Progress … Finally

Between waiting for parts and being away from home for a long weekend, I’ve not made an effort to go out to the garage, so Ringo has sat ignored in the garage. That finally changed last night when I ran out of excuses, donned my grungies, and proceeded to put Ringo back together again.

Before installing the new gas gauge sender into the tank, I messed around with it connected to the wire harness to determine which gauge read empty with the rod fully down and full with it at opposite lock. With the right gauge selected, the sender was poked into the tank, and, with a new gasket, retained with the lock-ring. After the wire ends were connected and the fuel hose was slid over the tube ends and clamped into place, task one of the evening was complete.

Task two was replacing the crankcase cover and that started with the pulling off the existing EM cover. I had somewhat dreaded this operation since cleaning the hardened gasket material off the mating faces is a pain in the butt times two – there are two gaskets sandwiching the crankcase vent (windage tray) between the engine and cover flanges. Careful, well-aimed tapping was rewarded with only the cover and its gaskets coming off leaving the vent and its gasket still in place against the engine. TYL! The LM cover needed some scraping before it was ready to go, and after fifteen minutes or so it had a new gasket light adhered to it with a thin coat of RTV. The outer surface of the gasket just got a light coat of grease before mating to the engine. All the bolts went in being torqued to roughly 150 inch-pounds. Since the crankcase cover includes a larger blower bearing that that for an EM, I had to go hunting for a LM blower. It took a few minutes, but I unburied one from the shelves. With it in place, I could maneuver the engine upper shroud into position. After bolting it down, the last task of the evening was simply dropping the blower pulley onto the blower hub.

I can’t go any farther until I find the four bolts that retain the blower and pulley to the bearing hub. I’ve done some cursory hunting through containers of engine fasteners, but have struck out each time, so my plan is to use the four off the Corsa engine and replace those when I’m rebuilding that engine. This evening should provide me with some more garage time with the hope being Ringo ends up out of the garage and back at the curb.