Cannondaleriders

I put in my piston and sleeve and to my horror I saw that there is a gap to one side of the piston to the cylinder wall. One side of the piston is right against the cylinder while there is a gap on the adjacent side!
The reason for this rebiuld was a dropped valve. Could my connecting rod have bent on the upward stroke trying to compress the dropped valve?

Please help...I kinda know what this is leading to...more money!, which right now i can really not afford. but hey hopfully i just installed somthing wrong

THANKS!

That piston might simply be favored to one side now, but should equalize after just a few revs with a normal crank.
The rod is 18mm wide, but the underside piston gap for the rod is like 24mm, so the left-right gap can be uneven until the motor turns over a bit.

But true, if the rod is actually bent, then you could have a "tilt" instead of a mere horizontal shift.
I would compare the piston surface to sleeve-rim distance of the left and right sides, at both top and bottom of the stroke. That should indicate if you have a problem or not.
You can also spray WD40 in the bore and stroke the motor with the flywheel nut several times, and see if the piston scoots back to centered. If you cleaned any "sticky" off of the wrist pin when you installed it, and lubed it, then the piston might shift to where it wants to be, and maybe without actual compression explosions.

Is the sleeve completly down into the case because the could be cocked a little. You can use a sleeve press plate or I've used a block of wood (2x4) with a big hammer to set it down into the case. Then take a measurement with the piston at TDC on both sides of the piston directly over the wristpin and see what the differnce is, someone else should be able to tell you how much is acceptable. If it is bent you can usualy have just the rod straightened which Timbomoose can do since he has done it to mine when I put a piston in backwards and dropped a valve in 10 minutes idleing

if you dropped a valve then yes, you may have bent the rod. did you check it out?

Yes the wrist pin. rings, sleeve etc. was all pre-lubed with oil before I installed them and the sleeve was all the way down. I also did crank over the piston a few times with a wrench but nothing, still has the gap.

How much does timbomoose charge for a rod straighting? Also how much $ for milling out the sticking buckets? I need my buckets done too, and if I'm going to send one part out, might as well send both out at once.

thanks

Does the crank have side play??? Maybe the crank isn't seated all the way into the bearing or something, causing the entire crank to be slightly off center?

i will check that!
thanks

Do you have the bearings AND races on the crank? Ive seen a dealer forget to install a race . Do like Mydreamride says and check piston protrusion. It looks like yours is bad enough that it will be clear without measuring. It only takes a few seconds to do. Any bend in the rod is bad and will lead to oil burning and more dropped valves. It can be repaired .