Reeto, small update.
As mentioned, I had acquired some forged pistons & a block. Along with some forged rods that were the wrong small end size. These have been sorted, so I was ready to crack on.
I purchased it from my good friend Mr Craig as so:
One of the rods was bent (standard rods) yet the pistons are the slightly oversized Wossner ones.
Stripped down and removed everything & my old man showed me how to glaze the bores a tad, even though they weren't as bad as we'd thought:
I've never touched a bottom end (oo-er) before, so this is all good learning for me.
I cleaned up the surfaces and the finished product is pretty neat.
Despite bending a rod, the block is fine. The crank looks decent. Only other issues worth noting were a missing oil jet & the main bearing on the side that the rod had bent, was a bit worse for wear:
Looks like it had been hammering at it. The lining was exposed and stress cracked. It had almost become egg shaped.
Anyway, Mr GMC sorted me out with some parts & advice:
Fitted a new set:
Surprisingly the damaged main bearings were ACL, but nevermind.
The block had been painted a couple of times, so after a day of chiselling and picking through the old layers, I managed to get a coat of silver enamel on there. Not the best job in the world, but hey ho.
I had a spare day off (with no kids) so managed to get the old engine out:
Started to strip it down and compared the GT17 against the GT22....
It's massive! The GT17 is in great shape though - zero play. So it will be for sale shortly.
At this point, I came across some hurdles.
- On the forged pistons, one of the oil 'mop-up rings' (the little last one) is deformed. Whilst my old man thinks we might get away with it, you can't actually tell whether it seats correctly when the piston is in. So, I've had to contact Wossner about getting a ring-set. This will set me back £40 or so, but also a fair bit of time.
- On the forged rods, it looks like someone has lost one of the arp washers that accompany the arp rod bolts. They replaced it with an oversized spring washer. I'd rather not take any chances, so ordered full set of washers from the states.
But, 3 pistons have been successfully installed at least:
Hopefully I'll get the old engine completely stripped this week so I can make a catalogue of what else is required.