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Engine Compartment Cleanup

September 18, 2005

In preparation for the engine coming back (hopefully this week), I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning up the engine compartment. I didn't think to take any before pictures but with the exception of the frame sills (they were black with goo) and the engine crossmember (lots of caked on grease), it was decent looking.

Here's the passenger (right) side. The inside of the frame sill has a lot of surface rust on it as does the seam between the inner fender panel and frame sill. Goo (which appeared to be transmission fluid based) was built up very heavily in the rusty areas. The offending aftermarket transmission cooler and corresponding craptacular looking cooler lines are not being re-installed. Instead, I'm having the proper style radiator re-cored and I cleaned up the cooler lines that came out of the same car as the radiator.

There's a slight gray haze to the inner fenders behind the radiator support. This is from overspray from the black out paint behind the grille. This treatment was done to lighter colored cars so body color wouldn't peek out from behind the grille.

Here's a view of the cleaned up engine crossmember and steering linkage. Notice the nice blue haze to the crossmember? The engine was repainted while it was still in the car. Also note the blue wire (upper left, near the blower motor). That should be a dark blue wire with a black connector on it. The light blue is overspray. It would not have been too difficult to unplug that wire and put some newspaper on the crossmember which would have made the engine compartment much nicer. The black spot to the left of the steering column is where paint has come off, exposing the primer.

Here's the driver's (left) side of the engine compartment. The silver box on the shock tower is the horn relay but it should have a golden cad finish (silver is, however, better than rust). The box with the blue label is the voltage regulator. I did get a nice surprise with the battery tray. Once I got all the grime off of it, it actually still had paint on it (I also got a nasty one -- it's held on with Philips head screws!). I also took a few minutes to clean up the washer fluid bag (that's the red bag for those of you that have never seen one before) and wiped all of the wiring and the washer fluid hose down so they look better.

I also found some sort of writing on the blower motor. I was unable to read it but it's something to keep in mind when the car is taken apart for a full restoration in the future. Also, it looks like the blower motor mounting plate was zinc coated. I usually see these done in black. Note the rusty seam and gray haze to the left of the motor. That's where the factory paint is very thin (it's like this on the driver's side as well but there's too much stuff in the way to see very well).

One final thing I want to point out is the kink in the brake line. Inline Tube warns about accidental kinks being duplicated and true to their word, this one was faithfully reproduced. Don't get me wrong, the lines I got from them (both the ones that they had in stock and the one I had bent) are very nice.