MORE Case and Crank prep...

It's been slow going lately, but progress seems to be taking place. I got lost in a lot of thought experiments and what-ifs, and (as is usually the case,) ended up right back where I started. So I cut the top off of the flywheel flange on the case, did a little bit of clearing on the inside of the case (some spots didn't seem to have more than a few thou of room for rotating parts), and used a Dremel to carve away a couple of channels for the engine mount in the back.

I also pulled all the aluminum plugs to get an idea of how much stuff was trapped in the case...

...And there was a lot! Much of that was from walnut blasting the case, but I found a good number of metal shavings as well. I'm glad I pulled the plugs... Next I tapped the holes for various pipe thread plugs, ranging from 1/16" NPT up to 3/8" NPT. I used a 1/2" NPT to tap a larger hole in the front for an oil temp sensor, because I've read bad things about the current temp sensor location (near the flywheel end of the case) actually reading quite a bit lower as a result of not being in a high-flow area. The new place is directly in the oil flow as it enters the oil pump, so it'd be hard to get a better reading than that!

Drilling and tapping the magnesium was quite easy, actually... in that the magnesium tapped without much force. There were a few places that I had to tap a few threads, then grind the tap down, then tap a few more, then grind, back and forth a few more times until the plug fit the way I wanted it to. There's one hole that I may have tapped just a little too hard and began to mess up the threads, but the plug threads in just fine and seems to have full contact along the entire length and circumference of the plug, so I'm going to leave it.

Now that all of the holes are prepped, I'll pull all the plugs out for another cleaning session. The last step will be to file a notch in each of the plugs so I can swage the case metal into those notches as a final insurance against the plugs working their way back out.

I forgot to take pictures, but I drilled the crankshaft for a couple more dowel pins. When I received it, it only had two, which was probably fine running the prop off the other end, but I'm not comfortable only using two running it with the prop hanging off the flywheel. So I drilled two more holes, reamed them, and tried to put the dowels in.... oops! One of the holes is *way* too loose! So I ordered a 11/32" drill bit blank, cut it down to the right length to be a dowel pin, and re-reamed the hole to be a press fit. This really isn't a bad plan anyway, as it keeps my flywheel aligned the same way every time it's reassembled, and the only extra work I'd have to do on a new flywheel is drill one hole slightly larger.

Upon reassembly of the flywheel and crank, I realized the flywheel is running about 60 thousandths out of true at the outermost edge. Not cool at all. So my next step is to remove the dowels and see if the crank face is out, but my bet is that somewhere along the way some burrs crept up and are keeping the crank from seating correctly. At least, I hope that's what happened... otherwise it's back to the machine shop.