Rope in the bore enables locking of crank if you haven’t got the special flywheel holder and don’t want to risk breaking any fins off the flywheel. I rotated the engine so that the valves were closed, feed as much rope as I could into the bore and then turned the flywheel cw to feel it lock. I could then torque it to 60 ft lb.
None of the soft keys I bought on ebay were a good fit – they needed dressing with a file first, and I had made sure the slots in the flywheel and on the crank, were really clean.
