Aggravation

The day started out great, Scott came by at 9 and I had everything ready to assemble the cylinders. We had all 4 installed and torqued by 10:30. It is finally starting to look like an engine.

We then set about measuring the cold tappet clearance so I could order oversize pushrods if required. The manual limits are 0.030-0.110, I did not have one within limits mine ranged from 0.117 to 0.161. I figured I needed 3 pushrods +0.030 and 5 at +0.070. I had a plastic tub full of pushrods so I set up this rig to measure them.

 It was surprising how close they all were to the same length.

I had one + 0.030 and one +0.070 pushrod in stock so I installed these on each cylinder just to make sure I could get them all within limits. This is where things started to unravel. I noticed some unusual binding when the oversize pushrods were installed in some cylinders. Notice anything in this picture?

The original Continental pushrod is on the left, the Superior +30 pushrod is on the right. Notice that the Superior one is slightly larger diameter at 0.440 opposed to 0.378 for the original. The problem occurs in here.

Here is one of these castings removed from the engine.

Notice the small tabs cast into the two holes. These are supposed to prevent the lifter sockets from being able to come out of the top of the lifter body. Anybody that has had that happen knows that these do not work as designed. Here is the other side.

The problem is that these tabs contact the larger diameter pushrods just slightly causing an alignment problem 12 inches farther up where the pushrod contacts the rocker arm. I had noticed this wear once before on the C-90 on my Trojan but never put 2 and 2 together. I called the expert, Don, and they grind this tab down a little before assembly.
  This all means that tomorrow I will get one more chance to get into Andie MacDowell's pant's  as I live today all over again. The cylinders will come off, these covers get modified and it all goes back together. Not sure it will all get done tomorrow since the temperature is supposed to break the century mark tomorrow. Helpers are hard to find when it gets that hot, and I can't install the cylinders without help.