Hi All

I've just started work on a Stuart S50 as a first project. All going well so far, nearly had a cylinder boring disaster but managed to save it thankfully and ended up with a decent bore but that's a story for another time!

Now I have the bore sorted I was looking to tackle port face next but I think I might have a bit of an issue with the casting. The actual features of the ports seem to be really deeply recessed below the cast face. I need to take about 3/64 off the face to get to the finished dimension but the cast port features are at least 1/16th below the surface. Looking at photos from other builds all the ports seem to be nearly level with the cast surface.

As far as I can see I have two options;

1/ t's a casting fault and it might be replaced.

2/ Machine off enough material to get a good port face and increase the finished valve chest thickness to compensate. I think I would just have enough material in the casting to make this work and keep the relative spacing between the piston & valve rods.

I couldn't find anyone else that had a similar issue so I'm not sure if this is a common thing or if it really is a casting issue, I was just wondering if anyone had seen anything like this before. Other than this the casting seems to be free of the more common issues.

Kind Regards

Richard