All the parts have now arrived for the rebuild of Hana-chan's injection engine so it's time to start putting them together. Mini engines are best built from the bottom up. I completed the gearbox overhaul with a new first gear, bearings and baulk rings and the differential was also given similar treatment with new planet gears, diff pin, thrust washers and bearings. I did not refit Hana-chan's crown wheel though. As she is an SPi Mayfair her final drive ratio was 3.1:1 so I used 98-kun's Rover Cooper crown wheel and pinion gear which has a 3.21:1 ratio. Not much difference really, just a wee bit quicker up the gears I hope. Hana-chan's engine block was bored +0.020-inch, making her 1293cc. This was done at British Garage Downton by Tatsumi Okamoto, who also balanced the crankshaft and flywheel and fitted the new Omega offset-dish pistons for me. He kindly left me to fit the piston rings: an intricate but very satisfying task as you see parts taking shape once more. I followed his advice too and used ACL bigend bearings, main bearings and thrust washers to complete the crankshaft and conrod assembly into the engine block. I applied 15W50 Gulf mineral engine oil to all the bearing surfaces before torqueing and re-checking every bolt. With that done the Isky-type camshaft followers were popped into their respective holes and the camshaft inserted. After bolting the gearbox to the engine block, Hana-chan's engine was ready to be turned the right way up.
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