Critical juncture in ABA rebuild - frozen crank (WTF?)

[ansonivan at yahoo.com (Anson Clement)]

Sounds like you may have mixed up your rod bearing caps or have incorrectly sized rod bearings, try moving the rods side to side on the crank by hand. If you find one that won't move freely you've found the problem.
 
Even with new rings the bugger should turn over with relative ease.
I made the rod cap mixup mistake on a toyota engine and got about two miles before they welded themselves to the crank.
 
hth
 
Anson

Jeff Toomasson <area53@validpath.com> wrote:
I've been on the precipice of tightening my crankshaft sprocket - so most of you can imagine how far I am into this saga.

A few days ago I tried to tighten the sprocket bolt and finally got the crank to turn when I was half way through my 90-degree additional turn. I thought this was odd, but just attributed it to the snug fit of the piston rings. But it still turned though so I wasn't worried. I just figured the rings needed to get seated and that would happen when I fired it up...

Today I went to tighten the sprocket bolt again prepared to brace the crank using a 2x4 (thanks for the tip, Ron!), but I could get it all the way through the 90-degree turn this time and then some!

The left side of my brain says somethings f*cked up in there and I need to tear it apart, but the right side says it's just the rings and they'll pop in once I start it (though that event isn't for 3-5 months!!).

I know either way it's the rings because the damn thing spun perfectly with little effort when only pistons 1 and 4 were installed. But is this something that's life-threatening?? (I think I know the answer but I need to hear it from someone else...)

Background: I used a synthetic paint brush to coat the bores with 20w50 before installing the rods and pistons. All bearing surfaces received Redline Assembly Lube.

Thanks for any input - Jeff
_______________________________________________
Scirocco-l mailing list
Scirocco-l@scirocco.org
http://neubayern.net/mailman/listinfo/scirocco-l
		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs