I think I might have talked about this a bit earlier, but without showing it properly. This is plugged in where the engine's distributor goes. That's the gadget that distributes electricity from the alternator to the spark plugs. In action, it's spun by the camshaft via a gear near the bottom of a long shaft that goes through the back of the engine. Near, but not at, because in this type of engine, the very bottom of the shaft has a "tongue" on it that uses its rotation to drive the oil pump (which you will recall is down at the very bottom of the engine).

At some point, someone figured out that if you stuck a properly configured shaft in here without the cam gear on it, and then spun it from above, you could run the oil pump by itself. This is really useful when the engine has been freshly rebuilt, because it means you can pressurize the lubrication system, and thus get oil up to the valve train and whatnot, without needing to turn the engine over dry at high RPM. It solves the chicken-and-egg problem.

Purpose-built oil system priming tools are available, but we made this one by ripping all the electric gubbins off an old distributor, removing the gear so it won't drive the camshaft backward, and then plugging it on in there. When the time comes--hopefully quite soon!--to prime the lubrication system, we'll just chuck the biggest drill we have onto the top of the shaft and let 'er rip.

--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.

Today: shiny new stuff for the front of the engine!

OK, the fan is neither new nor particularly shiny, but chrome fans are expensive, yo. Still, check out those pulleys. They actually, y'know... line up and stuff! Chrome fuel pump too, because why not?

As an aside, Dad's really going all in on the parts orders for this project, and it's taken me aback a little. We have all these parts he's been hoarding for years to save costs on an eventual build wherever possible, and now that we're actually doing the build he's like "well, none of these really look that good" and orders a billet aluminum crank pulley. I mean I'm not objecting, but it's kinda weird. :)

Next task: now that the bottom end of the engine is complete and we don't need to be turning it upside-down any more, Dad bought this little stand/cart thing to put it on, rather than leave it up on the cantilevered stand.

To accomplish the switch, it was back to the chain hoist to unbolt the engine from the tall stand, then lower it onto the cart and bolt it down. And if you think this was a nervous-making thing to do with an engine that's this far along... you'd be right.

Those brackets on the intake manifold bolts are designed to lift the complete engine with, but, I mean, the back one is only held on with one bolt...

Also, I realized about halfway through wrestling the slightly-out-of-shape cart onto the places where it has to bolt onto the engine that what we should have done is rolled the engine over on the tall stand, bolted the cart on from the top, turned it back over, and then take it off. Still, in the end we did get it done.

By this point it was getting toward time to wrap up for the day, but before we called it, we decided to put the fancy new valve covers on so we could get a sense for how it'll look. And once they were on there, well, might as well screw on the oil filter and put some oil in there.

Yes, that is heavy-duty diesel engine oil. This is a tip I picked up from Derek over at the Vice Grip Garage YouTube channel--it's a high-zinc heavy-duty oil that plays well with flat tappet cams, and it's a lot cheaper than a lot of the fancier alternatives made for the specialist market that exists around these engines.

Once it was on board, I tried a little experiment, and it appears that the oil pump we picked to install in this engine is in good working order. Just by turning the shaft on the old distributor with my fingers, I was able to make oil fly out of the hole in the top of the block where the sensor for the oil pressure gauge goes.

That bodes well for its effectiveness when we get a drill on there and start priming the whole system.

Here's where we were at session's end: installed on the new cart, new shiny bits on the front, valve covers on (temporarily--we'll have to take them back off once we have the engine running so we can adjust all the valves some more).

That grubby thermostat housing on the front of the intake manifold is just there for reference; if we use that one, we'll clean and repaint it. That'll probably be for next time.

Also probably next time: alternator! We have a new upper bracket coming for that (you can see the lower one is on there now, just in front of the valve cover on the captain's side). Once we have an alternator in place, we can figure out how long we need the belt to be.

--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.

First, we finally finished taking all that stuff upstairs and got the area in front of the steel bench properly cleared!

(last load of stuff shown ready to go up)

Following that, a rousing game of Car Tetris!

The pickup is now in position for engine bay operations, the Impala's been moved to the other side out of the way of moving back the gantry crane, and the Beetle is only there temporarily. It needs some suspension work to pass inspection. After it's out of that space, we'll probably use the gantry crane to remove the bed from the back of the truck and park it over there.

--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.