Well, I'll be durned! Some puzzles take me a while to figure out. Maybe it's old age. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

I sat for a long time last night and contemplated those piston/deck clearances and refused to believe that after all of the measurements I took and the calculations I made.... that the variances could be so large.

So, I got out the original list of crankshaft throw and rod length measurements and compared them to the installed results. I kept saying..... "That's impossible!... that's impossible! The expected shortest combination of rod and crankshaft throw can't end up being the longest and vice-versa". It's impossible!!"

I finally realized that the only way the results could show a .004" variance was if the table under the crankshaft grinder was not correctly aligned (not likely).... or the machinist made an error in reading his dial indicator. The lightbulb went on when I remembered that he was reading the dial indicator upside down and had maybe reversed the numbers and gave me (+) numbers when the indicator read (-) and (-) numbers when the indicator read (+). Ya think? Nah, nobody would do that, would they?

This morning, I removed #3 & #6, swapped rings and then swapped bores. Yup. Then I did the same thing with #1 & #2. Yup. Now the piston/deck clearances look like this:

#1 = .0175"
#2 = .0175"
#3 = .0180"
#4 = .0180"
#5 = .0180"
#6 = .0175"

It doesn't get much better than that and I've gone from not liking it at all to lovin' it! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> Now, the only variance is the very slight difference in swept volume due to the crankshaft throw differences - not enough to be at all concerned with.

I haven't yet gone back to visit the machine shop, but I expect we'll have an interesting conversation when I do. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

What a lesson in assumptions!!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Frank