Practical Engine Building: Step 7: Short Block Assembly
Watch This Course
$199 USD $99.50 USD
-OR-
Or
8 easy payments of only $12.44
Instant access. Easy checkout. No fees.
Step 7: Short Block Assembly
45.00
| 00:00 | The next step of our process is to begin assembling the short block of the engine. |
| 00:04 | And we've actually picked up on a problem while I was preparing for filming of this particular step. |
| 00:11 | And I think this is really good to actually highlight as to why we always need to verify everything that we get back from our engine machinist. |
| 00:19 | So, what I'm talking about here is a problem with our piston to cylinder wall clearance. |
| 00:24 | It's significantly less than what we need it to be. |
| 00:27 | And if I'd just blindly assembled this engine trusting that the machinist had in fact delivered us what we'd asked for, we'd have ended up with a significant and severe failure with the pistons seizing in the bore. |
| 00:40 | So, again just highlights the importance of double checking everything. |
| 00:44 | So, we're obviously going to be held up on this, because the only way to rectify this issue is to send the block back to our machinist and have them bore and hone, or at least hone the clearance to what it actually needs to be. |
| 00:56 | Let's look at how we can identify this particular problem though and that is of course by using our micrometer and our dial bore gauge. |
| 01:03 | It starts with measuring the skirt of the piston using our micrometer. |
| 01:07 | It is really important though to make sure we're measuring the skirt in the correct place, which is called the gauge point. |
| 01:13 | The skirt design of every piston is essentially somewhat barrel shaped, it's not actually parallel as you'd expect. |
| 01:19 | And the idea behind this barrel shape is so that when the crown of the piston, which is exposed to more heat during operation starts to expand, at that point we end up with the skirt essentially being parallel then. |
| 01:32 | So, at room temperature, this barrel shape exists. |
| 01:35 | The gauge point for our Wiseco pistons is listed as 1.3 inches from the bottom of the oil ring groove or the bottom of the skirt, in this case both actually happen to coincide, so it's the same point. |
| 01:47 | So, that's where we're going to be making our measurement. |
| 01:49 | So, we'll just get our piston on our workbench here and we'll get our micrometer, locate that on our gauge point, making sure that we have in fact got it on the widest part there. |
| 02:01 | And we'll use our little thimble to lock that up. |
| 02:03 | And we've got our measurement now on our micrometer. |
| 02:07 | The next step is to take our dial bore gauge and we're going to just install this between the anvils of our micrometer. |
| 02:16 | And we're just going to rock that backwards and forwards and I've already actually adjusted this one so we can see that the little needle is just nicely hitting the zero point. |
| 02:30 | Let's just get that back central again, this can be a little bit fussy to do. |
| 02:33 | There we go, right on our zero point, we're just going marginally past this. |
| 02:39 | I'll just make a small adjustment to that. |
| 02:42 | And we'll just check our zero point again. |
| 02:53 | Ok, so we're bang on our zero point there. |
| 02:57 | Now, what we're going to do is insert our dial bore gauge, at the moment that was our number one piston so of course we're going to be checking number one bore. |
| 03:06 | We'll get that in and this allows us to do a couple of things. |
| 03:10 | We can obviously check our piston to cylinder wall clearance because remember our dial bore gauge has been zeroed essentially on the gauge point, skirt diameter of our piston. |
| 03:19 | So, anything above this is the clearance between our skirt and our cylinder wall. |
| 03:24 | We can also check in multiple positions, both down the bore as well as in two directions perpendicular to each other and this will allow us to check the taper or belling in the bore as well as any out of round. |
| 03:36 | I will also be clear that obviously at the moment we're not doing this with our torque plate installed, so that will affect aspects particularly like any out of round, because that is why we torque plate hone a block in the first place. |
| 03:50 | And it can have a minor effect on the measurement that I'm about to take our piston to cylinder wall, but not enough to affect our outcome. |
| 03:57 | Anyway now we know what we're doing, let's have a look here and you can see that we're coming through .04 millimetres or four hundredths of a millimetre. |
| 04:08 | Just to make things a little bit more complicated, essentially we've been working here in imperial units throughout our build and the bore gauge that I am using there is a metric one, so what we need to do there is convert between metric and imperial, which is easy enough to do. |
| 04:26 | So, what we'll do is just get our calculator out here and if we enter .04, four hundredths of a millimetre and we divide that, not multiply it, divide it by 25.4, you can see we've got about 1.6 thousandths of an inch so around about half of what I'd actually be happy running this engine at. |
| 04:46 | Now, there's nothing we can do in our workshop here to rectify this so it's going to be a case of packing our block and our pistons up, sending them back to our machinist and we'll revisit this step once we've got all of those components back. |
