Engine Rebuilding Project
December 5, 2002
Took the crank to the machine shop yesterday and $32.00 later, picked up the crank today!
There was the problem journal. Everything is all polished up! Thank, God for machine shops – they can fix our stupid screw ups! I had tried to take some close up shots of where the scratches were, but since they are so polished up, all you can see is flash reflection. So I suppose you’re just going to have to trust me. There is a sticker on the bag noting "STD" for the bearings to get. This is for the main and rod bearings. Machine shops will tell you something like STD/.010 stating that the main bearings would be standard and rod bearings would be .010 undersized (just an example). Hopefully, this is the only mishap (just being too careful).
Funny, Al (the owner of Street & Strip Machine Shop) remembered me as soon as I walked in there. This was the shop that did the parts for the Mazda pickup I did a couple of years ago. That is a long story. The short version of it is, they did the block work, head, flywheel, rods, etc. I put the engine together and it was making a knocking/slapping noise. I thought it was a rod cap as I had a little problem with one of the caps during assembly. I pulled the engine out, they tore it down and noted nothing wrong with the assembly, but did tell me that I’m missing a head guide pin. Son of a bitch, I forgot to put in a guide pin for the head and the gasket had slid over, while installing the head, and the piston was slapping against the very edge of the gasket (the metal ring). Ah, well .. stupid little truck is still going! Anyway, we got to talking about stupid mistakes and seems that I wasn’t the only one in the shop at the time that agreed with me. I didn’t give two shits about the Mazda while putting it together, and except for the head guide pin incident, everything else went smooth. I start working on something I actually give a damn about – take too much care and look what happens … 
Enough blabbing!