefully... it's kinda like that buzzy wire loop game, you know? Touch the sides, and ehh ehhhh! You're out! Now we're on to the next part, so again, I support the cam here, dab on some assembly lube, rub it all over to make a good coating all around, and we're far enough in now that I've lost my leverage here, so now I can reach over and into the block and guide it to the next journals with my fingers."
She stood up to also look into the engine block while guiding the camshaft further and further. Slowly, carefully, measuredly, until the end of the camshaft was situated in between the last two journals, at which point Missy took one of the smaller cameras again and panned along the camshaft, pointing at the lobes and the bearings.
"We're almost there now, and now you can see what I meant. This one at the end here, it has passed through all these journals, and as it passed through each one, a little of the lube got scraped off. As you can see, there's almost no lube left on it, but since the crank and pistons are not in the way, I can reach in easily and dab a little more lube on here, and I can also dab a little blob in this last journal here." She did just that and swirled her finger around and around in quick circles inside the final journal to coat the entire surface all the way around. "Leedeleedeleedeleedee! There we go, now we can push this baby all the way home and seat it, clunk, like that, and we have the assurance that back here it has the same amount of lubrication as it does all the way at the front here." Taking a strip of wide gaffer tape, Missy stuck that over the end of the camshaft and the gear to hold it in place. "This is just a little security to make sure it won't go anywhere, and here we are, camshaft is installed. Now we can move on to the crankshaft and the pistons. Let's have a look at the bits and pieces we need for that, because there's a few very important things to note there."
On the workbench sat a row of crankshaft main bearing caps with black bolts sticking out of them. Missy picked them up one by one and brought them close to the smaller camera she was holding.
"These are the main caps, and it's very important to know where these go, because they and the block are machined in pairs. Now, this is a Chevy block, and GM has made it very simple for us; these are all stamped. See? One, two, three and four, and an F with an arrow pointing that way, meaning that side faces the front of the block. And then there's your main end cap, which is pretty obvious because it's much wider, and it also has the F and the arrow. These bolts I put in are ARP bolts, and I've chosen to use ARP hardware for everything on the engine. Some engines..." She turned to the block and pointed at the crankshaft journals, "...may have studs sticking up from there, and it can be quite tricky to maneuver the crankshaft between all those studs without bumping against them. What you can do is take some fuel hose or something and stick it over those studs as a protective sleeve, so that when you do accidentally bump against them with your crankshaft, you don't gall up the surface. And some engines may also lack the numbers and such stamped in these caps; if your engine doesn't have any markings, just get yourself..." She picked up a small square plastic box filled with small metal rods and held it up for a moment, "...a stamping kit, like this, on eBay, Amazon, even some auto parts stores might have them, or some hobby stores might have them, just ask around. But get a kit like this and stamp your own markings; a number, a letter, a dot, an arrow, a star, whatever you want, just something to remind you which one goes where. Now, before we drop in the crank, of course we need to put in the bearings first." She pointed at each of the half-round journals. "As you can see, each of these journals has a hole in them; that's for the oiling. And that makes it really easy to determine which half of the bearing goes where, because..." She turned to the workbench where two sets of half-round bearings were laid out in two rows, "...as you can see, these have a hole in them, and these don't. So these go in the block, and these go in the end caps. You can also see both the journal in the block and the end cap have these little indents here. Call it a tab, call it a tang, whatever, but as you can see, there's a little lip on the bearing that fits into that indent, and you have to make sure that when you have set in your crank and you're putting on the bearing caps, to match these little indents up with each other. So this one here..." She pointed at the small indent on one of the bearing caps, then at the indent at one of the journals in the engine block, "...goes here. The bearings are press-fit, and when you press them in, again, take your time and be gentle and careful." She took one of the half-round bearings with a hole in it and lay it in one of the journals. "Make sure these are as clean as possible; wipe them with some brake cleaner or carb cleaner and then wipe them dry with a lint-free rag. Use that little tab as a guide and to prevent it from shifting, and start pressing down slowly and gently in the middle. It's of utmost importance that these are flush with the block, so the end cap can make a good seal with the surface, and you won't distort the bearings when you torque down your end caps. Look at where it's sticking up, lightly work it from this side, then that side, until both sides are completely flush. Just like that. And the same goes for the other half of the bearing that goes into the end cap."
After demonstrating with one of the bearings, Missy set the smaller camera on the workbench and pressed in all the other bearings, both in the journals in the engine block and into the bearing caps. She also took half of a ribbed blue rubber circle and worked it into the journal at the very back of the engine, but instead of keeping both edges flush with the surface of the block like she had done with the bearings, she pushed one end a bit deeper down and let the other end stick up a bit.
"I'm just putting in the rear main seal now, since I'm here," she mentioned to the main camera. "Might as well, it's easy to reach now, and I put just a little dab of oil on it so that it's not dry on first initial startup. You'll also notice I've clocked this one unevenly, unlike the bearings. Most folks would keep both ends flush with the block, just like the bearings, and then just dab a blob of RTV or other sealer here, but I prefer to do it this way. Look how flat this surface here is, you'll be really hard-pressed to get a proper seal there, and with doing it this way, well, I won't say it's a guarantee not to leak, but at least I never had a rear main seal leaking on any of the engines I've built from scratch." She took the oiling can and dripped a bit of oil onto each bearing she had pressed into the crank journals, rubbing it all over the surface with a finger. "Now just dab a little oil on each bearing and make sure to coat the surface, and make even more sure you're not forcing any oil between the bearing and the surface of the journal. That will only increase the chances of spun bearings and excessive play, and you don't want to hear your brand new assembled motor making that dreaded knocking noise. I just use that same Rotella T-five here, just regular motor oil, it works fine. Besides, as I mentioned, I tend to be quite generous with the assembly lube, and that stuff is more like grease. If you put too much of that in your motor, it can clog up your oil filter and throw it into bypass mode, and you definitely don't want that to happen during that so critical initial startup and break-in. Especially with these flat-tappet cams, that first break-in is usually referred to as the longest and most stressful twenty minutes in a mechanic's life, and there's a good reason for that. You have to run the engine at different RPMs for twenty minutes straight, and if you even made one teeny tiny little error or forgot something or missed something during the build, those twenty minutes is where that will bite you in the butt and your engine may well go kablooie."
