[ricconhan]

​Update on adjusting rods and mains,

Well when we dropped the pan I set it on the bench to investigate the bottom and almost had a heart attack, I pulled 3 chunks of lead ( approximately 1" X 1/2" ) out of the dipper tray and immediately went to see where the hell they came from. Remember, this engine as I was told was fresh rebuild, although the gent I bought her from only bought it to flip trying to help out the older gentleman who's 85 years old and trying to sell his collection, so I'm getting info 2nd hand. So I called the 85 year old fella and he couldn't remember why he swapped engines, but the one in the car was bought from someone who supposedly rebuilt it.
Long story short, whoever rebuilt it did some things great and others to make me scratch my head. When he balanced the rods, instead of using the lightest as your baseline, he used the heaviest and added lead to the rest which obviously didn't work out too well, thank God I followed my gut feeling to have a look see before we had a bigger mess, we pulled the head and rods and pistons to balance correctly, on the upside all the babbitt looks good, we've removed 1 shim from each of the mains and have perfect clearances. We've removed all the lead from the rods, haha he must have run out of lead, one rod actually had a piece of steel tacked to it, and are balancing everything. One of the pluses, someone counterbalanced the crank.
This engine will get me thru the season and this winter the spare/original engine is getting rebuilt by "MY" rebuilder. ​​​ ​ ​ ​​

1st picture, lead in rod at top.
2nd picture, where there "was" lead that ended up in splash tray.