Some days are good some are bad and some are somewhere in between, I guess today was in between but a little toward the good.
I was out in the shed this morning and decided I would put some more stuff on the engine, this is usually to keep from losing things or getting them damaged and it is always nice to clear up a little space
I thought I would go ahead and put the lifters in because I shouldn't need to turn the motor upside down again, I wasn't sure how I was going to get them way down in the bores with those little holes that lifters barely fit through but figured I would cross that bridge when I got to it, I had just finished pulling the nuts oof the head studs (the head is not installed but I keep it bolted down finger tight) when the postman pulled up with a delivery, I really wasn't expecting anything but he had two packages for me, one was my paint respirator I ordered on March 15th, funny thing, sort of, the end of last week I sent a message to the seller on Amazon and told them to refund my money because it wasn't comming, and they did
seems like that always happens to me, I could have waited a few more days, I sent them a message back telling them it arrived and I needed to re-pay them, I am waiting for a response.
The other package was from Summit, not much in the box but some spark plug wire separators and a lifter tool I had ordered, looks like a good day and it arrived just in time.
I paid like $2.50 for it and it worked pretty good, not sure how I would have done the job without it those lifters are not the easiest thing to get in place.
With that little job done I decided to get the engine in time and install the distributor at least temporarily, this is where my luck took a turn, I was having problems getting the oil pump rod aligned, it needed to stick in the distributor and the hex alined and get it near TDC pointing at #1, after struggling with it a bit I decided I would turn the oil pump a little and get the flats in a better position, a 200 pump shaft is longer than a 250 shaft and I had one so I put it in there and used a socket and ratchet to spin the oil pump, pulled it back out tried to fit the distributor again, the pump shaft slid out of the distributor into the pump again so I was using a magnet to get the rod back out for another try and partway up I dropped the rod and it fell into the oil pan
the only way to get it back out was to take the oil pan back off, which meant flipping the motor over, half of the lifters coming out of their bores (none fell on the floor, not enough space for them to get out) then removing the 100 oil pan bolts and unsticking the RTV while not dammaging the gasket to get the rod and then reverse the process, reinsert the dislodged lifters and finally getting the distributor in the right place.
When I finally got that done I installed the port for the water temp gauge, oil pressure switch, and a heater hose nipple. The thermostat is in there too but I haven't really installed it yet because I want to check on some longer bolts the ones in there look too short to me (they reach through but only about 4 threads sticking out.
Obviously I stuck my spark plugs, wires, and the new distributor cap on there.
Getting it closer every day.
See Ya,
Mike