Turning back to the workbench once more and setting down the oiling can, the vanilla-hued mousette took the crankshaft out of its plastic wrapping and set it down on top of the box, then pulling a dark yellow card from the box as well.
"So here we have the torque twister. This is the original crankshaft that came out of this engine, and as I mentioned, I had the machine shop test and turn it for me. You can see here on this card, ten off the mains, ten off the rods, and there's some recommendations for bearings here, too. Now, not using an upgraded crankshaft will limit us quite a bit in how much power we can squeeze out of this motor. Four hundred, four-fifty horsepower, that will be the extend of what this crank can handle, so be conscious of that. If you want to build a powerhouse, that's definitely something you'll have to keep in mind. I'm not aiming to build a powerhouse, I think the original two hundred twenty horses this motor made is already more than enough, because I just want a comfortable cruiser. And with that in mind, I am actually overbuilding this motor quite a bit, with the ARP hardware and the King bearings and Hastings rings and Edelbrock pushrods and all that stuff. I could have easily gone with all stock stuff, that would have been more than plenty for the use this motor will see, but the upgraded parts is just a bit of extra security that this engine will keep on doing its thing without problems for a long time to come. Now, regardless of what kind of crankshaft you use for your build, once you've unpacked it, make sure it's super extremely clean; spray and wipe the surfaces with brake cleaner or carb cleaner, and blow through all these oil passages here with brake cleaner of carb cleaner, then follow that up with a blast of air. And take a dial caliper, like this, and run it all along each part of the surface, because as a wise man once said; trust, but verify."
She did all that, and even did it all a second time until she was satisfied. Picking up the crankshaft by both ends, the vanilla-colored mousette lifted it effortlessly and stepped over to the engine block on the stand.
"This is all clean now, and when you drop it in, be careful, go slow, take your time, and be very conscious of your thrust bearing at the rear here. Just set it down gently, like this, and I always like to give it a little wiggle." She rotated the crankshaft back and forth a couple of times. "It should spin really easily, like this; that's how you know it's seated well and you're not bound up anywhere." She reached over to the workbench and took a flat strip of something. "Now the next step is to check your clearances, and we do that with this stuff. This is plastigauge, and all you need to do is snip off a little piece of this and lay it on all these surfaces here, then set your main caps and torque them down to spec, then pull them back off one by one and check. Torquing down the main caps will squish this little strip down and you can measure your clearance by comparing the width of the squished strip to these increments on the paper here. For this engine, with the overbore and the thicker bearings, the clearance is between twenty-five and thirty thou. I'll do that now, and I'll be with you in a sec."
Missy cut small pieces of the very thin green strip and lay them on each surface where one of the bearing caps would go to hold the crankshaft in place. The bearings had already been pressed into the caps, so she could set them all in place and torque them down with a torque wrench, going from the first one towards the end main bearing, then removing them in the same order and setting them back on the workbench. With the smaller camera in one paw and the flat strip of paper in her other paw, she leaned close to the crankshaft and moved the flat paper strip along the narrow green stripe that was left on the surface of the crankshaft to match up the width of the green stripe with the markings on the paper.
"Between twenty-five and thirty, that's right about here. As you can see, I'm perfectly within spec. Something to keep in mind here; whatever type of engine you're building, make sure to research what the tolerances and clearances are. Some engines can have different values from cap to cap, so make sure you know all the numbers for your specific engine so you can check them, don't just assume that the first measurement you've taken on the first end cap is the same for all the others as well. Anyways, these all check out, so now we can put the main caps back on and torque them down for real." She set all the main caps in their place and took the small oiling can to dab a few drops of oil onto the threads of the black bolts. "A little reminder here on those main caps; be sure to put them in the right position. I mentioned before; they and the block are machined as a pair and you really don't want to mess that up. Also make sure to lube the threads of your bolts, and I like to also put a drop between the washer and the bolt. Now, depending on what kind of hardware you're using, you may not have washers, so just put a little dab of oil on there to help things along and ensure your torque values are accurate. Run them in with your fingers, like this, until they're finger-tight, and they need to be torqued down to a hundred foot-pounds, in three even increments. So we'll start at thirty-three, go to sixty-six, and then swoop all the way to a hundred." She took a digital torque wrench. "Start in the middle and work your way out. So first this one, number three; beebeebeep, thirty-three, beebeebeep, thirty-three. Then this one, number two, then this one, number four, then number one, and finally your rear main. Beebeebeep, thirty-three. Repeat at sixty-six in the same pattern, there we go, and then repeat again in the same pattern at a hundred, this one, this one, this one, this one, and the rear main, beebeebeep, there we go. Now we're ready for the next step, and this is a big exciting step, folks; pistons."
Setting the torque wrench back in its plastic box, Missy adjusted the cameras a bit, pulled near the rolling stool and sat down by the small table upon which the eight pistons were sitting in two rows of four, along with their sets of rings and the connecting rod end caps.
