INSTALLING THE CAM BEARINGS

I bought the cam bearings from Small Ford Parts in England. The first problem was what diameter the block has to bored to accept the bearing shells. Small Ford gave me the OD dimension of the shell so I machined a test piece and pressed the shell in. Measuring the ID of the shell I found the ID to be beyond the Ford wear limit for the cam bearings. 

I then contacted a shop in the UK that specializes in Ford side valve engines (  https://www.facebook.com/pg/FordSidevalveEngineServices/posts/ ). They gave a smaller dimension so I made another test piece and found it was too large too. I picked 1.664" as my bore size and shaved .003" off each side of the bearing shell so as to reduce the ID by .002". This would allow me to scrape the installed bearing shell to the correct ID and eliminate the high spots in the shells (poor quality parts).

Here is the shell being pulled in. I machined a plug with a step so that it just fits into the shell and catches the edge. A 3/8" threaded rod screws into the plug and sticks outside the engine plate. A nut draws the shell into place.