i took the engine of my 92 1200 sportser apart before break and left the jugs, pistons, and valves at the machince shop to be bead blasted, bored, and painted. Any tips or things i should be aware of while putting the engine back together? This is my first time.

 

Buy a book by Buzz Buzzelli called High Performance Sportsters and read it.

 

it's easy as long as you have a manual and torque wrench. if you don't have either of those it will definitely complicate things.

seriously get the manual, it takes you from putting new rings on and how to space them, torque specs for the heads and putting the rockers back on. don't try to re-assemble the engine without a manual if you've never done it before.

 

I have the harley davidson shop manual for my specific bike so I not going in there completely blind, should i still look for other works of literature on the matter?

 

What babalu said and you definitely need a ft/lb torque wrench and maybe an inch/lb, you'll have to check the manual for specs. This forum has tons of great info from guys that have experience doing what you're going to be doing, use the search feature. One thing that you want to make sure you don't overlook is to clean all your bolts and bolt holes of factory loctite and debris that may be on the threads.

 

is it the operators manual or actual repair manual purchased after market? also bring the cylinders to a shop and have them bore them out for you, shouldn't cost more than a few bucks for them to do it. If i'm tearing the engine down I would probably do new pistons and rings anyway. i would also look into getting your heads machined and putting in a big bore kit (if you have the cash), you can put like 20 horse on your bike.

 

I have a tourque wrench in both ft/lbs and in/lbs. I dropped off the pistons, jugs and heads all at the shop before break to be cleaned, bored, polished and wrinkle painted. What I'm more asking is are there any tricks I should know not mentioned in the harley shop manual? Any fluid/grease/ fluid I should get over another?

 

Nobody has mentioned it yet. Use an assembly lube. I prefer a Moly Assembly Lube.

 

As for the manual you can download it online for about $6, get yourself an appropriate sized hose clamp for squeezing in the piston rings while you slip the jug over and down. Make sure you put rags in the cases while you put the piston wrist pins back on. Other than whats been mentioned you just need the torque specs.

 

as long as the the pistons and jugs are at the shop you could pay them to seat and space the rings, lube it up and actually place the pistons in the bottom of the jug so all you have to do is put the pin through the rod and bottom of the piston and put the circlip in. if you're at all apprehensive about a top end rebuild this is really the only spot where you can really cause a major problem. they would probably only charge you $50.00 or so to do it, makes the rebuild a snap.

also when you first fire the engine up do heat cycles, start it run it for 30 seconds and let it cool all the way down. then start it again and let it run one minute and let it cool down, then two minutes. there's many different opinions on how to seat the rings properly, you'll get 100 recomendations on that and that's probably a thread of its own.