Bill L wrote in Post #7...
>Make sure the wrist pin is free to turn in the rod/piston. If it stays stuck, bad things happen.
Not only that, but that the rod has not glued or cooked onto the wrist pin, side-to-side. For an engine that has sat on its side for a number of months or years, the rod may 'gel' into a lock on the wrist-pin, in the wrong alignment with the rest of the moving bits.
If it has 'glued' it can still turn the wristpin in the piston, but only as far as t'other end of the rod can swing in the bottom of the piston. Crock-pot technique will likely free this up with minimum hands-on, but might just not.
I've done a few engines in the last 50+ years, even had an aero engine shop course in HS, so I feel a bit competent on some of this stuff...
A few engines I've cleaned up, for me or others, had this bound rod problem. At the least, it makes disassembly more difficult, as the rods usually need to slide on the wristpin some to allow the big end to slip off the crankpin. At the most, a well-aligned engine still feels like something inside is not fitting. Freeing the rod/wrist pin fit made significant improvement, every time I found the problem.