lower

Pretty much exactly that. The plastigauge comes in the form of a thread that you lay across the surface you want to measure, fit the bearing shell, clamp up to the required torque, release the bearing cap, remove the bearing and use the gauge that comes with the plastigauge to determine the clearance by measuring the spread of the thread. You use different diameter threads depending on the clearance you expect to measure.

CHIPPO

Lower you beat me to it , bang on , and that Plastigauge is for the smallest measurements that they do.

All his his bearings are within a few .0001" and with new shells even tighter over all , hope the crank is straight and the bores/bearing housings are straight and inline as with .001" clearances there isn't much room for error ! Will it revolve nicely on a nice oil film with zero metal to metal contact in the bearings . We have discussed how we will get oil fully around the engine before first fire up ensuring there is an oil film on all bearing surfaces , he knows what he's going to do!!

Still amazed at at the condition of the crank journals and lack of wear in the shells , I bet the new shells are only a few microns smaller than the old !

chrispayze

Cheers for that. Learning every day! I'll tuck that away for the day I rebuild mine.

CHIPPO

Toby fitted the crank today with new shells , all well within the OEM tolerances for anew engine.

we were happy with the way the crank spun with such tight clearances

CHIPPO

We also assembled the new conrods and pistons and dry fitted to big end journal to check dry clearances , again all well within OEM new build tolerances

chrispayze

Keep it coming, still interesting! Rebuild looking good.

Daytona-Dave

+1 good thread and info

Irish TuneR

+2 Also if you could update what it cost in the end, roughly. Cheers.

Nick Graves

Good work & great photos.

Shows what a marvellous piece of kit it is.

CHIPPO

It's not cheap , I only know cost of liners for sure , I paid for them birthday and Christmas pressie £800

i was amazed that 5 plain bearings all with around 0.001" clearance dry would spin freely with a drop of oil , with nary a sign of metal to metal contact smooth as silk . But then lots of things and I dare say moderns engines are now built to these tolerances . Lift worm gear boxes 30 years ago had to be hand scraped in , now there machine fit to microns.

More need to have a go at this as 2nd hand engines go up in price with higher mileages on , do it before bottom end failure or rod damage occurs. And who knows what happened to a 2nd hand engine in its life ! I would drop the sump and check for rubbish and look at valve retainers etc before even thinking of shelling out more than 3k of shekels. Whoops lots of puns .

toby did the right thing , loss of oil and water turn off , no obvious damage , strip down and check , all is so far fine what we have seen other than the foreign body being under the no5 main bearing shell when first assembled by Honda San ! Oh and split stem seals.