At long last the Mk4 engine is back in the frame after a rebuild. When I put the cyl heads on I reused the copper head gaskets which were annealed prior to assembly, but was disappointed that one of them was blowing, so off with both heads in order to fit new gaskets obtained via the club. I was not too unhappy about having the heads off, as I was then able to check the bores, which were fine. One thing does concern me though, is that on the left cylinder (sitting on the bike), the pushrods and valve gear had a bit of oil splashed on them, but the right hand side was more or less free of oil. Fortunately I had coated surfaces with Graphogen so that they were not running dry, but am a bit worried that something may be amiss, although, at the moment am not sure what the problem could be. To put it into perspective, I suppose the engine has been running in short burst for less than 20 minutes and it hasn't been ridden yet, so maybe I need to run it longer. I assume that the valve gear and cylinders are "splash fed" - thoughts any-one? Also, is it common practice to use exhaust paste on the pipes at both cyl head and woffle box joins? Comments gratefully received.
