My bike is a 95 Dyna Superglide FXD. I’m putting my engine back together after having the cylinders bored (but not trued) and installing an EV27, which replaced the EV46 I put in a couple years ago. My dilemma is this, I slid the rear rocker box on 1st and there is a gap of about 1/8” - 3/16” between the rocker box and the head and I’m reluctant to screw the bolts in due to the box breaking, warping or bending the pushrods. As you can see, the rockers and shafts are in the lower box already. I’ve rebuilt 2 other engines and I don’t remember having a gap before when the piston is at TDC on the compression stroke. I’m using stock pushrods, the head gasket is .030 and the heads weren’t decked, lifters are S&S that were in the engine from a rebuild 3 years ago. Somehow that gap doesn’t seem normal. Is something amiss here or is this normal? Thanks in advance

 

1) Did you double/triple check your cam timing to make sure you're on TDC compression stroke?
2) Are the lifters completely bled down and empty?
3) How much have you had to drink?

 

 

1) yes
2) I did not bleed down the lifters, so I’ll give that a shot
3) no alkeehol was involved in the assembly of this engine, although afterwards, absolutely 🍺

 

That looks about right. Pull the 5/16 bolts down alternating.

The lifters are at the top is why it looks like that.

 

Yep, that did the trick. Snugged the 5/16” bolts down, let the lifters bleed for 10 minutes, snug down the bolts again, lifters bleed, one more time and then finally tightened the bolts to 17 ft/lbs 👍. After torquing the bolts, I was able to spin the pushrods. Thanks everyone for your input, I love this forum!