Rock Flute: cylinder rehoning and top end install

I originally started to honed the cylinders with a ball hone but the quality of the finish was lacking and there wasn't really an effective removal of some spots. I went through another 20+ passes with a 3 stone hone and things cleared up much nicer.  I honed until the discoloration from combustion at the top of the cylinder was nearly gone. This was suggested by Mark Paris aka "Hondaman" in his book, as well as a few others I've spoken to. The goal was to remove the lip that is created on the cylinder at TDC. The lip is the upper endpoint of the ring travel.  Once I noticed that the bottom edge of the dark spot had faded significantly, I gave a few more passes with the goal of using the flat stones to blend away any lip that was there. It was suggested to get rid of all discoloration, but since this engine doesn't have many miles on it, I felt I could be conservative with the honing.

In the pictures below you will see that I installed the rings into the cylinder by leveling all of the pistons and clamping the rings with hose clamps. Again, this is another trick I got from a few old heads, Red Good of Cycle One Manufacturing, and Hondaman. Sand the inside of the hose clamps smooth first.  You don't want any small burrs to scratch your rings up.  I assembled after washing the cylinders until tissue paper came out spotless and used only enough oil to prevent the cylinders from flashing. 

In order to slide the rings into the cylinders, just rest the jugs on top of the hose clamps and loosen each clamp a little at a time. Tap on the cylinders GENTLY and the whole assembly will eventually drop over the pistons. What was easily an hour job by hand only took about 5 minutes.

Next came the head. I'm using APE cylinder studs that have already been run. They have already spent a significant portion of time in tension and going through heat cycles. This is important because new studs need to be set and re-torqued for their initial application since they will stretch a bit and loosen their hold on the head. Typically new cylinder studs are re-torqued after a few hundred miles or they are assembled, allowed to sit for at least 24 hours to let them to stretch and then re-torqued.  Even though my used studs have already yielded to their operating length and are ready for final a final torque, I torqued with wet threads to 20 ft-lb and let them sit for 72 hours.

Keep in mind that oiled or wet threads will apply more force with the same torque applied as dry threads. This is because some of the torque applied when tightening a nut onto dry threads is used to overcome the friction between the stud and the nut.

Once the studs have set at 20 ft-lb for 72+ hours, I loosened each nut individually and torqued to 19 ft-lb. I marked the torque pattern on the head and followed this for both steps. The APE studs can be torqued up to 22 ft-lb but I feel this would only be necessary for high compression or turbo applications. Even then its still a lot. To ease the stress on the studs, I torqued to 19 ft-lb with a tiny dusting of oil on the threads.