Well, after a bit of measuring I've learned a bit about why the cylinder had a folded gasket under one side of it.
I cleaned the paint and bondo off of the surface that the cylinder sits on and then measured from that surface down to the top of the hole that the crankshaft main bearing housing fits in, and there was a difference of 0.011" between the 2 sides. The side with the cam gear was 5.125" and the other side was 5.136"!
That's not good...
The cylinder had 4 gaskets under it. 3 of them were orange and measured aprox 0.018" thick each, and the fourth one was the folded yellow gasket on top. It measured 0.006", and folded over it makes 0.012", which is about how much the cylinder deck surface on the block is off.
The other thing was that the tapered roller bearings were set up way to tight. It was kind of hard to turn the crank by hand even with the piston, rod, and cam were out of the block. Once I loosened up the nuts on one of the bearing housings, then it got really easy to turn. There was obviously less than zero end clearance on those bearings.
How much misalignment can tapered roller bearings take? If the bearing bores are parallel, but one is 0.011" higher than the other ...?
Or maybe the bores are straight and square with each other and it's only the cylinder deck surface that's crooked. (I think I'd like that better)
Steve,
If you read at
http://www.utterpower.com/kit_engines.htm , the Beta one, two, and three reports explain the purpose of the folded gaskets, etc. Also, hotater (Jack Belk's pages on webshots), have explanations for much of this. Several of my engines have had none of this done, and they run just fine. What I don't know, is for how long! The idea of a 20,000 hour (??) or longer life is much more appealing than one of 2,000 hours.
Have heard over and over again that the Indian Listeroid engine, the way they are set up in India, will not operate more than several thousand hours without repairs.
My 6.2 Gm diesels do OK with their higher compression ratios and higher RPM; I think the lower C/R of the Listeroids, their huge displacement to HP ratio, and low RPM can really make a difference in fuel consumption and reliability.
