Ok, got everything back together today. I was feeling pretty good about it; went much lighter on the sealants, had minimal squeeze out. Here are some quick pics:
Looked pretty much like that all the way around the seam. All of the pics are oriented with the right half of the case up; that's the half to which I applied the sealant, so when some of the squeeze out looks like it's above the seam, that's actually just the excess from when I fingered-applied it on the surface prior to putting the case halves together (and thus not indicative of the sealant actually getting squeezed out...). Anyway, the actual squeeze out is minimal, almost to the point of making me wonder if I had put too little on.
I didn't notice any issues while putting the case together or torquing down all of the through bolts and perimeter nuts.
Then....
Defeated!
F* me, the crank is frozen.
Not sure what happened. Looks like I get to tear it apart again.
I threw a couple of flywheel bolts in to try to turn the crank with a cheater bar, just to see how frozen everything was. I could rotate the crank, but it took a LOT of force- not good. I turned it only a few degrees, hoping to minimize whatever damage I might be doing.
I went back and reviewed all of the pics I took today during the assembly, hoping to find something obvious like forgetting assembly lube, or an errant glob of sealant on a bearing or something like that... no luck. I'm afraid either a bearing slipped out of place and got wedged somehow, or maybe my excess sealant the first time around (things spun fine then) somehow masked a bearing tolerance issue... I dunno- reaching here.
I'm fairly sure it's not the oil pump or IMS bearings. If the IMS was frozen, I'd still get a little "click" of movement out of the crank.
So, I'll tear it apart again, and see if I can find the offending part and whatever new grooves or scratches I've created. Until then, any thoughts out there?
Good times. Keeping it positive, I'm glad it's my own motor, on my time. Whatever mistake(s) I made would be hard to live down if this were a customer car!
- Jake