| 04:58 | Alright, we've got our engine block back from the machinist for the second time around and we've had the machinist address that lack of piston to cylinder wall clearance and of course we are going to go through and recheck that. |
| 05:10 | Worth noting here that because I've sent the engine block back to our machinist and received it back, I have gone through the process of cleaning the block again, we never want to be taking chances on that, of course it's just exactly the same process that you've already seen so I'm not going to repeat that. |
| 05:25 | So, we've got our bore gauge here already set up to our piston skirt width and what we can do is just start on our number one bore here and we'll get it down a little bit from the top of the bore and just rock that back through and see what we've got here. |
| 05:41 | And we're settling on .08 of a millimetre there. |
| 05:47 | Now, .08 of a millimetre, if we divide that by 25.4, given that we are working here in metric and our bore piston to cylinder wall clearance of course is in thousandths of an inch, it gives us just a touch over three thousandths of an inch, 3.1 thou if we want to be very very precise. |
| 06:04 | So, that's bang on where we want it to be, our spec there is three thousandths of an inch. |
| 06:08 | Given it's a race motor I wouldn't mind running it a little bit looser than that spec anyway, but three, 3.1 thou, we're right on the mark. |
| 06:15 | So, what I want to do as well while I'm doing this process is we'll check the bore from top to bottom, make sure that we don't have any taper or any belling in the bore and we also want to check in two areas perpendicular to each other just to make sure that we don't have any out of round. |
| 06:31 | Worth noting here that this really is only relevant if we haven't had the block torque plate honed. |
| 06:38 | If we had the block torque plate honed, that process is done purely to make sure that when the cylinder head is bolted down, that any distortion results in the bores actually being true and round under those conditions and of course that can result in them measuring slightly out of round here. |
| 06:54 | I'll show you the process anyway to do this properly, we of course should be checking with our torque plate installed. |
| 07:00 | So, let's continue. |
| 07:04 | So, I'm going to check here essentially in three positions, sort of the top, the middle and the bottom of the bore, everything's looking really nice there, nice and consistent measurements and then I'll just turn the bore gauge around 90° and we'll just check again. |
| 07:21 | And again we've got a little bit of out of round, but that as I've mentioned is to be expected. |
| 07:26 | So, our number one bore there is now measuring up on size, we know we've got our piston to cylinder wall clearance where we need it to be. |
| 07:33 | We'll go through of course and measure the remaining cylinders and just make sure that those are also ok. |
| 07:52 | Alright, so second time lucky as it turns out, all of our bores are measuring up where we need them to be so we're confident that everything's good in that respect. |
| 08:00 | You'll recall that prior to sending the block away for machining we'd already checked our main bearing clearances and our connecting rod big end bearing clearances, so we don't need to check that. |
| 08:10 | I did have a little concern around the thrust clearance, I wanted a little bit more thrust clearance, which is one of the tasks I did give to my machinist. |
| 08:18 | However, we're going to check that once we've actually got the crankshaft installed in the block. |
| 08:22 | For now we'll rearrange our workbench a little bit so we can start file fitting our piston rings. |
| 08:27 | Now, that we've got our workbench rearranged, we can go ahead and begin gapping our piston rings. |
| 08:32 | Obviously, we always want to start by taking note of the manufacturer's recommendations and we've got those printed out here. |
| 08:40 | We can see that for a road race application it's recommended that the top ring should have four and a half thousandths of an inch per inch of bore and the second ring slightly more at 4.8 thousandths of an inch clearance per inch of bore. |
| 08:56 | Before we get into the top and second compression rings, we'll start with our oil control ring rails though. |
| 09:03 | These are a lot less critical and again there's a recommendation for a minimum of 15 thousandths of an inch and as much as 50 thousandths of an inch. |
| 09:12 | And the oil ring rail of course is not there for the purposes of controlling compression, so that's why it's a little bit more flexible. |
| 09:20 | So, what we'll do is we'll start by getting one of our oil ring rails here for our number one cylinder and we'll just get that located into the top of the bore. |
| 09:30 | And we're just going to use our ring squaring tool here and get that compressed down and gently slide that down until it contacts the top of the bore. |
| 09:39 | That just makes sure that our ring is nice and squared away, so that the measurements that we're going to take are relevant. |
| 09:46 | So, I've got my 15 thousandths of an inch feeler blade here and we can easily slide that in between the end gap of the ring there. |
| 09:54 | So, we know that our oil control ring rails are OK. |
| 09:57 | Of course, we'd always recommend that we go through this process and measure all of those, but for the purposes of our demonstration, we know we're good with our oil control rings so we can move on. |
| 10:08 | And what we'll do is start by getting our top ring installed in all four bores and squared away and we do want to make sure of course that we are in fact getting our top ring. |
| 10:19 | Also note that there will be a mark on the top of the ring. |
| 10:22 | This becomes more relevant when we're installing them onto the pistons and that mark always wants to face up. |
| 10:29 | So, we'll get our number one ring located here in the bore and we'll go ahead and do this for our remaining rings as well. |
| 10:41 | Alright, we've got all four rings just lightly installed there and we'll go ahead and again use our ring squaring tool and square them up in each of those bores. |
| 10:56 | Now, that we've got the rings installed, we need to know what our target ring end gap is. |
| 11:01 | Now, remembering four and a half thousandths of an inch per inch of bore. |
| 11:05 | So, let's grab our calculator here and what we'll do is enter 0.0045 and then we'll multiply this by the bore diameter, which is 3.366 inches and we're looking at a ring end gap there for our top ring of 15 thousandths of an inch. |
| 11:23 | Now, we've still got our 15 thou feeler blade ready so let's just see if we can get that 15 thou feeler blade in there and we can't. |
| 11:32 | Which is always refreshing because obviously we ideally want to be able to add clearance to get to exactly what we want it to be. |
| 11:40 | So, it's pretty close though, that just about slid in there so we're not too far off. |
| 11:46 | So, what I'll do here is drop that down to let's say 12 thousandths of an inch and we'll try again and see how close we are at 12 thou. |
| 11:57 | Ok, so our 12 thou feeler blade does slide into the ring end gap with just a tiny amount of tension. |
| 12:03 | So, we know that that's exactly where we are at the moment. |
| 12:06 | What we'll do is now take our ring out and we can get it installed on our ring file. |
| 12:11 | Now, with this particular file it does include a positive stop for the ring and once we've got our little adjustable stop here set up, this is going to make sure that we are filing our ring ends parallel to each other, so we're not going to end up with any taper there. |
| 12:27 | Now, that we've got the ring installed we can move our positive stop back and we'll just get this set up against our grinding wheel. |
| 12:35 | So, it's just contacting, obviously we want to take off here to get to 15 thou, we're going to take 3 thou off, but it's always a good idea to take off a little bit less than you need and work towards your target, basically measuring multiple times and working slowly towards your target clearance. |
| 12:52 | Alright, so we'll get our ring file turned on and we'll just gradually move our file in and we'll try taking off about 1.5 thou here. |
| 13:07 | So, we'll just check our progress here and see how close we've got. |
| 13:13 | Again any time we are refitting the rings here to check our end gap, we always need to square them up again. |
| 13:23 | So, we'll start with our 12 thou feeler blade, which at this point now should be quite loose, which it is. |
| 13:29 | So, we can step that up and we'll try our 14 thou feeler blade. |
| 13:35 | Our 14 thou feeler blade is actually, I've just got a little bit of friction there so we might actually have got that in one go, which is actually not the desired result. |
| 13:43 | As I say we'd like to creep up on it a little bit slower. |
| 13:46 | So, we know that our 15 thou feeler blade is a little bit too tight, there's a lot of tension, it will fit through the end gap , but it's definitely requiring a lot more force than it should. |
| 13:58 | So, we still need to probably take a quarter of a thou to maybe half a thou off that. |
| 14:01 | So, basically we'll just go through that process again. |
| 14:05 | Obviously, when we are this close we only want to just merely touch against the grinding wheel. |
| 14:18 | Ok, so our 15 thou feeler blade's now moving quite nicely through that end gap. |
| 14:23 | Just the tiniest bit of friction, so we know that our first top ring is gapped correctly. |
| 14:28 | We'll now go ahead and repeat this process with the remaining three. |
| 14:58 | Ok, at this point we've got all of our top rings gapped correctly to our target of 15 thousandths of an inch. |
| 15:05 | We'll come back to our reference here, remembering that the second ring requirements are 0.0048 or 4.8 thousandths of an inch per inch of bore. |
| 15:15 | So, again we'll get out into our calculator, multiply that by 3.366, the bore diameter, and now we know that we're targeting 16 thousandths of an inch. |
| 15:25 | A little bit less critical than the top ring, but essentially I'd like to see somewhere around about at least one to two thousandths more ring end gap on our second ring compared to our top ring. |
| 15:38 | So, we've got all of our second rings already installed and we'll start with our 15 thou feeler blade and see where we come up here. |
| 15:46 | Now, I can visually see that these are already a little bit looser than our 15 thou, probably going to end up a little bit looser than our 16 thou target as well. |
| 15:55 | But let's step up to 16 thou and see how we get on there. |
| 16:03 | And yeah, all four of them are slightly beyond our 16 thou target already. |
| 16:09 | Now, this becomes a bit of a case of making a decision as to how loose we're comfortable with. |
| 16:14 | Otherwise we might have to look at a different ring set. |
| 16:18 | So, in this case, let's just try our 17 thou feeler blade. |
| 16:22 | So, obviously one thou looser than what we were actually targeting. |
| 16:29 | So, we're a little bit looser than our target by one thousandth of an inch, but of course we can't gap this particular ring set any tighter so it comes down to again, whether we're comfortable with that. |
| 16:40 | In this case I'm absolutely fine with one thousandth of an inch additional clearance. |
| 16:44 | It's really not going to be a deal breaker for our engine. |
| 16:47 | So, in this case it makes our life a little bit easier. |
| 16:50 | There's no work to do with our second ring. |
| 16:52 | The last job before we finish up on our rings though, we do want to deburr the rings where we've filed them. |
| 16:59 | Because we've only removed a minor amount of material and also the particular material this ring is made out of, not really too much of a concern here. |
| 17:07 | You can normally feel if there's a burr just by running your fingers across it. |
| 17:11 | All we want to do in order to break down that burr is use a fine needle file. |
| 17:16 | So, we'll just do this under our overhead here, we're just going to run that file across the part of the ring that we've actually filed in our ring file. |
| 17:26 | Just making again sure that that's nice and smooth. |
| 17:29 | So, at this point we've completed filing our rings, we'll rearrange our workbench a little bit and we can start assembling our connecting rods onto our pistons. |
| 17:37 | Ok, we've got all of our components laid out and we can go ahead and start assembling our pistons onto our connecting rods. |
| 17:44 | Our first step with this is we're going to take our number one piston, we'll get it on the table in front of us and as we've shown in the practical skills section of the course, we're just going to use a little bulldog clip here and we're going to insert that into the wire lock groove and that will allow us to then install the wrist pin. |
| 18:06 | And why we're doing this is that this allows us to then install the wire lock on the opposite side. |
| 18:11 | Now, this can be a little bit fiddly. |
| 18:13 | Let's just get our piston standing on its side like this and we'll take one of our wire locks. |
| 18:19 | Now, the key that we need to keep in mind here while we're doing this is to make sure that we don't end up with the ends of our wire lock essentially right beside the little pocket that's cut out. |
| 18:29 | That's there to make it easy for us to get a pick or a jeweller's screwdriver in there and pry the wire lock out during a freshen up. |
| 18:36 | So, we want to make sure that the wire lock actually covers across that little gap. |
| 18:40 | So, what I'm going to do is start by getting my wire lock installed so it will do exactly that and then just using pressure from my thumb here, we can get that installed into the groove at least started. |
| 18:52 | And now what I'm going to do is just take my little flat blade screwdriver here and we're just going to press down on that wire lock. |
| 18:59 | And we'll hear that nicely click into place. |
| 19:03 | And then from there I'm going to repeat that for our remaining three pistons. |
| 19:24 | Now, that we've got the first wire lock installed we can go ahead and apply some engine assembly lube into the wrist pin boss, as well as the small end of the connecting rod and then we can assemble our rods onto our piston. |
| 19:36 | So, we'll demonstrate one of these in its entirety and then we'll go ahead and complete that job with the remaining three. |
| 19:42 | So, let's take our number one piston for a moment and we'll just temporarily remove that wrist pin again. |
| 19:48 | Now, for lubricating the wrist pin and the small end of the connecting rod, I do prefer to use a engine assembly lubricant. |
| 19:56 | This provides a little bit more protection during the initial startup with the forces involved or being applied to the wrist pin as opposed to just clean fresh engine oil. |
| 20:06 | So, we'll go ahead and apply a small amount of that into the wrist pin boss. |
| 20:16 | And at the same time we're also of course going to apply that to the small end bush in our connecting rod. |
| 20:25 | Now, that we've got all of that done, we'll make sure that the orientation of our connecting rod is correct and we can assemble our wrist pin through the piston and also the connecting rod. |
| 20:37 | Once we've done this, it's just a case of repeating the process of installing our second wire lock. |
| 20:44 | So, we'll take our wire lock here, and again being careful of the location of the little cut out there, we're just going to insert our wire lock and again we're just sort of using our pressure from our thumb to basically work it down using the piston to help compress that wire lock. |
| 21:04 | So, if you're doing this right, it can be a little bit fiddly to start with, but if you're doing this right, it should be relatively straightforward to do and all I'm using again is the end of my flat blade jeweler's screwdriver here just to press down on the wire lock. |
| 21:17 | If you press on the wire lock, there's no chance of us actually scratching or damaging the piston itself. |
| 21:24 | And we should hear that nice satisfying click, that's when we know that our wire lock is correctly installed. |
| 21:30 | Always a good idea to have a visual inspection of both wire locks as well, just once we've actually completed that task and make sure that they are both correctly sitting in the grooves and that way they're not going to end up backing out and causing a problem once we've actually got the engine up and running. |
| 21:47 | In this case, nice and comfortable that our first piston and rod are assembled. |
| 21:51 | Get that onto our rack and we'll now continue with the remaining three pistons. |
| 22:19 | Now, that we've got our pistons and rods assembled, we can go ahead and start fitting our piston ring, so we'll just readjust our workbench and we'll take our number one piston for a start. |
| 22:30 | And just to demonstrate this a little bit easier, what I'm going to do is just remove the cap off our connecting rod here and this will just allow me to sit the piston and connecting rod upright on our workbench, just makes it a little bit easier to visualise exactly what's going to be going on here. |
| 22:46 | We also need to understand what we're actually looking for here in terms of where our ring end gaps are going to be located and we've got our little ring orientation diagram here and we're simply going to be following that as we go ahead and fit these rings. |
| 23:01 | Another point I'll make here is that before we do fit the rings, it's always a good idea to wipe them down with brake clean and a clean rag, usually these rings will be coated in some sort of oil protectant film, so that they don't corrode and we want to make sure that we've removed that before we start installing them onto our piston. |
| 23:19 | So, what we'll do is we'll take our ring pack for our number one piston and what we want to do is start with our oil ring expander. |
| 23:29 | So, we're going to take note of where that's going to go, which is somewhere on the right hand side of this piston here. |
| 23:37 | And we'll just gently expand that by hand, no need to use a ring expander tool for our oil ring expander and we'll get the ring end gap or the expander gap where we want it, which is on this right hand side of the piston facing forwards. |
| 23:53 | Now, what we're going to do is install our oil ring rails and again we'll reference the diagram here, so our top rail is going to be orientated here and our bottom rail is going to be orientated over here. |
| 24:07 | So, what I'll do is I'll actually start with the top ring rail here, oil ring rail, and we'll just get that located gently into place and then basically just spiral that onto the piston, making sure that we do have the orientation correct. |
| 24:20 | So, that's our first rail installed. |
| 24:23 | Take our second rail and we're going to repeat that process. |
| 24:27 | I'll just rotate the piston so I can actually see where everything's going. |
| 24:30 | And we'll get that installed into location and again it just spirals onto the piston, nice and easy. |
| 24:38 | Alright, so now our oil ring is installed. |
| 24:41 | Always a good idea to just double check and make sure that we don't have that expander budding together or overlapping. |
| 24:48 | In our case everything's looking good there. |
| 24:50 | We'll start now with our second ring and again as I mentioned, we always want to make sure that the marking on the top of the ring is facing up, or the marking is on the top of the ring facing up, that gets our ring orientation correct. |
| 25:03 | Now, what I'm going to do is just use our ring expander tool. |
| 25:08 | We obviously want to expand this to get it onto the piston, but we want to expand it just the bare minimum, we don't want to excessively stretch or stress that ring. |
| 25:17 | We'll just get that into our groove here. |
| 25:21 | Making sure that it's nice and free. |
| 25:23 | And again referencing our diagram, we want the ring end gap for our second compression ring over here on the left hand side of the piston, so we've done that. |
| 25:33 | We'll repeat that process now with our top compression ring and again I'll use my expander tool, the top compression ring end gap is going to be essentially 180° opposed to the one that we've just installed. |
| 25:53 | And there we go, we've got our number one piston ring pack installed, we can get that back on our rack and of course we're going to go ahead now and repeat that process for our remaining three pistons. |
| 26:28 | Alright, so at this point we've got all of our rings installed and we can now rearrange our studio again, get our engine block back in and we can start assembling the crankshaft into the block. |
| 26:39 | Now, we can begin assembling our components into the engine block and we always want to start here with our under piston oil squirters. |
| 26:45 | Very easy to forget about these and it's going to make it very difficult to install them if you try and do this once the crankshaft and the lower half of the block have been fitted. |
