Project Odesseus - K30/C20 Suburban Snowball Project

[cal30_sniper]

POST 5: ENGINE CLEANUP AND PAINT

The block and cylinder heads on this engine were a disaster. Copious amounts of rust on every exposed surface, corroded bolt holes, and none of GM's original paint remaining. I guess that's what we have to look forward to with the new leak-free gaskets they're building motors with these days.





I tried a wire brush and scraper at first, but quickly upgraded to an air needle scaler. I had a cheap harbor freight one before that broke after the 3rd use, so I ordered a nice Ingersoll Rand for this project. It worked like a dream. After getting all the scale and rust off, I chased all the threads, and used a die grinder to smooth the sharp edges of the block left after cleaning all the rust off.



After getting the engine mounted on my engine stand, I wheeled it out, sealed up the orifices, and gave it a good cleaning with oven cleaner and scrub brush to remove the air tool oil and residual surface rust from the iron surfaces. For those who haven't tried it, oven cleaner is an amazing degreaser.



Then I masked it off and treated everything to two coats of Bill Hirsch high temp engine primer:



Normally I'm a huge proponent of painting blocks the factory color, but I had a quart of Bill Hirsch Old's Gold left over from a previous project, and decided to save $30 by using up what was left. I thinned it with VM&P Naptha, added enamel hardner, and shot it from my HVLP gun. Way better than before!