rookie mistake
 

I can't believe how stupid I can be sometimes.

after countless hours cleaning my case, and reading the section in wayne's book on assembling the bottom end every night for about the last 3 weeks I got the bottom end all bolted together today. everything went quite smooth.

then...when I was cleaning up I looked in the bag from the gasket set with all the rubber seals and O-rings it hit me...I didn't put the seals on the top of the oil pump.

it looks like I'm going to have to strip it down to the bare case to clean the loctite off.

I'm going to go a lot slower next time.

Wow, I can imagine how that must be frustrating, as I am just starting the process, this is exactly the sort of thing for me to keep in mind! Thanks for sharing.

Derek

chances are you dont need to clean all that loctite off the case. The factory manual states that this procedure is acceptable when rebuilding. In your case it should be fine since the new application of Loctite is going to dissolve the prevously hardened part. But then again if it was me I would most likely not want to take that chance and end up with a leak out of the case seam.

Sorry to hear that. Keep going and be happy you discovered it now rather than at the point where you won't get enough oil pressure on first start.

Ingo

the most humbling part about this is when reading wayne's book he points out that before mating the case halves to make sure the timing chains are installed. when I'd read that I'd always chuckle to myself and think "who'd be that dumb?" now I guess I know!

thanks for the encouragment guys. I can't tell you how bummed I was when I realized. I was sooooo proud of myself for about 5 minutes.

No biggie. Be thankful you caught the problem now, before you started the engine, ran it, and had unexplained oil pressure problems...

-Wayne

No kiddin'. The old stuff should come off easily. Also, JW advised me that, just as you're putting the case halves together, at the rear of the engine, with the halves an inch or so apart, you can shine a flashlight in there to see if the oil pump seals are going to make their connections properly.