ORIGINAL: Turk1
Your crank/rear bearing is not fully seated.Try to heat the engine,then try to seat rear bearing into case fully.Then you will see your connecting rod will slide out easily from crankpin.
I don't think thats the problem. It was like this new, as I've said before. The rod won't slide to the end of the wristpin on the inside of the piston. Its about 1-1.5mm away. If the bearing isn't in fact seated, then it was like this from the factory. The engine ran fine on the break-in stand this past fall.
The million dollar question is what is the most realistic bearing choice? This thing is going to see some RPMs, so I dont want the bearings to fly apart. It might be optimistic, but I'd like to see 16k from it with the Jett pipe, and 15% fuel on a 10x6 APC. This engine will not see constant sustained high rpms being that its going on an airboat, so do I really need to change the bearings? I would like to find out why it wont come apart, but it does run as-is so maybe just leave it..?