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As it turned out, keeping at it worked out.  I got the spacer on in line with the key but not on all the way.  He had had the same problem and Sonex told him he could drift it on with an aluminum work piece. I used a piece of scrap angle that applied pressure in two spots at a time. Working slowly, it went on in just a couple of minutes.

Since the piece was so small there was very little warming of the crank, so I kept going. The next piece was the heated distributor gear and it went on easily. The Aerovee doesn’t need a distributor so the gear is just another spacer to hold the cam gear in place.

The next pieces, the snap ring, number one bearing, oil slinger and a small woodruff key for the prop hub are unheated and all went on quickly and easily.

Time for the prop hub, it slid right on. I could feel it starting to bind just as it was about to reach the oil slinger.  I grabbed the block of wood, gave it a whack and it was on solidly up against the oil slinger.

I quickly started the large prop hub bolt and used my new impact wrench to drive the bolt home.

It was all done.  Here are the pictures Kathy took while Bobby held the crank and I assembled the pieces.