The girls seem to have taken to their new life in confinement - they've started laying eggs. Now if the Zombie Apocalypse comes, even though the garden has gotten away from me a bit, I'll be eating some nice veggie omelets. Of course now that there's only two chickens and there's two of us here, they'll have to be heavy on the veggies and light on the eggs.
I couldn't find the "high" nuts I wanted locally to fasten the jugs to the crankcase. I called the Fastenal store that's only about a mile from the college and that went about like most of my phone conversations go when I'm looking for something a bit out of the ordinary. I tell the guy I'm looking for 3/8 fine thread nuts that are taller than standard like they use on "U" bolts for leaf springs, since this seems to be the most common usage of the high nuts. I hear him turning pages like he's looking something up in a catalog or maybe he's just thumbing through a magazine. Anyway, he tells me all of their nuts are about the same height. I didn't bother telling him that in addition to the high nuts, there are coupling nuts that are longer still and jam nuts that are shorter. I went on-line and looked up Fastenal and they, of course, sell high nuts along with many other types but when I typed in a store search, the local store didn't stock them anyway. At least I learned I can check to see what's in stock before calling or running over there to buy something they don't have or getting frustrated by some knucklehead who's supposed to be the authority but doesn't know diddly.
Next step was the J&P catalog. They've got them and they're shiny too. They also have wrist pins, so I ordered a couple of those. I pulled the one back out and measured it and it's about .001" under where the rod goes. Even with a new pin it might be just a little loose still but it'll be much better. It should only have about .0015" clearance total so taking an extra grand out will make a big difference.
Working on assembling the rocker boxes now. The previous owner painted them but didn't mask off the holes for the rocker shafts so I need to clean the paint out of the holes. Also the first one of the shafts I tried to fit up had the threads on the end a bit too big in diameter to fit the hole. The shaft has a center hole machined in the end of it. I'm guessing that a center punch was used to drive the shaft out of the rocker box and it spread the threaded end out about .010". Just enough so a nut won't start easily and the shaft won't fit easily into the hole. I filed the thread down and ran a die over it - probably have to do the same with the rest of them as well. Not a big problem, just a little time consuming. According to the manual, if the engine is in the frame, the rear cylinder needs to have the rocker box bolted on to the head in order to have enough clearance to fit. I'll get them both, front and rear, rocker boxes bolted up to the heads and then bolt the assemblies down after the wrist pins and nuts get here.
Done!
Next step is wait for the mailman. The parts have been shipped so they should be here by Friday - Saturday at the latest. In the meantime, it's good weather for painting, so I'll try to get a little more of that done before the rain comes back.
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