"So here we are, these are the pistons for this build. The stock four-bolt con rods, pressed into these Speed-Pro hypereutectic pistons." She flashed the main camera a cheerful grin. "That's a big word, isn't it? Hypereutectic. So what does that mean? Well, I'm not a metallurgist, but I do know the basics where it concerns combustion engine pistons. Hypereutectic means these are an aluminium-silicon alloy, with a silicon content on the higher end of the scale. That causes these aluminium things to expand much less from heat, which in turn allows for much tighter tolerances. Or in other, somewhat simpler words; they can make these pistons a bit larger so they fit as tightly as possible within the bore of the cylinder, without needing to account for the extra space the piston will need as it expands from the heat. There's a bunch more to it than that, but as I said I'm not a metallurgist, and you already don't even need to know this information, really. What you do need to know is that before you start grinding your ring gaps and slapping pistons into the engine, you first need to measure your cylinder bore. Because your ring end gap needs to be absolutely precise, or as close to absolutely precise as you can get it." She picked up an L-shaped tool with a gauge on the top. "This is a telescoping dial bore gauge. We're going to need to do a whole lot of pretty boring mathematics here, and I'm expecting to lose a number of you folks on this one. But it's really super important. See, the piston rings expand from the heat as well, and especially if you put a turbo or a supercharger on your motor, or you're planning to run nitrous, the rings will expand even quicker from the extra heat. And if you don't have the end gap set precisely right, what happens is that the ends of the rings bump up against each other, closing that gap, and if they have nowhere else to go because the gap is too tight, they can splinter and crack, leaving little bits of debris in the cylinder and scratch up the cylinder walls, and they could even break into chunks, or worst case scenario, break a chunk off the piston. You've all seen the pictures online of blown engines; it can get pretty gruesome." She popped open a can of Mountain Dew and took a swig. "What this procedure of measuring will also do, is confirm whether your cylinder bore is still perfectly round. On high-mileage engines, the cylinder slowly starts turning a bit oval from all the repeated stresses, the rings won't seal properly anymore, and you're dealing with blow-by and loss of compression, thus power. Most machine shops can do what they call a hone to round, and that usually encompasses boring the cylinders ten thou over." She shrugged lightly. "If you're in that situation, just let them go thirty over. You may as well, it costs the same per cylinder and you're gonna need to buy new pistons anyway." She rolled her stool over to the engine block and turned it right side up on the stand, patting the surface with a paw. "For an engine like this, we're looking for a four point two eight zero bore; that's standard bore plus thirty thou over. Now, this may look complicated, but it really isn't." She held up the tool and encompassed the lower part of the L-shape between her thumb and middle finger. "This here part has several extensions, and what we need to do is set this slightly over a measurement of four point two-eighty. With one extension and a washer or two, I got this one to four point three hundred on the dot, as measured with this digital caliper here. Check it several times, I did, and I confirmed without a doubt this here measurement is four point three. So now I set this dial here to zero, and now all we have to do is put this thing in the cylinder bore, like this, so that this part is at a ninety degree angle with the cylinder wall." She pulled near the smaller camera as well. "Now when I rock this back and forth, you can see the needle on the gauge is moving, and it goes all the way to twenty. The tedious part is that you have to do this six times, per cylinder; north, south, east, west, northeast, and northwest. Or southeast and southwest, whatever you may feel like. But that is six times per cylinder, for eight cylinders, is forty-eight times in total. And as you can see, every time, the needle goes all the way to twenty. And we know the measurement of our lower rod is four point three zero zero, minus point zero twenty, is four point two-eighty; the correct size for these cylinder bores. And we also know the cylinder bores are perfectly round, because we measured in six different directions. So now that we know all this, we can go back to the table with the pistons and the rings, and do some more math. Yaaay, math."
Missy playfully poked out her tongue at the main camera while she set the tools aside and rolled her stool back over to the table with the pistons and the sets of rings on it.
"Now, you folks are in luck; I have already done all the tedious repetitive work here last Saturday, so I won't have to bore you with all that. What I will bore you with is some information on piston rings." She grinned and gestured at the table. "As you can see, we're working with three sets of rings here; that's the most common. The top ring, the number one ring, is your compression ring, and its primary function is, well, compression; it seals off the air and fuel mixture in the top of the combustion chamber. The number two ring is the one in the middle; it's both a backup for the number one ring, and it also helps with an even distribution of oil between the piston and the cylinder wall. Then there's the number three ring at the bottom; that's the wavy one, the oil ring, and its function is when the crank turns and splashes a bunch of oil up into the cylinder bore along with vacuum, that ring scrapes the oil back down and makes everything ready for the next splash of oil. All three of them work in harmony, and all three of them also work on dissipating the heat from the friction and the constant motion of the piston moving up and down in the bore, more or less transferring that heat into the cylinder wall, from where it will go into the water jackets, and the now hot water will flow into the radiator to get cooled off and flow back into the block." She took another swig of her soda. "Piston rings can be made of a variety of materials, and you just have to either figure out, or just decide, what the best choice for your application may be. They also come in two formats; direct fit or file to fit. Direct fit is easy, the name already says it; say you have a tired three twenty-seven Chevy motor that you want to refresh with some new rings. You just do a quick dingleball hone, no material is taken off the cylinder walls but they're just cleaned up, and you can go to any auto parts store and pick up a stock direct-fit Chevy three twenty-seven ring kit, throw'em in, boom, Robert is your mother's brother. File to fit, on the other hand, is also rather obvious in the basics, as the name implies that yes, you actually file the end gap of the rings yourself to a very specific tolerance. That's needed when you turbo or supercharge your engine, or run nitrous on it. You can run a few pounds of boost, five, six pounds, and maybe even a fifty shot of nitrous, on a stock set of rings no problem, but once you start to go into turbo boost mode, with stock rings, you're asking for trouble. So you will need file to fit rings, and in the case of when an engine is over-bored, like this one here, you'll also need file to fit rings. So that brings us to all of this."
Missy rolled her stool back a bit and gestured at everything on the table; the sheet of cardboard with the eight circles traced on it, labeled 1 through 8 and each with some numbers scribbled inside and a set of piston rings laying on them, a folded manual consisting of a couple of papers stapled together, a couple of small tools and the can of Mountain Dew.
