Except it's all clean and shiny now, so it's no longer the party block; it's now the Serious Business block.

Ooh, look at the shine on those cylinder bores. As a reminder, this is what it looked like before:

Now it's all fresh and new. Check out those freeze plugs!

Just to recap, the cylinders are now bored 0.030" over spec, the cylinder head decks are square to the centerline of the crankshaft and exactly 9.010" high (well, they'd be "high" if measured perfectly horizontal; obviously it's a V engine, so that's not strictly true, but you get the idea, I hope), it has new freeze plugs and camshaft bearings installed, and the holes for the crankshaft bearings are now perfectly circular and in line with each other (within the limits of the capabilities of the tools). We'll need to buy some undersized bearings to compensate for the fact that the holes have been honed, but as with over-bored cylinders, there are standard sizes for that and it should be simple enough.

While we were there, we picked up a fresh box of hot pistons too.

Well, OK, they're really fairly mild pistons, but y'know, figures of speech and all that.

Next steps: while we were at the machine shop, we dropped off the heads and crankshaft we intend to use (which are the original ones that went with this block). As with the block, they'll be checked for cracks and, if good, cleaned and refurbished.

Meanwhile, we need to rig up the arbor press and remove the rusty old pistons from the original connecting rods, so we can bring them to Bernie and have him check to see if they're any good. If they are, he'll fit them with new bolts, true up the holes at the crank end (similar to the way it was done on the block and its bearing caps), and we'll probably just go ahead and have him fit the new pistons. Which means we brought them home for no real reason, but, eh. He has the aforementioned Special Tools and a lot more experience with that kind of thing, and it's literally just a few bucks extra to have him do it after he's done all the other stuff to the rods.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Anyhoo, the Serious Block looks good and serious. Cool that Things Are Happening(TM), particularly SHINY things. Because more shiny equals more better. Looking forward to seeing what else happens.
...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"