The project is waiting, waiting....since the damn block is still at the machinists. It was due to be picked up last Monday, then Wednesday, followed by Friday, and your guess is better than mine on the next pickup date. I first took it to the shop in September!

The machine shop is a total filthy mess. The owner and I had to take the block out of the shop 8 or 9 days ago to transport it to a facility that had a milling machine to take the deck down. To get it out other blocks, cranks heads needed to be moved to make a path to get through. At one point I turned around and knocked a crank over which had been standing upright on the floor. Obviously the man cannot organize either his workspace or time satisfactorily. All payment has been made in full, so there is no hangup due to money owed.

When this does finally get home, I will shoot pictures periodically and post. I am going to check everthing I can with the tools available. Luckily I have a triple beam gram scale and can measure balance weights of rods and pistons.
The piston to deck clearance may be a crap shoot. My spec was .007. The milling machine used consists of a large wheel, maybe 3 feet in diameter with many cutting stones. It is zeroed to the existing deck surface after everything has been aligned, leveled, etc. As it was cutting, you could hear that only one side, 180 degrees, of the wheel was cutting, the other side would be silent as it rotated around into cutting position. The reason being that the wheel wobbled which I could see visibly, one side dipping lower than the other a small amount. My thinking is that the final deck height will be dependent upon which side of the wheel the deck was zeroed at before cutting. So, either I am a Nati Naysayer (isnt that something Spiro Agnew said), or the deck height could be .007 in the hole plus or minus .007, meaning a significantly more or less compression than planned.

Yesterday I took out my frustrations on a poor Mitsubishi pickup my neighbor sold for $50. Decided just to rip out all the aluminum and copper for salvage and have the crusher people pickup the remains. Saved the aluminum radiator to see if it can be made to work in the 46.

Mike

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46 1/2 ton with 56 292:thumbsup: