Put the Ragtop up for a bit to work on the motor buildup.

Last night, I placed each rod on the gram scale and found the lightest one and meticulously ground off the material in the key spots of the others to match.

Here is what I got accomplished this evening...

Scrubbed and drying off after letting them soak in Varsol, overnight.


Dissemble


Placing rod bearings in place


Lubing both journals and bearing face


Torquing the rod caps


Finished rotating assembly


Worked on the case to prepare to install crank but found out I do not have distributor drive gear shaft shims!!! \
So now I need to find these before continuing...

looking good. thanks for taking 'step by step' pics.

Nice work Chris...looks like you are working your way to a smooth running engine. Are you building it back to stock or bigger?

This will be a stout stock 1600 that I can throw around/back-up motor and also to cut my teeth on VW motor builds. I plan on building a 1776 or 1915 soon, as one of the rides' main motor.

Sounds like a good plan. Keep the progress pictures coming.

I was able to score some shims from a local import garage that has a small amount of parts for aircools on hand.

Great news!

Nice detail pics. It should be a nice motor when you are done.

Thanks!

When I started the motor build up, my wife wants to photo-document the steps. Well she has been sick with a sinus infection, so I put my cheap digital on a tripod, put it in the general direction, set the timer and get to work. Slowed down the process but I wanted to get it anyways.

Well it's 3:30 AM, I am frustrated as all get out and going to bed. Found out that a double shouldered cam bearing will not fit on a Engle W100 cam. After getting that darn distributor drive gear in and lining it up with the crank and then having to deal with the darn main bearings finding their dowels and installed the cam, I noticed that the cam bearing was not narrow enough and/or the cam has a shoulder against the journal that doesn't allow the double shouldered bearing. The bad thing is the left case half does not have a tang slot, so I am not sure how the next bearing will stay after assembly...

Oh well, like they say, 'back to the drawing board'