Engine rebuild status: Complete, however I have very few pictures, I will try and get the engine out tomorrow and get some pictures to post of the completed assembly.
This engine rebuild was beyond a night mare, plus beyond expensive. Anyone who has one of these Tornado 230 Jeep/Keiser engines, unless you want to stay original like I did, I would recommend repowering with something else if you are in need of a rebuild.
Stop reading here unless you really are bored or care about some of the issues I had and the recovery from them.
The issues:
The rod bearings are what I will call left and right, 1, 3, 5 has tab on one side 2, 4, 6 has tab on opposite side. I had five rods in, no problems, went to install sixth rod and found the bearing in the box had been switched and I had a left bearing where I needed a right bearing (box was a right bearing box). My engine machinist had ordered these bearings a couple years ago, we had no luck finding the correct bearing. I purchased the bearing for the flathead engine, which is the bearing they use now, however they are wider and I just didn't like how they fit on the crank. So, my machinist friend made a jig to place the tab on the bearing in the correct position and remove the incorrect tab by compressing by tightening the bolts on the rod, all measured good and bearing went in great. Oh, also had to drill a new oil hole in the bearing.
Rod nuts, these are one time use type (yield at torque). Figured this out after I had already started build, so had to order nuts, more time wasted. Got new nuts (same ones they use on the flat head six engine). Torqued to 40 ft-lbs in increments, this went great, then when I went to the max torque of 45 ft-lbs they yielded wayyyyy more than I was comfortable with, so I found some better new nuts which worked well, but more time wasted.
Now the worst issue, there are two aluminum filler blocks between the block and the pan at the front and rear of the engine. The aluminum used is of a very soft alloy (read - threaded holes strip very easily). So, this engine is known for it's oil leaking and there are specific assembly sealing products and uses they recommend. So I had to go find these products and used them liberally. The oil pan was well sealed to the filler blocks and the block itself. Well now I go to install the front plate which has four bolts which thread into the front filler block (yes I used a torque wrench to verify the correct torque, just a few inch-lbs (like 12 or 15). Well two of the holes stripped out, it appears that when this engine had been worked on in the past someone over torqued these bolts and had already yielded the material. So what do you do, I did not want to tear the oil pan back off so I thought, thread insert. Decided to install thread insert in all four holes, two of which are blind and two of which are open to the internals of the oil pan. Installed all 4 worked great, had a technique where I used grease in the hole for the open holes and vacuumed it out every little bit of drilling and tapping to keep the aluminum chips from getting into the oil pan, worked great. Then after I installed the insert I used dental floss tied to the insert tang to retrieve it from going into the pan when it was broken off, worked great. Then I used to long of bolt and the end hit the bolt head of the bolts holding the filler block to the block, this caused one of the bolt holes that had the thread insert to strip the insert out. %^&* what to do now, well there was room to upsize to the next bolt size so I installed the next size insert, worked great, until I went to break the tang off, guess where it went after the floss came off, into the oil pan. Oh ya, these are stainless inserts, no magnet can retrieve that small piece of metal that could destroy an engine in a heart beat. Well you guessed it I had to tear the oil pan off, clean up all the gasket surfaces, buy new gaskets, and start over. Found the tang sitting in the oil pan so that made me feel good that I did retrieve it. I have a spare parts engine so I used the front filler block from it, but before installing it I installed four new thread inserts, just to be safe, on the bench. I then cut the bolts to the correct length and reassembled, worked great, but this process took weeks to recover from, some time was waiting for parts, other was getting over the frustration.
Another thing I did prior to rebuilding the engine was I ground some relief into the bell housing. This engine requires the flywheel to be installed onto the crank prior to installing the crank, and this requires the bell housing to be installed on the block before installing the crank. I did not like this concept so I was able to grind a small relief around the bell housing so the flywheel (and bell housing) could be installed after the crank was installed. This also allows removing the flywheel from the engine without disassembling the engine (to drop the crank down).
Another thing, these engines had the front pulley replaced with an after market pulley with NO timing marks. Someone had drilled a hole at I believe it was 15 degrees as the timing mark, however it was very crude. I have an engine from a car and it had the original pulley, my machinist was able to bolt the two pulleys together and cut properly indexed timing marks into the edge of the pulley.
One other thing to keep in mind if you ever work on one of these engines. I had to use the crank from my spare engine, it was a 62 version and the engine is a 65 version, well the keyway for the front pulley on the 62 version is further inboard, so I do not have full key engagement on the pulley, as I did with the original crank. However there is plenty of key engaged in the pulley. Just a FYI.
Pre assembly, parts ready:
Modified bearing:
Jig used for creating new tab and repositioning original tab:
Start of assembly number one:
The four lowest bolt in this photo are the ones that thread into the aluminum front fill block:
