My case is cracked.
I took the case halves, the crank and the cam down to Old Speed in Paramount here in LA. Russ was very up front- you might even say blunt- that the case was no good. He passed a torch over the area where they usually crack and sure enough, it was cracked. When you put a flame to it, if there's any oil or moisture in there, it will bubble out or at least seep from the crack visibly.
It's only very faintly visible in this still frame- and honestly it was difficult to see in person.
An option is to just use the case anyway. But it had already been line bored several times- to the edge of what is allowable. I left his shop feeling pretty down. He suggested that we use a good case that he has in his stock of used engines. That's a possibility, but he wanted to build the engine all the way up, bench test it and then install it. I know that's a really good option but it comes at a pretty high price. I believe over 5,000 or more.
At any rate it clipped my wings as far as momentum on this project.
Something else that revealed itself was just how chewed up the front quarter panel is on the body. I was happy to finally get it up on the rolling stand. I had grand plans to make a rotisserie but I didn't like the idea of my self-engineered contraption and substandard welding failing and crushing some poor guy in a body shop down in Wilmington. I just removed the complexity and welded the supports to the verticals and it seems overbuilt enough, and high enough that I can get all around it an under it.
But the quarter panel... I've seen some really beautiful threads on TheSamba with folks carefully cutting out the old panel, grinding all the spot welds clean and installing another. I think in a different world I could spend 8 days grinding and prepping and fitting, but even then, I don't have a TIG welder.
I've made some attempts to cut apart and re-weld pieces with the MIG but even with the .023 wire, it's not pretty. It dumps so much heat into the parts, and it blows right through the thin sheet metal. The trick is to just pulse it together with tacks, then add more in between, then more until the seam is closed. But it's so clumsy and ugly compared to what a TIG welder can do.
So the pieces sort of knock around the garage, and the engine parts knock around the garage becuase I can't bear to just throw them away.
But the time will come... I'll get a TIG, and I'll buy a new engine kit, and the bug will continue....