That fly cut surface is to rough for mating with the carbon seal.

The lighting makes it look that way but its actually smooth to where you can’t catch your fingernail on anything.

a light lapping with a whetstone will improve it a fair bit.

Hey….what do you know?! ….the CAT distribution center in Denver finally packaged the oil pan gasket up the way they should have the past two times!!!

 

Went through the rocker shafts and cleaned and reassembled them this afternoon. When I pulled the rockers off the shafts a few weeks ago so that I could have the machine shop touch up the tips, I noticed a couple of the oil holes in the rocker shafts had a fair amount of crud obstructing them. So to get things perfectly clean I pulled the little freeze plugs in the ends of the rocker shafts and tried to blow all the crud out with a solvent gun. But the solvent gun wasn’t enough to get it completely clean. I fetched my shotgun cleaning kit. The 12 gauge brush worked great!!

 

Hi, NickyWalnuts.
Good trick, thanks for sharing.

Just my 0.02.

or you could have made a pull through with a bit of wire and some rag. the art is choosing the right amount of rag so its a nice fit.

Hi, trainzkid88.
Personally, I'd back the 12 gauge cleaner if it was a good fit.

Just my 0.02.

Glad you got your gasket set Nick. No more trips to Holt, hanging around that Vanco truck stop anymore!
As thorough as you are, I suspect you have changed the end seals for the decompression rod as well. JM

Juiceman you’re spot on. Since we finally got the head on today, the decompression rod end seal and the o-rings that seal the coupler where the rod passes through the rocker boxes are getting changed out when the rocker boxes go on tomorrow. I noticed someone in the past had globbed on some permatex on top of those o-rings. Wondering if I shouldn’t follow suit….

Some pics of today’s progress:
  
 
 

That’s a first class rebuild coming along right in time for tree digging time.

I remember going over to Wood Colony in Modesto to Driver Nursery and they had a U series D6 elevated just like that digging out trees, I recall they also had what started out as a forage chopper modified to go on it as well to trim everything back down prior to digging.