White Metal Bearings

[David Stepney]

Provided the engine doesn't exhibit any weird noises and runs fairly sweetly, I would tend to leave things alone until something goes wrong.  The bottom end of a standard engine is quite long lived. My own car has done 112k miles (believed genuine) since new and is still running on its original crank and rods. The last time I had the engine to bits was two years ago, to fit new pistons and the bottom end looked to be in good condition then. I too had a slight amount of movement in the  big ends , which I corrected by judiciously filing the caps until I had about a thou radial clearance to make sure that the oil had somewhere to go.

I have done about 8K miles since then and all is still well.