Well it's a been while since I got the motor home. I've been getting parts again and doing little things. Yesterday I threw off the gloves and took the monster on. I trimmed, fitted, and siliconed the crank scraper down. I found that the bolt heads on the Hilborn pump drive bolts were too big and were hitting inside the Moon pump mounting cover. I had to go on a hunt to find proper bolts but ended up getting some button head bolts, and grinding down the circumefrence enough to get the bolt head to fit in the pump drive slots. All good now. Installed the front cover and pressed on the front ATI balancer. The Moon cover with the added thickness of the pump drive cover, is just too thick to allow the balancer to bottom out on the bottom timing chain gear. ATI sells crankshaft shims/spacers so I'll be calling them tomorrow. Since all my pulleys will be custom installed I don't care where the bottom pulley ends up. I bought a Precision Pumps blueprinted 80 lb pump too. So that went on with the pickup for my oil pan. Last night I shot a coat of paint of the engine and the oil pan. But when I tried to install the pan, it's hitting on something inside preventing it from dropping down in place. I'll have to figure that out. Previously I had painted the Moon cover leaving the machined tops of ribs polished, and I painted between the ribs on the blower scoop too. I have not had time to do a good cleaning of the ribbed valve covers but they will get painted between the ribs eventually too. So I mocked up the painted motor to take some preliminary pics.
Got much to do yet. Once I get the oil pan figured out and installed I will place the motor up on the steel table and start all the mods to get a starter bolted on. I was doing a lot of stuff while I still had the '59 block I had found. But I really needed the actual block that I was using so I could finalize every mod as I went along. Now I can do that and "I have a plan", heh. So far so good.
Mark L