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. 
