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Mail From: (email redacted) (Sixto Bernal)

i spent the afternoon yesterday, 1pm to 7pm, at Jerry White's machine
shop in Redwood City, CA. i was watching Jerry work on my motor. i
feel great about the money i'm spending with him. when deciding on a
motor, i had shopped the 'engine houses', both local and mail order.
the thing that had stopped me was the fact that i couldn't bring
myself to trust a machinest i couldn't see face to face.

Jerry only got to align honing the block and boring it. he also managed
to finish the big ends of my rods. he had completed shot-peening the
rods by the time i got there. he seemed very careful about his work,
he double checked himself at each step of the way. being a one man
shop, there were lot's of interruptions, either the phone would ring
or another customer would stop by.

we managed to talk about a wide number of motor related topics. everything
from bearing clearances to valve guide materials. i pumped him for info
on everthing i could think of. he's been at it for 20 years and has
opinions on just about everything. i'm glad he's willing to explain and
back up his thoughts, i learned quite a bit, and was pleased to have
some of my own experince acknowledged.

the KB112's varied in pin height by about .004". Jerry measured the
quench surface to bottom of pin with a caliper, just to get a reading
on how consistant they were. we'll probably end up matching short rods
with tall pistons.

Jerry also checked over Rigo's crank work. he found that all the mains
and journals were right on.


"for evil to triumph,
sixto good men need only do nothing."
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Block

all plugs were removed, the block hot tanked overnight, and jet washed
in the morning. the main caps were dressed in the cap grinder, before
bolting to the block which was already mounted in the align-hone
machine. just the setup to make sure the caps were square took about
half an hour. the align honing itself took another hour or so.

Jerry stopped every few minutes to check the progress using a bore
guage. he had told me that mains 2 and 5 were way off, and he was
right. as the cross-hatch pattern began to appear in the bores it was
plain to see that 2 was the first to be done and 5 didn't even show it
over 1/3 of the bore. he had to take a bit more off 5's mating surface
to bring it near the others. he ended up with bores that were exactly
the same,

he put the block in the jetwash and blew it dry with pressurized air.
he put the block into the boring machine. as he mounted the block i
noticed that it indexed off of the new main bores. he took his cutter
out of the boring bar and dressed all of it's faces before actually
doing any cutting. he next checked the present bores and deck for
level. they were very close.

he centered the boring bar and did the first hole. when it had gone to
the bottom he adjusted a depth stop and moved to the next hole. he let
the machine do the work while we chatted.

Rods

Jerry had shot peened the rods over their entire surface, except
inside the bores. they were a beautiful grey color all over. he put
each of the rods, and then caps, in the cap dressing machine. then he
took the new ARP bolts and pressed them in, using a non-seize goop. he
torqued down the nuts and moved to the rod honing machine. Jerry's rod
honer is an automatic unit that moves the rod over the rotating stone
in a loose fixture. the rods move freely perpendicular to the stone so
as to produce a straight bore.

again he stopped every few minutes to check the progress. this part of
the process took about an hour.