And finally, Wookie's 82 begins !

Hello Guy, I understand your frustration all too well!   It takes a great deal of fine-tuning—measuring, trial-and-error, and ultimately a good dose of luck—to make "bearing caps that don't match the cylinder head" fit properly... unfortunately, this succeeds all too rarely! But I am certain *you* will pull it off; you have the technical understanding, the patience, and the resources! I wish you the very best of luck!

(I once bought a Z1b that was in "running condition"... but when I performed a major service—including valve adjustment—a few weeks later, I discovered that the bearing caps for the exhaust camshaft hadn't been tightened down. When I did tighten them, the camshaft seized up completely. I actually got lucky in that instance, because the "problematic bearing cap" was geometrically compatible with the curvature/bearing saddle; it was "only" too short. I managed to resolve it using special shims—6 mm inner diameter, ranging in thickness from 0.01 to 0.03 mm—to dial in the measurements precisely so that I could properly secure the bearing cap, and everything ran smoothly again.)

But one cannot emphasize this enough:
Folks, do not buy used cylinder heads unless the original, matching bearing caps are included! The bearing bore was machined at the factory in conjunction with the bearing caps; EVERY single cylinder head is manufactured with minute, unique variations in the horizontal bore for the camshafts!

As are the lower cases and crank big cap

moizeau wrote:

As are the lower cases and crank big cap

indeed they are, however I had no reason to suspect anything was amiss!! Lesson learnt the hard way - hopefully I have saved the situation 

Forgot to add, great job. I've just been rereading your painting. Itchy bum time here soon, never done it. What did you grind on the caps? A wise man (who we both know)told me for fore and aft cleareance the holes can be enlarged and the cams, under pressure from the valves will keep them central. Did you swap swap 1 and 3 caps to see if someone had sorted it before?
 

moizeau wrote:

Forgot to add, great job. I've just been rereading your painting. Itchy bum time here soon, never done it. What did you grind on the caps? A wise man (who we both know)told me for fore and aft cleareance the holes can be enlarged and the cams, under pressure from the valves will keep them central. Did you swap swap 1 and 3 caps to see if someone had sorted it before?

 

Yes I did try swopping 1 & 3, the bearing clearance on top is in spec, the issue was the sides. The last 1/4 turn on the bolts was pushing the ends of the bearing in and pinching the cam. I I used a small flap wheel in my pillar drill so I could stay square then took a little at a time until the caps would tighten down without pinching 

Wow! Good on you for checking the clearance. These old machines can hide a plethora of surprises.

TexasKZ wrote:

Wow! Good on you for checking the clearance. These old machines can hide a plethora of surprises.

Ain't that the truth, if I had realised how little use it had had in the last 20 years I would have checked it a lot earlier in the process. Another head here complete with valves and no broken fins is around $500-$600 then add blasting and machining it would be more like $800 done and fitted !!!!!!!