| 26:54 | Of course, we also want to start by making sure that these have been thoroughly cleaned. |
| 26:58 | I'll just get these installed and threaded in by hand, making sure that the locating dowel is correctly located in the block. |
| 27:06 | So, let's get all of those installed now. |
| 27:13 | Now, that we've got our oil piston squirters installed, we can torque these to spec. |
| 27:18 | And we don't have to guess here, we can use the workshop manual and we'll find that the required torque for these is 12 foot pound. |
| 27:25 | So, let's go ahead and get these torqued to spec now. |
| 27:31 | Alright, so we've got our under piston oil squirters installed, we can now go ahead and install the upper half of our bearing shelves for our main bearings. |
| 27:39 | Always a good idea, despite the fact that we have cleaned this block down thoroughly, that we start by cleaning down the journal surfaces with a clean rag and some brake oil and we're going to do exactly the same for each of the bearing shelves as we go ahead and install them. |
| 27:56 | Now, it is quite easy to make sure that you've got the bearing shelves around the right way, but of course the upper shelves do have these oiling holes , which align with the oiling groove in the block. |
| 28:07 | So, if you do happen to get these around the wrong way and you place the lower shelves in the upper half, you'll have absolutely no oil flow to the crankshaft, which is obviously going to destroy everything very very quickly. |
| 28:17 | Alright, so we've got our first shell cleaned down here, we'll just put this in the number one location here. |
| 28:23 | And the technique is just to align the tang with the cutout in the block and then I'm just going to apply some light pressure forward with my thumbs and push the shell into place and that's going to ensure that we don't end up scraping the backing off the shell, leaving debris on the block sharp edge there. |
| 28:39 | Let's go ahead and we'll fit the remaining shelves. |
| 28:49 | Ok, we've got all of our upper shelves fitted to the block, what we want to do now is apply some lubricant to these before we drop the crankshaft in. |
| 28:56 | Now, while we can use engine assembly lubricant, I do prefer, as discussed in the main body of the course, just to use clean mineral based engine oil here. |
| 29:04 | Gives you a better sense of feel as you're rotating the crankshaft in the block compared to the more viscous nature of an engine assembly lubricant. |
| 29:13 | So, what we're going to do here is just apply a generous amount of oil to these bearing shelves and once we've done that, we'll just smear that around with our finger to make sure that all of the surfaces are correctly coated. |
| 29:28 | Now, that our bearing shelves are completely lubricated, we can gently drop the crankshaft into location. |
| 29:37 | So, we've got our crankshaft in location, at this point of course we haven't installed our two thrust washers. |
| 29:43 | And it's easiest to install these once the crankshaft's in location. |
| 29:46 | And what we're going to do is clean them down for a start, then apply in this case some engine assembly lubricant and then we're going to just rotate those into position. |
| 29:56 | So, let's get them cleaned down for a start. |
| 30:03 | And what we're going to do with our engine assembly lubricant is make sure that we've highlighted the side of the thrust washer that's going to face the crankshaft and we can see there's two grooves machined into the thrust washer. |
| 30:15 | And we're going to apply our engine assembly lubricant to that surface. |
| 30:19 | And again it's always a good idea just to make sure that the surface is entirely coated. |
| 30:25 | And then we can move the crankshaft forward or back in the block just to allow a little bit more space. |
| 30:32 | Very, very, important that you make sure that as you install these you've got the correct side facing the crankshaft, obviously the side that we've just applied our assembly lubricant to. |
| 30:41 | We'll just get that onto the crankshaft and that should just nice and easily slide around into place. |
| 30:47 | At this point we've done the forward side of the thrust washer and what I want to do now is just move that crankshaft towards the back of the block, that's going to open up some space for the rear thrust washer to slide in. |
| 30:58 | So again, just clean that down, apply some assembly lubricant and repeat that process. |
| 31:10 | Alright, with our thrust washers installed we can now go ahead and install the lower half of the block or the cradle. |
| 31:16 | I've already installed the bearing shells into the cradle, it's exactly the same process as you've already seen, but because with any luck this will be our final assembly, we do need to apply some sealant to the outside perimeter, make sure that everything's going to be oil tight once it's all installed and set up. |
| 31:34 | For the purposes here I am going to be using 3 Bond , which is an OE style silicon sealant. |
| 31:40 | And again you'll find in the workshop manual the recommendation on where you need to apply this sealant. |
| 31:47 | So, again no need to guess here, we can actually create some problems if we apply too much sealant or we apply it in the wrong place so we always want to follow the diagram in the workshop manual so let's go ahead and get that done. |
