Got some professional help!

Played hookey a bit at lunch today and took the crankcase, the crankshaft, camshaft, valves and piston into a machine shop for them to give a once-over…

Here’s what I know…

Cylinder bore is within spec (yay!), MAYBE a thousandths out at the bottom… They suggested a deglazing or a honing (I expected that, think I’ll go with a honing since it sounds easier…)

Piston… Well, its within spec, they had no advice on the rings or the wrist pin as, well, they just whomp them out the brute force way and if it gets wrecked in the process they just get a whole new piston/wrist pin/connecting rod/ring set… not really an option here…

Crankshaft – looked good to them, crank pin was in spec, they suggested a good polishing for it…

Camshaft – Again, they didn’t have a lot of advice about it, it looked fairly good to them aside from some scuffing at the nose of the cam lobes.. However, since I can’t get a NEW one and I can’t rebuild it and if I order one from eBay I can’t guarantee its going to be any better, my options are kinda limited…

Valves – looked good to them… again a good polishing would be in order for the valve stems…

DOH! I shoulda had them check the valve springs! I was in a rush to get back and forgot! Might have to pop back with those…

They gave me the obvious caveats, of course… They can’t tell me if the connecting rod is good, as its aluminum… It’ll be a gamble, but hey, its a 44 year old engine, this whole thing is a gamble…

So, there ya go!  I’m learnin’ lots, and that’s what its all about, right? Well, and getting an old tractor running again… I found it really interesting talking to the engine shop guys… It was a bit startling to hear them talk about what THEY do to rebuild an engine, because they don’t waste time mucking about trying to do something the gentle, persuasive way… If a part gets broken in the process, they just replace it… However, when I thought about it, time is money to them, no different than any other business. They don’t have the resources to “waste” on a possible no-hoper… So what that REALLY brings home to me is that restoring an old tractor is a labour of love…

Of course, that’s probably why they did the mic’ing for me gratis, as they’d all probably LIKE to take the time to lovingly restore an old engine. Can’t see them going into a business like engine rebuilding unless they had an appreciation for doing it…

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