Pitts S1C - N738HLast night I started packing up the engine parts to get them ready to ship to the inspection shops. I’m struggling a bit with what all to send so I guess I’ll send it all. I still need to decide what I’m going to do with the cylinders.
To get the gear out of the end of the crankshaft I had to make a tool. It does not want to come out. I’m not sure that I really had to do this. They may pull it at the inspection shop but I hadn’t thought about it at the time so I did it.
I just thought the gearbox cover and the sump where hard to separate. The crankcase halves were going to drive me crazy. I spent the morning taking all the bolts off and tapping on it with a rubber hammer and nothing budged. I saw in the overhaul manual where I needed this “Pressure Plate” to separate the crankcase halves. Six of the cylinder hold down studs go all the way through both crankcase halves. They act as dowel pins and they like where they are and don’t want to move. I took some time, went home to cool off and eat lunch. I looked up this “Pressure Plate” tool and found one for sale for $12,000!!!! They must be absent from their sanity. It’s a metal plate with six holes drilled in it. It must be made from unobtainium. On to plan B. There are some $1000 tools that can be bought for this purpose but that seems a bit out of reach too. After some Googling around I decided to build my own.
Thankfully the local hardware store was open today (Memorial Day) so I was able to get some 1/2-20 nuts to use to make a tool. This is what I came up with…
I had some 1-1/4 x 1/4 bar stock laying around so I used it. It worked but 3/8″ thick would have worked better. It deflected quite a bit, but was able to put enough pressure on the studs that a “gentle” tap with the rubber dead blow hammer was able to liberate the case halves from one another.
I got a micrometer out and started checking what I could. The crank looks great and measures out to be right on the money. I’ll still send it off to have it inspected properly but I’m hopeful that it’ll come back with a yellow tag on it. The cam looks good, no spalling, pitting or corrosion on it and the journals measure out to be within limits. All of the tappets are within limits and have no spalling, cracking, pitting or corrosion on them that I can see.
I may have a good little engine here. We shall see. I need to get it cleaned up, packaged and shipped off. 
I managed to get the sump and the gearbox off today. For some reason they were much easier. I gave the sump one good whack with the dead blow hammer and it came right off. The accessory gearbox cover took a bit more doing. I was able to get some plastic putty knives started in the gap between the cover and the crankcase and I worked them around the edges until it was free.
Everything in the gearbox looks pretty good. It’ll all have to be properly inspected but there doesn’t seem to be any backlash or galling to speak of on any of these parts. There is no corrosion on anything in the gearbox.
I started tearing the engine down today. I managed to get all the accessories off the gearbox but I couldn’t get it to budge.
I also managed to get one jug off. The cylinder walls don’t look too bad but I don’t really know what to look for. There is what appears to be some calcium deposits on the bottom of the valves and the top of the pistons. The cylinders “look” okay but there is some corrosion and I haven’t measured the cylinder bores yet.
I need to figure out how to get the gearbox and the sump off. I’ve beat on them a bit with a two pound rubber dead blow hammer but I don’t want to get too carried away and damage something. It’s late and I’m tired so I’ll go home and do some research. fake watches replica for sale watch replica shop rolex