| 32:07 | Ok, we've got our 3 Bond applied, now one last step here is to apply some lubricant to our bearing shells just like we did for the upper shells and we'll smear that around again with our finger to make sure that the entirety of those shells is covered with lubricant. |
| 32:27 | And now we can take our cradle, flip it over and install it. |
| 32:36 | As you can see there I've just used the end of a wooden hammer just to tap that down into location before we go ahead and start installing our bolts. |
| 32:44 | Which is our next step. |
| 32:47 | And here we are using the factory bolts and we need to apply some lubricant to the threads as well as the under head of the washer. |
| 32:55 | Here I'm just using clean engine oil. |
| 32:57 | But we'll go ahead and get all of these installed just finger tight at this stage. |
| 33:15 | Alright, with everything finger tight now we can go ahead and torque them down to a Honda specification, which for our main bolts is 22 foot pound followed by 56 degrees of torque plus angle. |
| 33:27 | And we'll start by grabbing our torque wrench here and we'll get this set of course to our initial torque of 22 foot pound. |
| 33:37 | And we can go ahead and torque them down. |
| 33:39 | We also do need to be mindful of the recommended torque sequence, which is again in the workshop manual, but essentially just like with the cylinder head, we're starting in the middle and we're working out diagonally to help prevent any distortion. |
| 33:52 | So, let's get everything torqued into place. |
| 34:10 | Now, we've gone through and torqued everything to our first stage of 22 foot pound, we can change our torque wrench over to torque angle. |
| 34:17 | I've set that to 56 degrees and we're going to go through and do our final stage. |
| 34:39 | Alright, all of our main bolts have now been torqued to spec. |
| 34:43 | We also need to install the outer bolts around the perimeter of that cradle and get those torqued down before the three bond sets up, so we'll go and get those installed now. |
| 35:06 | At this point we've got all of the outer bolts just lightly installed into the correct holes and we do need to be mindful that there are different lengths here. |
| 35:14 | The centre on both sides require a longer bolt, so we want to make sure that we've got the correct bolt in the correct location. |
| 35:20 | I'm now going to go ahead and just tighten these down finger tight before torquing them to their specification of 16 foot pound. |
| 35:46 | We've got one last task to complete as part of our crankshaft installation , which is to recheck our thrust clearance and you'll remember that originally when we checked this before we shipped our parts off for machining, we were measuring 5 thou, which was within the recommended clearance range of 4 thou through to 14 thou, but is a little bit tighter than what I'd like to see for competition use. |
| 36:08 | So, we've had our machinist open this up a little bit and we've already got our dial gauge reinstalled on the snout of the crankshaft and what we'll do is just move this backwards and forwards through its travel and we see at the moment we're measuring around about 8 thou to 9 thou. |
| 36:25 | So, again nicely within our clearance range and definitely more in line with the sort of clearance that I'd like to see. |
| 36:32 | Our next task in this step is to install our pistons and connecting rods and to help with that process I'm going to be using an ARP tapered ring compressor. |
| 36:41 | I find that these are just a little bit easier and safer to use, very difficult to damage the ring, but of course with care, there's no reason why a conventional ring compressor can't do an adequate job as well. |
| 36:53 | So, what we're going to do is begin by rotating our crankshaft here so that we've got our number one and number four conrod journals facing directly down. |
| 37:04 | Now, we'll take our number one piston here and what we need to do to start with is install our bearing shells. |
| 37:12 | So, before I do that what I'm going to do here is just use some brake clean and just clean down the journal surface just, so that there's not going to be any chance of any debris in there for our bearing shell to be sitting against. |
| 37:25 | Likewise, of course we're going to do exactly the same procedure with our actual bearing shells. |
| 37:34 | Just like with the installation of the bearing shells into the block, we want to make sure that we locate the little tang into the hollow cutout in our rod and just using some pressure from our thumb, we'll just get that into location. |
| 37:49 | I'll also apply a little bit of our engine oil onto that bearing shell as well and as usual we'll just smear that around using our finger. |
| 38:00 | And while I'm doing this as well I'm going to apply a generous coat of engine oil to the skirt and the ring pack, this is just going to lubricate these components, these parts when we insert our piston into the bore. |
| 38:19 | Alright, we've got a good coat of oil essentially everywhere that we need it. |
| 38:24 | Now, what we're going to do is take our ring compressor. |
| 38:27 | Now, because we oil our ring compressors, no matter what type of ring compressor we are using, I always like to start by just cleaning down the inside of the ring compressor. |
