Hello,
Today, I learned enough to answer some of the questions I asked earlier
concerning the offset wrist pin.
I stopped by a local garage that works on British cars, and specializes in
MGB's. As luck would have it, the owner had a set of new Hepolite pistons
still in the boxes. None of the pistons had an arrow on them, but each one
had "front" stamped on it. Like the pistons in my friend's engine, the wrist
pin is offset toward the distributor side of the engine. The mechanic was
just as puzzled as I as to why this is. He was also amazed that in the
twenty-plus years he has been working on these engines he never noticed the
offset. One thing we came up with to explain the offset is the possibility
that the crankshaft is offset from the center of the cylinder bore, but he
didn't have a block we could check. Anyone care to look in to that? Any
other ideas?
Bottom line here is that the the pistons in my friend's engine were installed
properly, in spite of the rear-pointing arrow. The con rods were also
installed properly, based on the location of the cylinder oiling hole. In
other words, we could have left things the way they were, and everything would
have been fine!! Oh well, at least we learned something......
Thanks much to those who responded!
Rich Rock
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