Thank you Neil and Eddie for your responses. Sorry I realized I did a very poor job of explaining my concern. I will confirm when I put the crank gear back on, but I do believe the "washer" was spinning free behind the crank gear. Does that not seem odd? I did remove the lip seal previous to taking the picture but it was in place properly. Just seems to me the washer should fit tight to the end of the crank...

Hi Team,
as you suspect and as Neil says above, the washer is trapped between the gear and the crank shoulder to seal oil transfer thru that joint.
The gear is a really tight fit and in my experience at The Dealer and beyond we heated the gears so they drop onto the crank with the "S" timing marks on the crank and gear aligned, and a best guess at when the gear has cooled enough the bolts and washer are fitted, and tightened to spec.--the gear is given a moderate hammer blow to a suitable punch to further seat it as it has likely shrunken away from the washer as it cooled. Re-tension the bolts and set the lock.
NOTE :- you must back up the crank main bearing journal web on that side with a tool like shown below or risk stressing the already flimsy main bearing retaining dowel system by putting the blow force thru the main bearing dowel on that side--dowel will be loosened and main bearing moved and the process of excessive end-float that breaks cranks starts.

The tooling shown is part of a tractor linkage found in the scrap pile at Meyer Ranch when Mike and I did a pair of ponies some years back. Any metal bar that is similar and fits between the bigend journal webs as shown will work.
Set the crank on the bar as shown and you should be good to go without stressing the main bearing and dowel.

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Thank you Eddie for the pointers about backing up the crank web. I used a 5/8x8 bolt and ground/ filed the head so I could fit it down there and snugg it in the web. Managed to get most of it together. I checked cam and crank end play, crank bearing clearance, valve clearance. Everything looked ok. I think proper snow will come soon so I wanted it buttoned up and able to push snow soon. I told my wife I would give her tomorrow afternoon off and wouldn't touch the Cat so I worked until 11pm tonight with my headlamp. Heres what the old girl looks like tonight. Also, feel free to correct me but I dont think it is possible to snake the pinion drive in without removing the governor on this unit because it has a Laplante Choate blade and the brace does not allow the clearance- I dont think...It wasn't a big deal anyways and it gave me a chance to clean 75yrs of schmegma out of the housing.

We got 10cm back around Oct 20 and maybe another 10 in mid November and nothing since. About 10cm in the yard and below 0c all day. We often get a 20 to 30cm proper snowfall just before Christmas. I think I will take today off and go on another late night "headlamp bender" later this week and get it all buttoned up.

Hi Mangoman,
add on pieces can add a whole new dimension to how things should proceed and finally end up being.
Well done.
Eddie B.

I picked up that outer seal you mentioned. Any idea where I might find the metal clad seal?  2-A-3686 

I check tomorrow I should still have some

I did find and ordered it.  Thanks