Ok gang...
   After over 5 weeks of waiting on various suppliers, my micrometers arrived on my doorstep Monday - four Outside "mitutoyu" style micros covering 0-4". Yay. Had a family member in the ER for a few hours since then, and didn't rightfully have a chance to mess with things until this evening. I took the time to mic. and scope gauge/mic all the applicable parts of the rotors, bearings and housings and jotted my numbers down. Observations included the following...

1) the Eshaft is at maximum allowable dimensions with regards to diameters. I am interpreting that as "like new, no measurable wear". It appears true and straight.

2) I may have introduced some error into my measurements by using the telescoping gauges and then measuring those with mics... because my calculated clearances on 3 of the 4 bearings were a smidgen under the minimum allowable of 0.0016, and there were (or should I say HAS BEEN)  NO signs of abnormal wear on the babbit that you would expect with a tight journal bearing.

3) the side housing face wear was a fraction (1/4) of the allowable amount... not new.. but clearly not excessive.Clearly visible wear marks where they should be, but the numbers arent bad at all.

For those of you who missed the original story, this is the 1st of a batch of 3 (three) 2nd gen 13B turbo II cores we bid on, from Ebay, and won for $710. We then spent another 80 bucks max on gas for a road trip and had the engines home within 24 hours. I had made statements to Chris that visually, the first engine looked like a good rebuild candidate, I just didn't have the proper measuring tools to prove it. Now that I do, I am VERY pleased at the prospect of having a rebuilt engine that truly is near LIKE NEW tolerances.  And I haven't even knocked the dust off the other two cores/engines yet.

Chris Barber, the airframe builder, and our mutual friend Russell, came by the house today after our first "boys night out" together in quite a few weeks and showed Chris my handiwork... the workbench, the tools, the sand blasting booth that I threw together. He had seen inside an earlier engine we had elected to return, and he marvelled at the end product I had laying in pieces.

I intend to go back over my measurements (remeasure) my bearing min diameters tomorrow as I am quite exhausted today/tonight and may simply have some error using the telescoping gauges. Next step after that is to get the rebuild kit and begin the process of putting this jigsaw puzzle back together for good. I currently am awaiting arrival of some street porting templates, and need to go by Chris's to grab a junk engine core over there to practice on before I try to port out this first clean engine. Then time to start planning/shopping for intake/injector/turbo components. This end is hopefully starting to come together after much too long a delay.

My question for the masses.. with regards to piping and tubing, what are the recommendations? Automotive or aviation flaring tools for flared fittings (pro-con on this one)? Firesleeve or braided? or firesleeve over braid? Welded, tapped or clamped fittings/hoses for the various plumbing?

Dave Staten
13B turbo II rebuild
Velocity N17010 (reserved)