"The very first thing you need to realize is that this is the most boring and tedious process of building an engine, because this will literally take you several hours. It's incredibly tedious, but it's also incredibly worth all the work. I like to keep things organized, as all of you know pretty well by now, so I usually have a side of a box or something, just some kind of sheet of cardboard, on which I use an old piston ring to trace out eight circles - or six, or four, depending on what kind of engine I'm working on, number them, and write the measurements in them. The measurements are taken from this manual; all of the sets of file to fit rings you can buy will come with a manual similar to this. And over here on this page, this is what you want, this little chart here." She picked up the papers and zoomed in close with one of the smaller cameras. "You can see here, in the first column, it shows the different kind of applications; street, street/strip, circle track/drag, forced induction up to fifteen pounds, forced induction over fifteen pounds, nitrous up to two hundred horsepower and nitrous over two hundred horsepower. The second column here shows measurements for the top ring, your number one ring, and it's divided in half, with the left side showing cast or forged pistons, and the right side showing hypereutectic pistons, the third column is for your second ring, the middle ring, for all types of pistons, and the last column is for the oil rail, the wiggly wavy oil ring on the bottom, also for all types of pistons. Still with me? Alright, then let's take a closer look. Our application here is a cruiser build, so that would be just Street. And we have hypereutectic pistons." She ran her index finger along the top line. "So that shows that our end gap measurement is bore size times point zero zero six five. So we take our bore measurement of four point two eight zero, times point zero zero six five, which makes..." Pulling out her phone, Missy activated the calculator mode to make that calculation. "...point zero two seven eight two. Sheesh, and why did I calculate that; I wrote it down on this sheet of cardboard here. Anyways, so for our second ring, the measurement is bore times zero zero four five, so that's..." This time she referenced the number scribbled in one of the circles on the sheet of cardboard. "...point zero one nine two six. And the oil rings are all point zero fifteen as you can see in the chart. That's why it's so important to do those bore measurements six times, so you can be absolutely sure you have a perfectly round bore and you have the correct measurement. Now, when measuring ring gap, I have seen people do that wrong so many times, so allow me to educate you folks a bit."
She took one of the piston rings and rolled her stool over to the engine block, setting the ring into one of the cylinder openings flush with the surface of the engine block.
"Often, folks just set the ring in here like this, right at the top, and take a feeler gauge, as you should, to measure the gap. And this is wrong. A cylinder bore is slightly tapered, meaning it's a little bit wider at the top and a little bit narrower at the bottom. So you want to measure the gap with the ring set further down into the bore." She picked up an aluminium ring with several ridges. "There's tools like these, but you don't have to use this; you can just as well use an old piston. But you need something that is pretty much the same size as the bore, so you can push the ring further down, without scarring up the cylinder wall." She pressed the aluminium tool into the opening and took it back out. "Just like that. Now the ring is seated further down, and now we can measure our end gap correctly. And I can hear you right there; Missy Missy! Why is that so important? The thing is, folks, like I said the bore is tapered, and all the way at the top here, it can be as much as five to ten thousandths wider than further down. So when you measure the gap at the very top here, you may think you have the correct gap, but it's actually a significantly smaller gap when you seat the ring further down, and then you're getting dangerously close to trouble; the gap will be too narrow, the rings can't expand as much, the ends butt against each other, and you can crack or splinter your rings, they'll create friction against the cylinder walls and with friction comes heat, and I don't have to tell you what happens when such heat causes the rings to weld themselves to the pistons, or even worse, when so much heat is generated that the rings weld the pistons to the cylinder walls. That's big kablooie time right there, folks."
She rolled her stool back to the table and zoomed the smaller camera in on one of the tools. It was a small red square of metal on a flat metal foot with two holes in it, with a small block with a lever on top, a small round stand on that, a dial indicator on the left side and a very small and very thin cutting disc on its own tiny little electric motor on the right side.
"This here is a ring filer. Don't buy this, folks. These things are pretty darn expensive, and you don't need one unless you're filing lots and lots of piston rings on a regular basis. I didn't buy this one; there were several of them in this garage already. You can just get a hand-cranked one, they work just as good and they're a lot cheaper. When you do get a hand-cranked one, though, make sure that your cutting disc is spinning this way, clockwise. You want to be filing down your ring against the block here, because that will prevent the ring from cracking or splitting." She picked up a very narrow and flat, small hand file. "You also need a file like this, you will need this to file the tips of your rings..." She picked up one of the piston rings and brought it close to the camera, showing the small shiny spot where the black coating was removed at the end by the gap. "...like you can see here, to remove any burrs and anything else sharp that might possibly cause any cylinder damage. And this also shows you that yes, I have in fact already filed all these rings to the proper end gaps; I did that last Saturday because I couldn't film any footage due to the weather, so I just made sure I got all this super tedious and time-consuming work out of the way." She swiveled around on the stool to face the main camera. "Now, we all heard that old saying; measure twice, cut once. With these rings here, it's more like, measure fifteen times, cut eight times. You have to be so careful, because you can't put any of the material back once you've removed it. For instance, that ring I showed you, the gap was point zero two eight. Take that in several steps; I did ten, checked, then ten more, checked again, then five, checked again, and then very meticulously dialed in the last three. That will take you several times, so take your time, don't rush, put on your favorite music or podcast or whatever, have plenty of drinks within reach, and take, your, time. It's so important that you get your ring gap size as precise as you possibly can, so take it slow and do it little bits at a time. Anyway!" She gestured at the sets of rings laying on the cardboard sheet. "As I said, I already did all the work here, so all these rings are correctly gapped. Let me go grab the pistons, and I will put the rings on them, set them down in their spots here, and when they're all done, we can shuffle this whole situation over to the engine block there behind me and slap the pistons into the motor."
