made a bit of progress since last year.
took the block out in the driveway, scrubbed it down real good to clean the gasket surface, and to prep the outsides for paint. used like 8 cans of brake cleaner.
taped everything off that wasn't getting painted-
used some eastwood high temp 2k engine paint. i wanted a matte black finish but they didn't have straight high temp matte black, so i got the gloss black and some matte clear.
primer-
black-
peeled the tape off the freeze plugs and a couple other parts and then sprayed the clear, and came out like this-
painted some other parts while i was at it. masterseries base coat, then finished off with some eastwood 2k rat rod satin black and some matte clear in a few places.
throttle body, aac valve, power steering pump-
starter-
vtc solenoid and cam gear-
used some of the leftover high temp gloss black on the turbo coolant fittings, since the blue/red earls theme won't match anything. and used leftover high temp matte clear on the power steering fittings.
trans adapter plate cleaned up and painted-
rear timing plate cleaned up and painted. there's a vacuum hard line that runs behind it that interferes with the greddy manifold that needs to be cut off, so i cut the tube and crushed the ends shut with my press.
started to clean up the oem fuel rail to clear coat it, but underneath all that dirt was a neochrome-looking finish that i like, and the clear would have made it all dull, so i left it. looks pretty cool.
i then started to dig into the head. cleaned it up the best i could.
cleaned out all the spark plug wells-
cleaned all the carbon out of the exhaust ports and cleaned off gasket material from the flange surface-
cleaned out top end where the cams sit-
ended up having to pull the cams anyways to do the seals-
and FINALLY.... threw in arp head studs and put the head back on the block. i used copper gasket spray to help with sealing a little more, figured it wouldn't hurt. then reinstalled cams with new seals.
so as you can see i finally have some engine assembly going on. everything i wanted to paint is now painted for the most part. i just need to get some more things powdercoated, but it's finally starting to come together so i should be updating this thread a little more often.