Well no progress with the car itself.. surprise!
Decided to take action on another front. Pulled the crank, added the main studs, re-measured the bores.. this is a point of contention. With the studs the bores were significantly rounder, only for whatever reason the oil clearance was larger to the median journal size we measured to originally. Makes NO sense.. according to ford they are in to out of spec. According to the rule of thumb of .001" clearance per every inch of bore. They're in spec. So they measured .0018-.0035. The more I check in spots on bearings the crazier I got. I have decided as a machinist in the centerless world, I am way to anal to be building engines. The bearing tolerances are hot garbage.. Anyway rant over. I decided I could be at this nit picking for an eternity so I would just send it.
Then went on to install the crank, measure crank end play. Was .007" excellent. Spins smooth with all if the ultraslick on the bearings. Next I torqued all of the rod bearing bolts. Measured the oil clearances.
All were in spec so I went to work installing pistons rings, while doing this i realized i had installed some rods backwards to the pistons... so i quickly rectified that. Wiped the bores out. Oiled them down and broke out the compressor.
This 3.552 bore taper compressor was by far the easiest part of the install. The pistons went in with little to no effort.
Lubed the rod caps torqued to 22 lb ft +90° rinse and repeat 9 more times and voila.
Making moves, son! Turns over smoothly