Play in con rods

[burchy75]

Have just split the cases on the K0 engine here to salvage some of the parts for my K1 build. I was hoping to use the crankshaft and con rods from the K0 in the K1, obviously replacing all the main bearings to suit my k1 cases. 

When examining the crankshaft in the lower case there appears to be a fair amount of play in the con rods, left to right in line with the crankshaft itself, is this normal?

I have no history for the engine at all so it may have done 100k for all I know. I just thought I'd ask as this is the first engine I've split (gotta start somewhere I guess) and have nondiea if a little play is normal.

I also wanted to ask about con rod bolts as I've heard that the later model bolts could be used a number of times whereas the earlier bolts stretched once torqued and had to be replaced if the engine was rebuilt, is this true?

Sorry for the newb questions

[Trigger]

It is normal to have about 0.10mm  end float on the con rods.
The torque on the con rod bolts is not worth worrying about, I have never replaced the bolts in 27 years of engine building on the 750 K's.

[burchy75]

Cheers trigger, so all I need to do is make sure to order the correct bearings and just reuse the old bolts again? Have you ever heard of any of them failing at all?

[Trigger]

Yes, I have heard about them failing and seen them fail but, only when someone has over torque them. If you put new shells in then the best way of measuring the clearance is with plastigauge, you torque the nuts to the correct torque to find the clearance and then take them apart again. Are you to replace the bolts everytime you do this ? I don't think so 
Most engine failures are down to owner error or people trying to squeeze more power out of a engine than it was originally designed to do.