The rebuild begins!

I have all the parts except the last piston so decided to start getting things back together again. Started with getting the crankshaft installed. As the bearings are going to be replaced I don't need to worry about the positions of the new ones. 

Guide bearing in position

All upper bearing shells in place, cleaned and a layer of assembly lube added.

Very carefully lowered the crank into the shells and made sure it could move freely. I put a length of Plastigauge on each of the main journals, added the new bearings and caps and tightened the old bolts to the correct torque. 

All were within spec. which is lucky as I doubt whether I could have taken them back otherwise.

I then cleaned off the Plastigauge and put everything back and tightened up the new cap bolts again to the correct torque and angle (50degrees) 

All the main cap bolts in place and torqued.

Put back the rear oil seal cover replacing the gasket and oil seal. Much easier to install using the plastic installation tool.

Put back pistons 1, 3 and 4 making sure the rings where correctly aligned at approx. 120 degrees. The ring compressor I bought from Biltema actually worked! I used assembly lube for the big-end bearings. I reused the ARP big end bolts, it says on ARP's homepage that they can be reused.

Replaced the rear cover plate as I bent the old one.

It wasn't easy to get the flywheel back on and bolted to 120Nm without the engine being in the car. On my own too which didn't help either. Adding the clutch assembly wasn't so bad but could have done with a third hand when centering the clutch plate.

The engine stand is excellent. The extensions I added gives good space for flywheel and clutch.

Front cam chain housing in place with new gasket in between.

Changed oil filter gasket, bush, filter etc.

Oil filter housing bolted back in place.

Hopefully tomorrow the last piston will have arrived so the head, sump, timing chain etc. can be put back on. It's getting to the point where I see light at the end of the tunnel. I'll double check that I haven't forgotten anything.