Loss of Yardage

Knowing Dad was going to be gone this weekend, I made sure to get my homework done early on Tuesday and Wednesday so Dad and I could get as much work done at the garage as possible. We left the block, now with its newly balanced crankshaft in place, under a garbage bag to protect it from the elements. However, the book we have been using for reference covers reassembly of an overhead-cam engine, but a ’69 Ford 302 is cam-in-block. Apparently, cam-in-block engine assembly begins with the cam, which meant we had to pull the crank. Again. On Tuesday, we opened up the box with our new cam, slid it into the block, and coated the lobes with Lubriplate and the cam journals with oil. Then, we replaced the crank, applying a liberal amount of lube, but we couldn’t torque it down fully due to the fact that Dad’s fancy-shmancy digital torque wrench broke last time at the garage, so we used our manual one and torqued it down to between 60 and 65 foot pounds rather than the 70 foot-pound  maximum our shop manual recommends.

Mental note: don’t forget to bring the camera home next time.