Well, today was officially a nice day! Weather-wise AND tractor-wise! Got back to working on Bror’s engine this afternoon… Here’s some details of what the engine shop did with the valve guides… Those look like copper sleeves…
And I THINK this is a new exhaust valve seat!
Since it was so nice and warm, I got out a pail of nice soapy water…
Here’s after the bath, and after a bunch of drying off with the air gun
First step, find the bearing retainer plate,
and attach it finger-tight just for holding the crank in for now….
Lie the block down in preparation for dropping the crankshaft in,
Made sure I knew where the alignment marks were on the rod and cap, and that I had them oriented the right way…
Didn’t take any pictures of me fighting with the piston ring compressor, but I must be getting better at THAT part, because it only took me two tries to get that nice oily piston into the cylinder!
Got the connecting rod cap on… that’s always a bit dicey
Here’s one of those dang expensive lock nuts!
Got the con-rod nuts all torqued on, hit the cap with a drift as per the manual, then retorqued…
ALMOST forgot to pop the tappets back in!
Got the timing mark on the cam shaft all lined up with the chamfered tooth on the crankshaft! Yay! (this was a tough shot to get, it actually broke my old camera… All the attempts to get the macro to see the two marks in focus finally killed the lens motor on my tractor-cam! Thank goodness LTGal has upgraded recently so I can have her hand-me-down! Lemme know if you see any difference in my pic quality from here on in!).
Got the crankcase gasket all set on it…
And here it is, all buttoned up! 
I think I’ll stop at this point and take it back to the small engine shop to get the valve clearances done… They’re SUPPOSED to be 0.010 cold for both… I’m clocking in at around 0.006 according to the feeler gage. So, Monday afternoon maybe… I MIGHT get the crankshaft end play figured out yet this weekend, but I don’t think I’ll go much further than that… Don’t want to have to carry too much weight around… I wonder if they need the valve springs in there… Probably not, since they have to pull the valves to grind the ends, don’t they?