As you all might guess from my most recent post a few weeks ago, I've been pretty discouraged by the discovery that my engine was going to have to go back to the machine shop again. I keep thinking about selling it and buying a nice little 318 Dart. Last week I spent some time cleaning and organizing my work bench so that I could get to work on some other things. That's helped my mood a little, so for now, I'll keep going.
I got to thinking that maybe I'd done something wrong, like maybe not seating the rod fully against the crank or maybe the shop had installed the pistons incorrectly, so today I double-checked my work and everything was correct. The photo below shows the right side head installed with #2 at TDC. You can see that the space between the head and the deck and the little silver bit shining in between the two is the top of the quench dome on the piston. So, it all goes back. Since they'll have to mock everything up to check clearances anyway, I'm going to check to see how much extra it'll cost to have the shop assemble the short block.
Afterwards, I spent a little more time cleaning and organizing, then figured I may as well get to work on another restoration project, so I pulled the wiper motor out and got to work on that. You can see that some previous owner did a real jury rig job on the wiring - note the twisted pairs in the harness that don't even use butt connectors. I just got started today - there will be more work next week. I'm hoping it's salvageable - there's a fair amount of corrosion in the motor casing.
