Did a little tinkering on the 1988 Sportster engine this weekend. Got the cams cleaned up and the tappet guides, lifters, and pushrod covers installed. The oil pump is cleaned up and installed. Everything has new gaskets. Also, did a bit more cleaning, man there is a lot of nasty crust on this thing but it’s starting to look better.

Installed the cam gears with the timing marks lined up.

Tappet guides and the pushrod tubes and covers got new o-rings. The oil pump got a new gasket. All of it is cleaned up, lubed up, and put back together.

The tappet guides did not have any of the stock bolts so I used 5/16 x 18 x 1″ button head bolts in place of the stock socket head screws and washers. Also replaced the bolts mounting the oil pump with new 1/4 x 20 x 2 1/2″ socket head screws.

I spent a fair bit of time working on cleaning up and polishing the cam cover. Just so you can see what I was working with here is the before…

…and here it is after a bit of sanding and polishing.

Still a bit of work to do on it but it looks a lot better than it did. Basically I cleaned it up with using a couple Scotch-Brite green scouring pads, then sanded it with 320 grit sand paper, then hit it with 400 grit, then a once over with 600 grit, and finally 800 grit. Then used some Mother’s aluminum polish to polish it up.

Only a little progress, but progress is progress. I should hopefully have a frame in a couple weeks. Will keep tinkering till then.