A few moments were taken to finish the can of Mountain Dew. Another few moments were taken to reposition the main camera and some of the lights. A last few moments were taken to pick up all eight of the pistons and set them down on the cardboard sheet. Missy switched on the radio, as this was just going to be a timelapse, rolled near a different rolling stool with a backrest and sat down behind the table to start winding all of the rings onto all of the pistons.
It was, apart from being 30-over size, a pretty standard piston ring set, so there were four rings per piston in total; a top ring, a middle ring, and two of the wavy lower rings. Working calmly and humming along with the radio, the vanilla-colored mousette worked all the rings into their grooves on the pistons, completely disregarding at what position the ring gap was as it didn't matter anyway in this stage of the procedure. She worked from the bottom up on each piston, first putting on the oil rings in the third groove, then putting on the secondary compression ring in the middle groove, and finally putting on the top compression ring in the upper groove before setting each piston upside down on the sheet of cardboard and moving on to the next one.
Once she was done, before turning to the main camera and addressing it, Missy first made a few crude little drawings in a notebook. Only then did she turn to the main camera, sending it a smile.
"Right, there we go, all done, or as good as. A note or two; when you're putting new rings on your pistons, pay very close attention to them." She pointed at the first set of three little doodles while zooming in on them with the smaller camera. "The rings will have some kind of mark on one side; a dot like that, or a small diamond or square, or an asterisk, or even the word 'top'. Make absolutely sure that you put on the rings with that side of them facing upwards, to the top of the piston, because the rings have specific beveled edges..." She tapped the other two little doodles with a fingertip, "...like this, to help them do their work as best as they can. So make sure to put your rings on your pistons the right way up." She picked up one of the pistons and held it up in front of her, with one end of the wrist pin facing her. "Then, there's clocking your rings. This is a subject of much controversy. Go to any forum or chat group or whatever you have online and ask about how you should clock piston rings, and you will get a bazillion different answers from a million different people. There's charts, there's pictures, there's videos, there's manuals with measurements, there's all kinds of stuff. Well, I'm here to tell you; forget all of that. And I'm not alone in telling you that; there's more and more manufacturers who put it on the inside of their boxes or in the manuals that come with their sets of rings; 'we do not care how you clock your rings, because it does not matter'. Oh yes, this may come as a shock to you, but it is absolutely and totally and completely irrelevant how you clock your rings. Piston rings turn when a piston moves up and down, folks, they spin, they rotate, because that's what they're supposed to do. And what's more; they spin immediately once a piston starts moving. So once you have put all the rings on your pistons, you can just go right on ahead and put the pistons in the motor. But if you still feel you need to clock your rings, if nothing else just because it may make you feel better, just do it like this." She lifted the piston she was holding a bit. "Hold your piston with the rings like this, so you can look clean through the wrist pin. Then take your top ring..." She turned the top ring towards the left, "...and put it at ten o'clock. Then take your middle ring..." She twisted the middle ring to the right, "...and put it at two o'clock. Easy to remember, ten and two, just like how you were taught to drive. Then, turn your piston one hundred and eighty degrees, or simply; turn it around, so you can look clean through the wrist pin from the other side, and do the same with your oil rings." She turned the upper of the two wavy rings in the bottom groove leftwards, and the lower of the two rightwards. "Ten and two, just like that. It'll help make you feel better because you clocked your rings, and once you have finished your engine build and fire it up for the first time, the rings will sit in that position for a sliver of a fraction of a micro-second because they will immediately start turning with the movement of the pistons."
She set the piston back down on the table and moved the table over to next to the engine block on the stand. From the workbench, she took several round black items; two solid ones and one with silver-colored straps around them that looked like oversized hose clamps with adjusting screws.
"Now, of course, to put your pistons into your engine, you're going to need a couple of tools. Obviously, you'll need a ring compressor of some sort." She picked up the one with the straps. "This is the type we all know and loathe. They're cheap, and they work, but goodness gracious do they give you fits of irritation. Because they're also sharp, so you're constantly skinning your knuckles on them, and all of..." She waved a paw over the adjusters, "...this garbledegook tends to strip out after two or three uses and you can't set them to the correct bore size anymore or they just fly open and sproing all over your workshop right in the middle of using them; we've all been there, we all know what this cheapo garbage is like." She tossed the thin black tube with the silver straps over her shoulder carelessly. "So we're not gonna use that. You can also get these..." She picked up the other low black tubes, which were much thicker, solid, and had a number printed on them. "...from just about any auto parts store. These here happen to be ARP brand, and they're so much nicer because they're of much thicker material, so they're solid, and they come in many different flavors and sizes so there's bound to be one out there that will fit the size of the cylinder bores in your engine. And it's printed right on the side here, so it can't miss, see; four point two eight zero, and they have a taper and also this little lip at the bottom here so you can set them right in the bore..." She placed the low black tube into one of the cylinder bores with an audible clinking sound, "...just like that, and then you can just drop in your piston. And to tap the piston down into the bore, you'll need another tool." She picked up a long L-shaped deadblow hammer in blue plastic. "You can get a specific piston hammer like this one, or you can just use that plastic or rubber handle on the bottom of your claw hammer, or a stick, or a piece of two-by-two; basically anything that is solid but somewhat soft and has a bit of give so you won't damage the top of your pistons. Now, of course, before you start dropping your pistons into your engine, make sure you have the con rod bearings pressed in, that's the same procedure as the crank main bearings, make sure they have a thin coating of oil, and also lubricate your piston real well, and the inside of the bore, just really slop a good amount of oil in there, and also give the inside of whatever type of ring compressor you're using a nice coat of oil. Anything to help these babies just slide right home."
