Winter Projects 2019/20 - Part 2: Cold Grease.

 

 

Dec 28, 2019-Jan 5, 2020. Time to de-grease and clean. It was cold in the garage now, but there was no way I was going to go through all this work and leave grease, dirt and oil behind if I could get to it and clean it.

One of the major advantages of doing your own mechanical work vs. letting a professional mechanic work on your car is that you can choose to invest as much time and attention to detail as you want and think necessary. A professional mechanic (or "technician" as they have decided to call themselves these days) really has no choice in this at all. They must get the car in, troubleshoot if necessary, make the repair and get it out as fast as they possibly can. There's no other way to successfully run a car repair business.

Of course this (hopefully) doesn't apply when you're paying to restore a vehicle, but in terms of repair jobs, whether it's the guy at Joe's garage, or the guy at the Porsche specialist shop, he can't take the time to replace all the worn or mismatched nuts and bolts he sees. If there's a bolt missing, he can't order the correct yellow zinc plated fastener from a specialty hardware supplier and wait for it to arrive. Instead, he digs around in a greasy box for the first used bolt he can find that threads into the hole. Pro mechanics can't stop taking something apart to clean and paint it, wire-wheel the fasteners, de-grease and paint the brackets, or clean and re-fasten the wiring harnesses and connectors. Many wouldn't be inclined to anyway, in fact it wouldn't even occur to them to do so, but that's another issue for another blog entry.

This is where I started. Lots of grease, road grime, and oxidized aluminum. In years past I would have put some Varsol in a spray bottle, doused the area, scrubbed it off, and then hosed it down. Being much more responsible nowadays, I didn't want to make a huge toxic mess. My cat Opie lives in the shop and I have to look out for him. So the method of choice was a spray bottle of Simple Green Aircraft cleaner, at 30% dilution, applied to one small area at a time with a drip pan underneath. A small paintbrush and a small "acid" brush, both with the bristles cut way down to stiffen them up, were used to agitate and cut through the deep grime. Lots of old rags were used to wipe down the cleaned aluminum surfaces until they were dry and oil free. The results were a bit slow to come, but very good in the end. It doesn't look like new, but it's clean and has that nicely aged patina of vintage aluminum engine parts to it. The Simple Green Aircraft also worked great on the wiring.

Opie the Orange Tiger Cat in his role as supervisor.

 

I was really surprised when this lettering started  to appear on the side of the block under where the air-oil separator was mounted. I didn't realize just how much crud was on there - before I started cleaning this area there was no trace of any lettering.

You can see how clean it was going to end up. It just took a few days of work in a very cold garage, with me draped over the fenders, scrubbing away. I went through a lot of rubber gloves during this time! The Simple Green (or any de-greaser) works much better when both it and the part are hot, but I just had to do the best I could.

There was plenty of missing hardware, incorrect washers, nuts, and bolts that had been replaced over the years by mechanics who didn't have the time, or didn't care, to use the correct part. The threaded stud in this picture is supposed to hold a clamp that goes around these two thick wiring harnesses that lead down to the starter. 

Once this area was cleaned up I installed a new stainless steel clamp. Also visible in this picture is a sensor only used by the factory at time of manufacture . I briefly considered removing it but then decided to leave it in place.

I worked from the back towards the front of the engine. At the front, all of the belts and covers, as well as the sprockets, pulleys, and idler rollers had to be removed so I could access the block to clean it. They would all have to go anyway so I could replace the oil seals at all the shafts.

Next time I will clean the front of the engine and begin the cleaning and re-building of the throttle body.