Lots of hours work, but suffice it to say I've got the engine ready for testing. I'll be going to Ly-Con next week for engine stand break-in and dyno testing. One of my goals for this airplane was building the engine myself, so it was a lot of fun and very satisfying.
I bought an oil pan, accessory case and few other items, like the dip stick from a couple different folks on Barnstormers and then eBay, so those turned out to be good sources. I did strip and carefully inspect the pan and accessory case with dye penetrant with no cracks or deficiencies noted, so I primed and painted them with high temp self-etching primer and paint. As a retired Navy guy, I personally like the blue and gold theme; note my super cool blue oil dip stick. BTW, I used Kleen Strips Ultra Aircraft paint remover, which worked great, although it took about 5 stripping evolutions to get the many coats of paint off of the accessory case. And then I had to wire wheel the oil dip stick with a small wire wheel on my Dremel tool to get all of the corrosion off and down to bare metal.
I did have to make several modifications in the process of eliminating all of the unneeded gear from the accessory case. I don't have a mechanical fuel pump or magnetos, but I did add a B&C 410-H 30A alternator on the vacuum pad, and then their BC700 oil filter adapter. I also have an intake from SkyDynamics, which included mounting their plenum to the original oil sump and then their increasing-velocity intake tubes; it was also gave me the hardest lock wire job I can recall. First I had to torque the bolts, and then safety wire through intake tubes while holding and twisting with very long, thin, pliers, that I ended up buying just for this job, while doing the work via borescope on my iPad made me feel like I was doing remote surgery; it was definitely an interesting challenge, but I'm happy with the work.
Likely the biggest mod to the engine is the SDS EFII system. I mounted the coils on the magneto cover plates to allow dyno testing, but I will be moving those to the engine mount once the engine is mounted on the airframe. I also have SDS's CNC made valve covers and flywheel, which are just cool.
Fitting the intake pipes provided an unforeseen challenge for me as the cylinder head oil drain lines interfered on four of the cylinders, so I bought a line beader and remade those four lines myself clearing the intake tubes. Not too hard, just a twist in the process.
My engine has a crankcase from an TIO-540, then a crankshaft from a D series, new Superior cylinders and then a whole list of either overhauled or new parts. Once of the more interesting things was fitting up the governor drive gears with the thrust washer, which involved installing the gears on the shaft first, measuring the gap and then buying a thrust washer that provided clearance per the manual, which is 8-16 thousands; I ended up with 0.010" using a 0.063" thrust washer.
My exhaust system was custom made by Vetterman for me after I shipped him my intake to fit up; it's a 3-1 for each side with a collector/exhaust tail that built to fit my ShowPlanes cowl. Hopefully it has a nice rumble.