Turning the corner!

Today, I think I've finally made the bend around that last corner of the track and started heading for home.  Instead of tearing down, grinding, cleaning and otherwise covering myself in 33 year old carbon, the rebuilding process has begun.  Yahoo!

Here are a few of the piece parts of the engine, detailed and finally in paint.  Notice the oil pan has a rock guard that is spot welded in place?  Other items in the picture are the oil cooler, timing gear cover (with front main seal removed for painting), side cover and harmonic balancer.  The covers were "coerced" back to there original shape after years of overtightening before a soft grinder was used to remove all traces of the old petrified gaskets.

For the pan, no matter how many times I've tried to flush old oil from the gap behind that guard, more keeps running out.  Can't get paint to stick to that!  So, last night I put a "diaper" on it and filled the "diaper" with mineral spirits.  Today, I should get some paint on that.  Here's the "diaper":

Nice new paint!

The balancer and the engine mounts were done in POR-15.  Stuff is liquid armor!

Me thinks the engine and drive train will be ready for replacing into the frame this weekend!  Fingers crossed.