Setting all the pistons up on the workbench along a row of half-circular bearings, Missy took a moment or two to adjust the cameras, and a little longer to clean the bearing surface of all the connecting rod end caps and half of the bearings themselves. She also took several moments to press all the bearings into the connecting rod end caps, and into the ends of all but one of the connecting rods. Only then did she turn back to the main camera and addressed it again, meanwhile rubbing the last half bearing with a blue paper rag and some brake cleaner.
"Use a lint-free rag and always make sure your bearing surfaces and bearings are super clean before you press them in. You can see..." She held out the blue paper rag at the camera, showing a gray-ish stain in the damp spot where she had sprayed the brake cleaner, "...how dirty these were, even though I got them right out of the box. So clean them up good first with some brake cleaner, then press them in, same way as the main bearings, and also make sure they're flush just like the main bearings." She pressed in the last bearing and took several long black silicone caps from a small flat plastic box, putting those on the ends of the four studs sticking out from the ends of the connecting rods before holding up the piston. "What I did there was putting some vacuum caps on the ends of the studs, so they won't scratch or scuff the surface of the crankshaft when I put the pistons in the bores. Also, pay close attention to how your pistons are supposed to go into the holes. The connecting rods have a beveled edge on one side and a straight edge on the other side, and the crank shaft has a beveled and a straight edge on each of the rod surfaces as well. That's to keep the con rods from binding up against the counterweights and seizing up your engine, so it's very important you get that right. And the shape of your piston also dictates how it should be placed; usually they have a small mark or an arrow stamped into them to show which way should be facing forwards, and with these here, they have a slight dome with a much larger indentation for the intake valve, so I know I need to have this part of the piston facing towards the top and to the right."
She turned to the engine on the stand and rotated it so one side had the cylinder bores facing straight upwards; then she took the smaller camera and leaned over the engine block to look down each bore.
"You want to make sure, when you drop in your pistons, that the crank is at the center and the bottom. What do I mean by that? Well, look there." She pointed at the part of the crankshaft that was visible through each bore. "See how here, it's all the way down and in the middle of the hole, and in this one it's over there, and in this one it's over there; you want to rotate the crankshaft so the part where the connecting rod sits on is in the middle and all the way down. So for each piston, you have to rotate the crankshaft a bit. Now, let's drop one of them in here."
The vanilla-hued mousette set the low black ring compressor tube onto the first cylinder bore, lowered the piston down into it connecting rod first and took the L-shaped hammer to slowly and gently tap it further and further down. Once the piston was seated in the bore, she removed the ring compressor and continued tapping down the piston while reaching into the engine block from below with her other paw.
"Take it nice and slow, and you can feel the connecting rod here so guide it to sit on the crankshaft correctly. Tap tap tappy tappy tap... thud thud thonk, hear how that sound changed? That's how you know the con rod is fully seated on the crank. What I usually do from here on is take off these vacuum caps here and put on the con rod end caps, and just snug them up finger-tight. I do the whole uneven bank first, then plastigauge all the rod bearings, check the clearance and torque them down, then I turn the engine over and do the even bank. Of course, when you're working on a Ford engine or something, it's just the left and right bank because they go..." She pointed at the four cylinder bores in quick succession, "...one two three four, and five six seven eight on the other side, whereas a GM block goes..." She pointed alternately to the left and the right, "...one two three four five six seven eight, like that. I'll just knock this out for now, and I'll be back with you in a second."
Swiftly yet meticulously, Missy tapped in the other three pistons of the bank on that side of the engine block, turned the block over, put on the connecting rod end caps with a sliver of plastigauge between them, torqued them down, took them back off, checked the clearance, nodded and torqued the end caps back on. Then she turned the engine block further and repeated all the processes for the cylinder bank on the other side, and eventually, she turned the engine block upside down again and double-checked the torque on each of the connecting rod end caps, marking them with a yellow dot from a paint marker one by one.
Finally, with the block sitting upside down, she rotated the crankshaft a couple of times and took the main camera from its tripod to look over the underside of the engine block.
"Right, there we go. All the pistons are in, all the con rod end caps are checked, torqued down to spec and double-checked, and as you can see I've marked them with a yellow dot. That signifies that I have in fact torqued them down and checked them, and you'll want to do something similar. Because I know myself all too well; I tend to forget stuff all the time. Like in this case; it's lunchtime now, and I'm hungry, so I'm stopping here and go have some lunch. And then when I come back to this motor, I'll look at those end caps and start wondering; gee, did I torque those down properly? And the dots say; yes, yes Missy, you did. So that saves me doing extra unnecessary work. Also, what you wanna do is every time you set a piston in the bore and put an end cap on the con rod, rotate your crankshaft back and forth a bit to make sure it still twirls nice and free and easy and nothing is bound up. This one..." She rotated the crank shaft a time or two, "...as you can see, rotates nice and free, so everything is hunky-dory here. Now I'm gonna let this sit right here, while I go and grab me a bite for lunch. When I'm back, we'll get right back on this motor and get to the timing gears. See you in a bit!"
One, two, three... editing point. Missy shut off the cameras and the lights, stretched for a moment and walked out of the clean-room. Up on the mezzanine, she took off her pastel yellow coveralls and draped them over the mezzanine railing, stretching again and running her paws down along her sides to smooth down her fine, sleek fur. Fully naked, she made herself a cup of tea, a cup of instant soup and a couple of cheese and salami sandwiches, lounging in one of the armchairs with her feet propped up on the low coffee table and petting Salmon who settled in her lap while she calmly ate her lunch.
She even took a nap like that, although the summer's tropic schedule was not yet in effect. But adhering to that schedule the first time shortly after immigrating into Minnaluna, the light yellow mousette had found how much it refreshed her to have a nap in the middle of the day, how it invigorated her, relaxed her and sharpened her mind, ready to take on the rest of her work in the second half of the day.
