The pistons come in a box already inside of the cylinders and they look ready to install. Jackson told me we never assume anything is ready to go!!!! (I learned my lesson quick). Jackson removed the pistons from the cylinders and placed each set in order. He then cleaned the inside of the cylinders making sure there was not any cosmolene inside. Next he lined up the compression rings (The two top rings) With the small arrow on the face of the piston facing toward the flywheel, the two compression ring gaps were placed at 10 and 2 o'clock. The oil ring has a red and green mark on it that goes to 12 o'clock. There are also two small rings on each side of the oil ring called scrapers that we also positioned at 10 & 12 o'clock 

With his ring compressor around the piston he lowered it into the cylinder. Again Jackson applied a very light coat of Ultra gray Permatex around the cylinder wall that slides in to the case.

He then carefully slid the piston out of the cylinder just far enough to get at the wrist pin. By turning the engine so the connecting rod was all the way out, he then slid the wrist pin through the rod and inserted the wrist pin retaining clips on both sides.

Gently he tapped the cylinders into place with a small rubber mallet. Jackson did the same process 3 more times. 

Jackson then put on the super cool tins on both sides. Then he lined up our big valve head and slid it on just enough to stay put so we could prepare out push rod tubes.

We are using windage push rod tubes for this engine. What is unique about these tubes is that the end that goes into the engine is longer than the end that goes to the head. What this prevents is to much oil sloshing through the tube into the head when making sharp turns. The proper way to install these tubes is the seam need to go toward the top of the engine. The reason for this is just in case the tube was to bend and split, the oil can still stay in the tube. If the seam was at the bottom, your oil would leak out.    

Now that our push rod tubes are in place we can set the head all the way down. This also took some light tapping around the outside of the head with a rubber mallet. Then our head washers went on, 8 on each head. 

Once the washers went into place, the 8 nuts went on and we began to torque or heads down to 23 lbs. Jackson alternates nuts to tighten, first a lower nut the the opposing upper and so on to get a nice even tightening of the head to the cylinders. 
Cake walk Huh?
Next we will do rocker arm geometry, but that's another day. 

If you have any questions or comments about Chirco's Engine Tech
please e-mail don@chirco.com we sure would like to hear from you.

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