A quick glamor shot

Over the past few days I've been scrubbing up the parts that didn't make it to the machine shop for cleaning, and painting a few of them. For your enjoyment, here's my valve cover as it is now:

The lighting was poor so you can't tell that it's not black, but Duplicolor "Cast Coat Iron" engine enamel. It's the same colour as the block is, and the intake manifold will be.

The joys of cleaning aluminum

After being quoted $50 per part for bead blasting, I chose to clean my parts myself. The intake, water pump, and the alternator/AC bracket are cast aluminum and were all pretty grimy.

When disassembling the water pump I snapped one of the bolts off in the housing. Yay. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

No longer headless

I finished up with scrubbing and painting the oil pan, so I put that on today so I could flip the engine upright again without making a huge mess. I think it looks much better than it did before, don't you? Its oil-containing ability is also much better.


After flipping the engine upright I chased the threads for the headbolts with an old headbolt (re-using these bolts is usually not recommended unless you like changing headgaskets and planing heads on a regular basis) which I cut thin slots into with a Dremel, and after oiling the bolt ran it in to each bolt hole, unscrewed it, cleaned it, repeat until I could thread it in and out all the way with my fingers and the bolt comes out clean. I removed a bit of rust from 4 of the holes, the others came up clean.

This is the last time the pistons will see daylight. I love the reflection on the cylinder walls.

The head went on today as well, I used a Mopar Performance "2006" headgasket and Mopar Performance headbolts.


The manifolds didn't go on today like I hoped because the intake is being more difficult to clean than I thought. Tomorrow I think I'm just going to try a powerwasher on it. I know I could still just slap it on and run it, this isn't a show car, blah blah blah... but I want it to at least be clean and nice looking when I get it all together the first time, so it will be easier to keep clean later.

Drawing ever closer...

I ordered my fuel pump today, the online vendor I was planning to buy it from put it on sale for $23 less, I had to jump on that.

More work, again no photos

Okay, I really did intend to take the camera with me tonight but forgot. It's really too bad since I never did get a shot of the bare head as it came back from the machine shop, it did look quite impressive. Tonight I was going to put on my freshly welded up oil pan (thanks Mr. D!) but when I opened the trash bag it was in I realized I had forgotten just how grimy it was (along with the rest of the engine originally) so I set to work degreasing it. I probably should shoot some paint on the welded area anyway to prevent rust. That proved to be quite difficult, and as I left it to soak in degreaser I started to assemble the head.

Starting resulted in finishing. I get carried away so easily.

Progress continues, sans photos

Today I made some good progress, I'm back up to having a shortblock. No photos, was too busy assembling and besides, my hands were too oily to handle the camera.

Slow and not all that steady

Well, my progress has been halted by 1) waiting for a replacement rod bearing to arrive and 2) things in life beyond my control. Both of those are now out of the way, maybe I can actually get working on this thing.