The first thing Weckman made me do was to thoroughly clean the block using soap, water, cleaning solvent and some compressed air. I spent about an hour cleaning and scrubbing the block and all of the oiling passages. You can't spend too much time cleaning the block and getting as much dirt and metal out of the block before you assemble, especially if the block has recently had any machining done to it. You'll save yourself lots of time and money in the long and short run.

You can't spend too much time cleaning the block and getting as much dirt and metal out of it as you can before you assemble. Especially if the block has recently had any machining done to it. You'll save yourself lots of time and money in the long and short run.

Once the block was cleaned it was time to install the rotating assembly. The Ohio Crankshaft rotating assembly was clean when we opened the box and we just had to wipe it down. The crank bolted right in and while I was doing that job Bill was doing the most difficult and precise work: putting the spiral locks into the piston to hold the wrist pins in and end-gapping the rings.

There are no shortcuts here unless you have some trick tools; we didn't. Bill did these jobs using a steel pick to install the spiral locks and a body grinder and feeler gauges to end-gap the rings. Anyone could possibly do this, but it is tedious, time consuming and you really have to be careful about what you are doing, especially when grinding the rings. One little slip and the ring is trashed. I tried to do this job but after one futile attempt

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Weckman quickly took the tools away from me, apparently afraid that I would injure myself on the grinder or worse and, more probably, screw the job up.

Once we got all of the parts prepped it was just a matter of installing and bolting everything together. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well, it should have been if it weren't for the old Burkster factor.

Once we had the rotating assembly bolted together, we started installing the cam and valve train. The springs that came on our Dart heads were more than enough for our cam. We didn't have to check all of the valve geometry or even use a degree wheel to install the cam. I swear to you that Weckman just pushed the cam into the short block! I asked him if we should get a degree wheel and check it and he said, "What for? I've installed hundreds of these cams like this and they've all worked fine." That was good enough for me.