<VV> Engine Rebuild

[rchivers at tampabay.rr.com]

Hello all,
      Well after 30K miles on the top end the 65 vert (95hp PG) started making a heck of a knock down deep in the engine.  We pulled the powertrain out and opened the engine up.  No obvious metal flakes or shavings anywhere to be seen.  Rolled the engine by hand and put a compression tester on each cylinder, and each cylinder had some type of compression reading (typically about 20 lbs which did not seem too bad for just rolling it by hand one revolution).  This was at least enough to make me think that all of the valve seats were in place.  We replaced a head about 500 miles ago on the passenger side do to a dropped seat.  No knock or stuck points were encountered as we rolled the engine over.

     Finally reached in and grabbed each of the rods and tried to move them on the crank. Four out of six felt ok, the fifth was slightly loose, however the last one (#3 cylinder) had .020 - .030 slop in it.  We pulled the rod cap off and as you would expect the crank journal is scored.  The thing that really surprised me was that there is no evidence of a bearing ???  There is significant wear on the cap at the center to about 1/3 up the arc on both sides.  Could someone have assembled the engine without a bearing in number 3 ??  The engine has always had a little rod knock, but never anything major until this episode.  Could the bearing just have desintegrated leaving no traces behind ??

     Well will be pulling the engine down for a full rebuild, guess the first step is to get the crank over to the shop and see if they can save it.  Scoring doesn't look to deep maybe .005 to .010 ....  Never been into a bottom end on one of these before, should be interesting.  Pistons and cylinders were right at the max clearance when top end was rebuilt last (30K ago) guess will probably have to move up to .010 over this time ...  

     Any thoughts, suggestions, or things to look out for would be appreciated !!!