| 38:38 | And that's just going to prevent or remove any dirt, dust and debris that's managed to stick to that oil coating since the last time we used the ring compressor. |
| 38:47 | What we'll do now is again just coat the inside of our ring compressor with our clean mineral based engine oil and just make sure that we've got that spread right around on the inside. |
| 39:00 | Now, we can take our piston and our connecting rod assembly, we're going to drop that down into the ring compressor, making sure that we've got the ring pack nicely started in that compressor and we just want the skirt a little bit proud of the underside of that ring compressor. |
| 39:16 | And we can now get this located into place. |
| 39:20 | Now, of course we want to take particular attention of the orientation of our piston, making sure that we do have our larger valve pockets for the intake valves on the correct side of the engine block, making sure that we've got everything straight here. |
| 39:33 | Apply some pressure with our thumbs onto the top of the ring compressor and at the same time we're just going to gently push the piston down into the bore. |
| 39:43 | Alright, our job's done there and now what we can do is just manually push that down and while I'm doing this, I'm just contacting the bottom of the connecting rod and guiding that down onto the crankshaft journal, making sure that it doesn't scratch or damage that journal while we're installing it. |
| 40:01 | So, that's our number one piston installed, obviously the process is exactly the same for our remaining pistons. |
| 40:06 | Let's get our number four one installed here before we flip the block over and we'll look at installing our caps. |
| 40:24 | Alright, we've got number one and number four piston and conrod assembly installed, we've flipped the block over, we've got the conrods nicely seated on the crankshaft journal, so it's now just a case of installing our conrod caps. |
| 40:36 | I've already gone ahead and installed our bearing shells into our conrod caps just to speed the process up a little bit. |
| 40:44 | And of course we want to make sure that we've applied a generous coat of our lubricating oil onto those caps. |
| 40:50 | Also a good idea to take note of the numbers and make sure that we have got these going in the correct location so we'll drop number one into place. |
| 40:58 | And repeat that of course with our number four cap. |
| 41:05 | Now, what we want to do is take our ARP2000 connecting rod bolts and we're just going to apply a little bit of ARP moly lube underneath the head of that bolt as well as on the threads and we'll get those started. |
| 41:25 | Now, that we've got all of the bolts into location, we're just going to do these up finger tight and pull the caps down onto the body of the connecting rods. |
| 41:41 | Ok, at this stage we've got the caps just nipped up a little bit, we've just applied a little bit of tension there just to make sure that they're in locatio , but it's my preference here not to torque these caps individually. |
| 41:54 | What we're going to do is go through the process of installing number two and three piston and conrod assembly and once we've got everything in place then we can torque all of our four connecting rod caps up at the same time. |
| 42:05 | This stops the double handling on the settings for our torque wrench. |
| 42:08 | So, what we'll do now is rotate the crankshaft through 180°, we'll turn the block back over and we'll repeat the process that you've just seen for number two and three connecting rods. |
| 42:48 | Now, that we've got everything installed, it's time to torque our fasteners down and the recommendation here is 45 foot pound and we're going to do this in three stages using ARP moly lube. |
| 43:00 | Of course, the alternative is to use the stretch method. |
| 43:04 | So, we're going to split the difference here and go in three stages, 15 then 30 then 45 foot pound and we've got our torque wrench already set up here. |
| 43:14 | So, given that number two and three rods are currently at bottom dead centre, it will make sense to torque those first. |
| 43:22 | So, let's get that done now with our first stage. |
| 43:29 | Now, in order to rotate the crankshaft 180°, now we've got all four of our connecting rods and pistons in there, there's a little bit of friction so what I'm going to do is just temporarily install the front crank pulley bolt and we'll use this to help us turn the crankshaft over and get number one and four at bottom dead centre. |
| 43:56 | Alright, we've got our first stage complete there and while we've got number one and four at bottom dead centre, we'll just step up to our next setting of 30 foot pound and we'll repeat that process. |
| 44:10 | Same process again, we'll rotate the crankshaft, get number two and three accessible and we'll complete the second stage of torque for those connecting rods. |
| 44:24 | And of course now our final stage, we'll step up to our target of 45 foot pound and we'll rotate back across number two and three rod. |
| 44:36 | And the last step here, another rotation of the crankshaft so we can do our final stage for number one and number four. |
| 44:48 | Alright, everything is torqued to specification and this completes the assembly of our short block, we can move on with the next step of our process. |
