RE: Welcome to Club SAITO !
Last week I was at BLW's house and he was putting bearings in a Saito 80. The engine was only about 4 years old and the owner had too many engines for it to be used a whole lot.
There was absolutely no rust in the engine (The owner uses Omega with 2 oz of caster/gal added) but the cage of the rear bearing had destroyed itself inside the shields. Little metal parts were shining all in the engine but no damage to the cam or piston/cylinder wall. It was a particularly hard engine to change the bearings in because the case was tight on the bearings but he finally resorted to the oven and they came out. There was slight damage to the bottom of the rod and inside the case where they had hit due to the bad bearing but he cleaned the mess up up and washed every thing in detergent and then oiled the parts. The new bearings came from the local industrial supply store in town and cost $11.40 plus tax. The new bearings went in just as hard as it was to get the old ones out.
Barry set the valves and ran the engine on the test bench at the owner's house. The engine seemed just fine. The owner was pleased.
While in the area I went to another guys house who had a old model Saito 72 that had never been run. When he started to run the engine, it seized up. When disassembled, the rod had frozen onto the crankshaft. After some struggle we got the rod off the crank and naturally it was galled in the big end. I worked with the rod with clean oil and a rag putting it on the crank pin and twisting until it seemed to be free enough to run. We ran it for a couple hours on the back porch railing and it seemed to be fine. I got the engine running without having to wait for a new rod. The moral to this story is that you should not buy an engine and let it set around for 7 years before you run it. The warrentee expired about 4 years ago.