Well Humble, I got my 'perfect day'. Everything went so smooth in the garage today, it was faaaaantastic.
You could say I'm making progress!
It's 2am, which is ridiculous on a work night! I started by having a good afternoon in the garage and I just got on a great roll overall. Excuse the zipties and cross-over in the above photos, that's just me mocking everything up so I can set up the linkage/carbs as much as possible before taking them off to install the engine. Basically, once I install the exhaust and thread lock all the tin screws, the engine is ready to go into the car. The car isn't quite ready for the engine yet...I need to put in the new engine bay seals and plumb my oil filter and oil accumulator lines. Not sure how I'm going to do the fuel-line from the pump to my T fitting behind the shroud. I'm starting to think a hardline / softline combo might be the ticket. Mind you...I wouldn't be surprised if my car has that nice big loop of fuel line on it for the first few hundred miles :P
Had a BIG scare tonight...I was adjusting the valves, basically the final thing before taking these photos, when I got to the last adjuster on #4. The adjuster was there, but no lock nut. I had been working on the engine with it tilted 90deg, so the head was straight up. Horror of all horrors, the only place that nut could have gone was straight down the pushrod tube. Couldn't see it with the light, couldn't feel or get it with a magnet. Before starting to tear the motor down to the bare block I figured I'd better do a serious clean/check of the garage. Unbelievably, there was the nut sitting on the workbench...somehow I had knocked it off when backing off all the adjusters and hadn't noticed. I'm 100% positive it's the right nut too, these adjusters use a 12mm wrench on the lock nut. There are NO other 12mm nuts in my garage! PHEW!!
The oil accumulator is causing me real problems due to space restrictions. If it wasn't for that, I could probably fire the engine up tomorrow night and break in the cam/lifters.
-Dave