It had been quite a switch. Aside from the sub-tropical climate she'd had to get used to after having grown up in Wisconsin, that had been something she'd also had to very much get used to. She had grown up with the American way of life; being exhausted from working super long and hard every day was a virtue, what one did for a living and how well they did it was more important than what someone was like as a person, taking time off from work or even taking long breaks was shameful. But in this sub-tropical country of Minnaluna, both the climate and the culture, the social climate, were very different. Missy had learned to take a step back, to enjoy her life as well as her work, spend time on her own or with friends or loved ones, relaxing. She had learned to take things slow, to take her time - which was also helped a great deal by no longer being an employee of an enterprise with strict deadlines but being her own boss and setting her own deadlines. And the naps in the middle of the day, those had been both one of the biggest culture shocks, and one of the biggest improvements in her work days. Because goodness did they make a difference!
She had completed the work of putting all the pistons into the engine block before stopping for lunch to have that bit fully finished, so her lunchtime had only started about thirty-five minutes past noon. Taking her time to sit back and have lunch and a nap, it was two o'clock by the time she woke up. Stretching, yawning, smiling at the fluffy Maine Coon cat dozing in her lap, very gently setting Salmon down on the sofa while she went down off the mezzanine with her coveralls draped over an arm. A moment to splash some cool water into her face, dry up, and comb her hair out of her face and down behind her large ears with the fingers of both paws, another moment to put her coveralls back on.
In the clean-room, she reset the cameras and lights and switched them back on, smiling into the main camera.
"And we're back! It's now two in the afternoon, and let me tell you folks, I had a quite simple lunch but a very nice little nap. So I'm all fresh now to continue work on this here engine. So where did we leave off? Well, we basically completed the shortblock with rotating assembly... but not quite! For that, there's one thing still missing, and that's the timing parts. Now, we all know what a drag timing chains can be. They stretch, they sag, they get loose and sloppy, they can even jump one or more teeth on the gear, and then your whole engine tuning is out of whack. So we're going to eliminate all that!" She turned to the workbench and opened a flat box. "Here's the timing set I'll be putting into this motor. This is a PRW dual-gear drive timing set from Summit Racing, and as you can tell, it's kinda different from what you're used to. This and this is the same; big gear for on the cam, small gear for on the crank, but hey! No chain! Instead, there's this dogbone with two solid gears as well, and that will take the place of the chain; it sits in between these two regular gears. A thing to note; you can get these in noisy, or quiet. Meaning, the noisy ones are louder so you can actually hear them. Well what good is that? Who wants to hear their timing gears grinding? Well, some racers do, folks who build very specific vehicles for very specific applications, such as for instance a burnout rig, or a dragster. It can be an advantage in such builds if you can hear what your timing gears are doing. But we're just building a comfy cruiser here, so this is a quiet set. I don't need to hear these gears doing their work; matter of fact, I want this motor and this whole car to be as quiet as possible because frankly, with these..." she tapped the side of one of her large round ears with two fingers for a moment, "...satellite dishes on my head, I already pick up way too much noise as it is. So I went with a quiet timing set. Another couple of things to note; we'll need to be conscious of two specific clearances with this set. This one on the main idler here..." She turned the dogbone with the two connected gears over and tapped a spindle coming off the left gear. "That's this here, that will sit against the block, and this cam thrust button here..." She picked up a small round metal tube and set it in the hole of the largest loose gear, "which is this thing here, and that will sit against the timing cover. Let me go and put this all in place, and then I'll come back to you and talk about it some more. Because I haven't done enough talking in this video yet," she added with a cheery giggle.
In about ten minutes, Missy installed the timing gear set on the front of the engine block. All done, she sat on the rolling stool and held the main camera in her paw to zoom in on the gears while pointing and tapping at them with the fingers of her other paw to illustrate the information she was giving to the camera.
"So here we all, it's all on the block here. Remember to put some red Loctite on your camshaft bolts here, and you can also choose to add a locking plate on each one. I did that just for peace of mind, but it's really only a necessity for high performance engines aimed to go into a race car or something like that. Now, these gears here on the dogbone, this smaller one on the right here is the reverse idler, and this bigger one on the left is the main idler. And the small gear down on the crankshaft here. It's basically the same as with chain-driven timing sets; line up your marks, the dots on the gears here; six o'clock or straight down on the cam gear, twelve o'clock or straight up on the crank gear, so they're pointing right at each other. And then just slide this dogbone in between them." She moved to the side a little. "Now, you can see, these are pretty thick, beefy gears. And you can also see that while the cam gear and the crank gear are fully seated, these dogbone gears stick out a bit. So I will need to do a bit of clearancing, just swipe a little bit off the tip of that spindle I pointed out earlier with a flapper disc. When you have to do this, just make very quick, light swipes, one at a time, and put the dogbone back after each one to check if the gears are sitting flush. It's very easy to take off too much material; it's impossible to put it back on, so be mindful of that, folks!" She took out the dogbone and pointed at the other two gears. "When you drive these gears on, always use a straight-edge to make sure they're sitting back as far as possible and they're flush with each other. And when these dogbone gears stick out a bit, like you saw they do, you need to take a little bit off of this stand-off, this spindle here. The instructions actually tell you that it calls for five thousandths of an inch of clearance; that's basically touching, so I'll say it again; be very very careful when you start grinding this stand-off spindle so you don't take off too much material. Now, this is also the time, whether you use this setup or you're going with a timing chain setup, to degree your camshaft. I've built a good number of engines in my time, and I'll tell you this much, folks; I never degree my camshafts. Unless you're building a very specific engine for a very specific, high-performance application, it's not really necessary to degree your camshaft. Besides, when your engine already is, or still is, in your car, it's a major pain in the patootie to do it. And once again; this application here is just a calm and comfy cruiser, there's no real strain put on the motor, I'm already way overbuilding this motor for what its purpose will be as it will never see sustained high RPM for long times on end nor does it need to squeeze out every last horsepower it has to give, so I am not going to degree the camshaft."
