The cams went in the freezer overnight so it was a pretty simple job to tap the bearings on to each shaft. That big sprocket makes assembling the cam in the head a little fiddly as it obscures the view of the splines more than the later type. The sprocket nut has a spring detent to stop it coming undone and that added to the general fiddliness of the operation, but eventually it all went together.
I did a bit of a dry run with the points and tacho drive covers but the combination of this big nut and the tighter dimensions of the early tacho drive cause the two to foul and stop the cam from rotating.
I could have taken the dremel to the casting but that seemed a little drastic. A quick search through the spares box turned up a smaller nut which fixed the problem.
Before I put in the rocker shafts, I had to remnd myself which was the bigger of the two locations, so I just put a reamer in the holes and found out which was which.
After that the rockers and shafts slid nicely into place.
It was then time to put in the gasket, knock pins, o-rings and M6 studs before lowering the head into place.
The cam chain that I got from David Silver was a genuine DID endless version and I got some rivet links to go with it. First I had to take the chain apart with my new riveting tool. This came without instructions but I was able to download some for a very similar device. Once all the guides anvils and springs were in place, splitting the chain was easy.
Getting the chain riveted back together in place was a little more tricky because of tight clearance and I struggled to get the tool centralised on each pin.
Eventually I though I had it done but when I looked at this picture, I realised that I had overdone one of the pins and cracked it. The instructions warned of this but I succeeded in proving that it could happen!
I think that's a job for my next workshop session. I'll remove that link and put a fresh one in with a little more care.
In any case, it's starting to look a little more like an engine....
G
