Status Update!

I've been laying plans and preparing for the big event at the end of the year. This week has been very productive so far as some of those plans are put into motion. I've itemized below.

- The block is at the machine shop! After some research I decided to try out a nearby independent machine shop instead of the national-chain-opperated one who were fairly pleasant in person but required my pestering them to get the work done after several weeks of waiting... the quality was good, but to top it off the price was a little high in my opinion. The quote from the indie shop confirmed that; $65 compared to $100 to resurface the deck. I hadn't planned this operation initially. The head is a remanufactured one so it's already been resurfaced and the block was low mileage and was well within spec when measured against a straight edge (per the manual, in millions of directions). However, because this wasn't the head that was originally paired with the block I decided it was really best practice to have both freshly machined for piece of mind if nothing else.

So, once it's done and back in the garage cylinders will be honed, rotating assembly installed for real (as opposed to mocked up), oil pump installed for real, head studs installed for real, and everything ready for checks and double-checks.

- The camshaft has been shipped to Delta Camshaft in Tacoma, WA to be reground. After failing to receive any response to my email after three weeks of waiting, I decided to call. I brought up the email and the guy on the phone said he had just been backed up... hopefully just on email replies and not on completing work orders. But that's why I've sent it now to give a buffer of a few months. Upon return I'll check the valve to piston clearance after degree-ing the cam and adjusting the valve lash.

- The chip with a custom basemap from Xenocron is on order. This is really more of a back-up plan incase trailering it up to the tuner doesn't work out. This will also avoid situations like the one I was in last Dec. when the original engine in the car got a case of "rodbearingitis" and left me without a car for 6 weeks. I also have ordered another ECU socketing kit. the first one I had purchased and installed will be used to get my brothers D16Z6 swapped 1990 civic wagon running.. that should be a fun project as well! It should also be done before this one too since he has no other transportation...

There's more. But I wait to included in the next update. A proper update with pictures and things happening and everything!