Learning more the hard way, the battle continues...
Had high hopes for Saturday, my mechanic and I were confident. Timed the mags, twenty gallons of fresh gas, gallon and a half drained out of the lines via the primer into my john boat gas tank for next spring. Replaced the safety wire for my prop bolts (I ignorantly used .032). Everything checked off the list, ready to see if it would build oil pressure with the starter, bottom plugs out, all plug wires off, prop went round, oil pressure guage coming up. All looks good, ready to briefly light a fire and look for oil leaks.
Had my mechanic, watch the primer connections for leaks, gave her two pumps. No leaks, full rich, 1/8" of throttle, master on, start...
Fully expected her to kick first blade over. After 6 and not even a snort, my heart sank. Gas running out of the carb heat box, must have flooded her. We went to lunch, tried again, same results.
Pulled the rocker cover on number one, slowly brought it up to TDC. Intake valve opening approaching TDC. What the heck?
Ever do something a year in the past when it was easy, clean, well lit, and so sure you had done the right thing?
Helen Keller and Ray Charles can see the timing marks on the cam gear and crank idler gears. It is practically nonexistent on the crank gear. Not stamped with an indentation or dot, but a faint grey zero almost like printed on. We searched the crank gear and debated back and forth for an hour on which tooth bore the dull grey letter. In the end my mechanic and I were both confident. That's it, someone has even slightly dressed the tooth down ever so slightly with a bevel to help identify it. NEGATIVE. We are now both confident we were three teeth off.
So yesterday afternoon I had my first experience pulling an accessory case on a mounted engine. Not much fun, heartbreaking really. Luckily it wasn't a greasy, grimy, gritty mess to start with. I did manage to make about a 1 quart lake of 40 weight mineral oil. Another dingbat move, had 8 qt. in it, should have drained two out through the sump drain before ripping and gouging. I was confident I would be buying two new gaskets and using 1.25 of them. Unbelievably, that was not the case. I'll get to that in the end.
Mechanic came back this morning to evaluate with it opened up. More head scratching, I can't see that can you? Finally a picture taken from my Spock like Tri-corder phone thingy told the tale. With the flash you could faintly see the letter. Three teeth off. Properly timed, the two of us got the case back on. Lots harder to get everything to mesh with the engine in the horizontal. Torqued up, again this is lots easier in the vertical, well lit and tons of fighting room. Slight film of gasket maker on gaskets curing till tomorrow. Got the mess cleaned up and it didn't appear as though I contaminated the oil that I left in the sump while doing battle. Retiming mags and trying again tomorrow.
Kudos to this stuff. My mechanic insisted I use it. Never used it before this project, will never try to use what I have used before on mating surfaces for oil again. Loctite and Permatex, (same company now I believe), make an anaerobic gasket sealer/maker. It will not set up like silicone until you squeeze all of the air out of the two surfaces being mated, giving you practically all the time in the world to get things right. If any excess squeezes out of the mating surface, it cleans up like red grease, not gacky silicone. If I would have used a thin film of silicone to hold the gasket in place, I'm sure I'd be waiting for replacement gaskets. Once the joint popped, the accessory case gasket was left in tact, and was easily saved. I couldn't believe it. Again, not an expert, obviously. Consult your mechanic.
In good spirits again. Looking forward to tomorrow.
Thanks,
Jim