A few moments were taken to step over to the workbench and do some grinding on the short spindle sticking out from the back of one of the dogbone gears. After several checks, Missy slid the dogbone into place and straight-edged it, found it to be as perfect as it needed to be, so she continued on with the rest. Before addressing the cameras again, she put the little thrust bearing on the camshaft, rubbed a little red grease on the surface, took the timing cover and its gasket and installed it, then took it back off to check it, turning to the main camera she had set back on its tripod.
"So, the other clearance you have to check is the camshaft thrust bearing assembly. As you can see, I dabbed a very thin layer of grease on here, and then all you need to do is take your timing cover, and the gasket, install them, remove them, and see if the grease left a witness mark." She took the timing cover and showed it to the camera. "You can see here, it did leave an ever so small witness mark. But again the instruction manual say five thousandths for clearance, and that very thin layer of grease already is pretty much five thousandths, so we're good here. I'm not gonna wipe it off either, because the grease will actually form a protective and sacrificial layer between this thrust bearing and the timing cover."
Another few moments were taken to install the timing cover with its gasket; the gasket getting a thin layer of gray RTV rubbed all over both sides to both help it stay in place and help it seal. The seal in the hole where the crankshaft went through also got a little dab of grease, and Missy took a brand new dampener and started winding it onto the crankshaft snout.
"Almost done here, we just have to put our dampener on here. How you do this is all up to you; you can lube the crank snout a bit, take a deadblow and a piece of wood and hammer it home, or even put this thing in the oven, about two-fifty degrees for about the time it takes you to drink a soda or two, and then, because the heat will have expanded it a bit, it'll just slide right on there. Or you can use a tool like this one here, and just wind it on like this. But whichever method you choose, as always; be careful and take your time. You don't wanna strip out your crank bolt, and you don't wanna cook the seal in the timing cover. Also make sure the keyways are nice and clear and smooth without any burrs on them. I just use this little MAP torch here, give it a little fwoosh, crank it on a few threads, give it another little fwoosh, crank it on a few threads more, so on and so forth until it's all the way seated. Hhnnnyeee-ahh, there we go, like this." She took the torque wrench from its plastic box and set it. "Last thing is to torque it to eighty-five foot-pounds. Now, the crank will want to spin, so what you can do, what I do, is just stick a couple of the flywheel bolts in place at the back of the block and wedge a piece of solid steel pipe between them and the bolts of the engine stand; that will prevent the crank from rotating so you can torque down this thing here. But as mentioned many times before; be careful, you don't wanna bend up any of the flywheel bolts." She checked the torque wrench. "Eighty-five, right, there we go. Beebeebeep. We're at eighty-five here, perfect."
Putting the torque wrench back in its box, Missy took a moment or two so she could remove the bolts at the back of the engine block again, and reset the cameras again. The main camera went back on its tripod, and she pointed it at the engine block, then stood next to the block and smiled at the camera.
"So now we actually have a fully assembled shortblock here, with the full rotating assembly in place. And I'll be honest with you folks; I have quite the feeling that I've been losing several of you throughout this video, both because of how long it already is by this point, and because of all the information and everything else I've been pouring into your earholes. So I'm actually going to split up this engine build into two or more separate videos. That way you won't sit here watching a three-hour video full of info and technical terms and blahblahblah, and I can take my time and make sure everything is done properly. I can tell you, folks; I can build an engine from scratch in a day no problem. But with all this filming, the constant stopping and starting, all the pointing out and explaining what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, and what you should keep in mind and look out for, it's taking so much longer. And we're in no hurry here, there's no deadline; I'm just building this car for myself, I'm making a video series of the build because I thought that would be nice and interesting, there's no customer waiting for the car, there's no show or event I need to be in time for, and I don't have to..." She sent the camera a playful smirk and made quotation marks with her fingers, "..."get this done in two weeks or I'll lose the garage". I have all the time in the world, so I will take my time, it's just a fun project for myself so it's important it will also stay fun. And at this exact moment right now? Heckity, I feel like taking a break and loaf around for a bit. I can always get back to this later. And when I do, next time you will see this here motor, I'll be putting it together more; the heads will go on, we'll talk about valve and rocker geometry, I'll be putting in the oil pump and pickup and put the oil pan on, I'll modify a valley pan to fit in here, and the intake will go on. And perhaps I'll do some more than that next time, perhaps I won't even get that far; who'll say? If you want to see how far I'll get next time, check out the next episode in the series! And for now, I'll end this episode here, so thank you so much for sticking with me, if you made it all the way to this point in the video; you rock and you're awesome! I'm so glad to have you all, and I hope I will see all of you again next time, in the next episode, right here at Mousie Motorworks! Tata now, see ya!"
One, two, three... ending point. Missy shut off the cameras and the lights, took all the cameras into the office and set them to transfer all their files to the external hard drives of her editing laptop. She also went through the clean-room and cleaned up, putting away the tools she had been using, disposing of the empty packaging and putting a cover over the engine block. The rain was picking back up outside, so she also put the inside shutters over the extraction fans to make sure no water was accidentally blown into the clean-room.
In the office, she checked for messages again, and planned in two customer appointments. Being behind the computer, the vanilla-colored mousette also took some time to just browse the internet, put in a couple of orders and check for anything interesting.
All in all, while short, it had been a good day! She had made a very good start on the engine build, and the hardest work on it was now done. It was ready to get finished, and despite the rain having returned, it also looked like the weather for the coming week was improving. Positive news all around!
