The engine was all apart, scattered between 6 plastic bins of various sizes.
The first step in my Aerovee assembly manual was to thouroghly clean the mating surfaces of the case halves, and file away any flaws from the manufacturing process. I used Laquer thinner, gloves, and a paper towel to clean away all the old sealant. And shook the shavings out.
Once it was stripped to bare metal, I moved on to the next step: I used engine assembly lube to goop up the various moving pieces inside the case, and the cam bearings. Then I test fit the cam just to be sure it turns smoothly and identify any problems before the case halves are sealed. Aside from getting molly lube on my hands from touching the cam without gloves on, it all went splendidly. The next step was to prepare the crankshaft's bearings, I cleaned, lubed, and fitted them.
Now begins the fun part. Most of the bearings on the crankshaft go all the way around, and they can only do their job if they don't move relative to the case. To keep them from free spinning in the case, they have a indentation on the bearing, and a little peg (or dowel pin) that fits inside the indent. this means that when placing the crankshaft into the case, I needed to align the bearings so that the indents were lined up with the dowel pins. Big problem, you cant see the hole when it is straight down, so I was kinda working blind wiggling it trying to get it to pop into the indent. to solve this we used a pen to mark the bearing 180 degrees from the indent, now I just had to spin the bearing so that my mark was straight up, jiggle it a bit, and it popped right into place. Repeat a few more times and badabing badaboom crankshaft is in.
The big moment, joining the case halves! I opened my can of case sealant and painted on a thin layer, like painting an O ring into the case half. Up until this point I'd been only working on the right case half, it had all the studs in it. now it came time to carefully lower the left case half onto the right one. I lifted it up and slowly set it down the studs just barely poked through and I began the complex pattern of installing a few nuts torqueing them, and moving onto the next one, then torqueing them all down even more. after 10 or so minutes everything was tightened to full torque.
The next operation will be to install the cylinders.
(sorry about no pictures! It completely slipped my mind)
The big moment, joining the case halves! I opened my can of case sealant and painted on a thin layer, like painting an O ring into the case half. Up until this point I'd been only working on the right case half, it had all the studs in it. now it came time to carefully lower the left case half onto the right one. I lifted it up and slowly set it down the studs just barely poked through and I began the complex pattern of installing a few nuts torqueing them, and moving onto the next one, then torqueing them all down even more. after 10 or so minutes everything was tightened to full torque.
The next operation will be to install the cylinders.
(sorry about no pictures! It completely slipped my mind)