Block update

I dropped the block off for machining on Monday, and picked it up today. Pretty good service I'd say! It looks, well, the same really. With the 0.020" overbore, the new piston sits in there nicely and the valves look to be perfectly ground in their new seats and guides. The ball is back in my court now, just some assembly is required and we'll be good to go. I plan on putting up some pictures after I've washed the block of sand blasting grit and oil, and finished the painting with some Cub yellow.

Some painting

I was going to paint the parts and engine block after the block came back from the machine shop, but because of the eBay delays I decided to go ahead and start the painting now. No pictures yet (I'll save that for when I'm done) but so far the high-heat black paint is on the top part of the block (cooling fins) and muffler. It looks pretty nice.

An eBay experience

I elected to purchase the rebuild kit (piston & rings, gaskets, rod etc.) from eBay -- I found the best price there and figured it's time to try eBay out. The Kohler-genuine rebuild kit was about $200 online (this would have been factory-original parts, my first choice) and the local small engine shop would sell an after market kit for the same. On eBay I found one for $105US; after shipping and currency conversion it ended up being about $140 Canadian.
The eBay seller uses a "blanket" item number for the K301 engine's kit -- you need to use eBay 'messaging' to contact the seller after the sale to let them know the exact overbore size and rod size that you need. Sounds simple. I made the purchase as a 'guest' (didn't want to sign up) but they don't tell you that you can't sign in to the message service with a guest account, you need a full account. Argh. They'd beaten me, so I signed up. Then you find out that the message service is disabled for 3 days after initial sign-up, so I couldn't reply to the seller with the details. What fun.