Part 4
Catching up on progress since my last post.
When I first bought the car it ran like crap, and for good reason. The engine had about the worst collection of cheap, mismatched parts on it imaginable. I spent a couple of years getting it to run well, except for an exhaust leak I could not find – then I took the car apart. While the car was out being painted, I turned my attention to the engine. A leakdown test showed less than 4% leakage on any cylinder, so a full rebuild wasn’t in the cards. I would have just cleaned it and repainted the sheet metal, but the pushrod tubes were so rusty I was afraid one would spring a leak, so I took the heads off and replaced the tubes. This is where I made a disappointing discovery about the engine. The paperwork that came with the car showed that the engine had been rebuilt, and from the invoice it looked like it had been done properly, with case savers, align bored, new heads – all the good stuff. Upon inspection it did have case savers and new heads, but it looked like it had been assembled by a monkey. The special cylinder head washers were mismatched, and some of them looked like plain old hardware store washers. The nut on one of the case studs was cross threaded and only held on the stud by a few threads, but he kept cranking on it and drove the stud clear through the case. Worst of all, some knucklehead had painted the crankcase. Most of the paint had flaked off, but what was left was on tight. None of this stuff was a game changer, but it undermined my confidence in the engine.
By the time the car came back from the painter I still wasn’t finished with it.
I don't have any pictures of the engine as it came with the car. Here I've already replaced the distributor and carburetor with proper German parts. It still has the corroded, ugly alternator.
This is the original crap that was on the engine. Brazilian Brosol carburetor meant to be on an auto stickshift car, Brazilian knock-off of a German Bosch 009 distributor, Chinese knock-off of a Brazilian fuel pump, Empi coil, and a fuel filter in the engine bay. ALL WRONG.
After removing the engine I gave it a good scrub down. When I replumbed the house I ran hot and cold soft water lines to the garage. I soaked the engine in grease remover and blasted it with 140 degree soft water. It took off all the grease and a lot of the paint.
Then began the tedious task of scraping off the remaining paint on the case.
I blasted the parts that would fit in the blasting cabinet with aluminum oxide. The rest had to be cleaned with wire brush. Coats of etching primer and primer sealer went on under the satin black paint.