Slow going

As predicted, not much happened on Saturday due to the miserable freezing rain. The sad thing is that I am now addicted to messing with the Galaxie and without my fix I turn into a miserable old curmudgeon. On the happiness front my new water pump arrived and behold the pump in all its glory

I showed it, and the new valve covers to Gene and I could see that he was impressed as he started to ask about the cost and the shipping. I would not mind betting that this time next year there will be two Galaxies in chrome.
The only other thing to report is that I sprayed a small part of the clean block with the AutoZone gloss black and when it dried it looked real slick. This engine is going to look better than new when finished but it is so frustrating that the weather is slowing progress to slightly faster than bugger all.

Bring on the spring.

Not such a clean machine

I think that I am going to have to place AutoZone engine cleaner into the Haynes Manual Hall of Shame. Just like the Haynes manual the promises to clean my 390 were a tissue of lies. I really should have known better especially bearing in mind my recent successes with common or garden oven cleaner. Last night I was truly "Dans merde creek sans le paddle", as we say im Deutsch.

I was beginning to think that these short nights were becoming a pain but then I realized that next week the evenings get longer so productivity will shortly improve. What with only an hour of daylight and the worthless engine cleaner not much got done, although I did discover that most of the paint has gone from the timing chain cover and it has quite a nice aluminum look which I shall leave on the finished product. Whilst in the AutoZone I bought the Silver paint for the exhaust manifold and the black for the block (if I ever get the grease off). I also raised Gene's eyebrows by getting an aerosol of fluorescent yellow for the oil pan. As the oil pan will hardly be seen it seems like a hidden signature from me. Then Gene mentioned that a few guys paint the back of the differential in yellow with a smiley face. Again it is hardly even seen so that might be fun.

Talking of Gene he has been hard at it without me and a fair amount of sanding has been done behind my back, praise the Lord.

Tomorrow's forecast is for wintry sleet and snow with a high of 35 degrees so I don't anticipate being able to write my usual devastately witty blog, sorry yawls.

Is (engine) size important?

So here it is in all its glory, the mighty FE390 (or 6.4 litres to my army of British acolytes). Now I was chatting to Gene with regard to my earlier plans of painting the block blue and he concurred that blue was a perfectly acceptable color and indeed Ford did paint their blocks blue, on the 351 engines. What a horrid thought that people might look under the hood and assume that I had a tiny engine. So black it is, I could not bear the shame of being mistaken for a Cleveland driver.

That nasty rusty mess above the crankshaft pulley is the water pump which I pulled off last night. I was going to service it until I found out that the overhaul kit was going to be $60. So it seemed a whole lot more practical to just buy a rebuilt pump in, wait for it....... chrome. Doesn't that make your girly bits throb in anticipation?

I think that might do it for the chrome, well except for the 5 inch T bolts that I bought to hold the valve covers down, oh and the chrome vent for the crankcase ventilation.

I have to confess to a slight feeling of melancholy at the moment. Everything that I do makes the car look worse. As you can see below the engine bay looks like crap and indeed the car is just a mess. Still everyone tells me that this is the worst part of the project and things will not get to feel better until I start to spray primer.

I am not too sure how much progress will be made this weekend as the forecast is for highs in the 30's. Now I can work in the cold but I don't think that the filler will and I know that Gene won't. At the very least I shall get myself a ton of oven cleaner and clean the engine. It will doubtless be too cold to spray the block so I might just take the bell housing off. Then the clutch can come out and a replacement fitted. I suppose that I should take the flywheel off and check it for any warping, however the clutch takes up fine at the moment (or it did before I took the engine out and deprived myself of the odd illegal burn up the lane.

I will get the exhaust manifold checked for level so maybe before I do I will sandblast them off and see if I can paint them in silver. Black block, silver manifolds and a red pan, that sounds good to me.

Finally look at the poor old Galaxie, nasty filler everywhere (thank you so much Gene) and without the weight of the engine she looks like one of the hip hop things you see in LA.

When, oh when are things going to start to look better?

Nothing to Report

Well I haven't blogged lately because nothing much has happened. I didn't work last Saturday as duty called and I spent the day either in the Coffee House or restocking the Coffee House, merde!

Still I did tackle a task that I thought would be a nightmare and yet turned out to be a dream (isn't that always the way)? My good ol' boys had already told me to change the exhaust manifold gaskets while the engine was out as it was near impossible to do with the engine in. I was fully prepared to end up grinding out the bolts but in fact only two sheared off and the others came out nice and easy. As it happens one gasket was shot and the other was missing. (Once again I am forced to the conclusion that I am not the first to boldly go &etc.).

That is it, that is all I have done in a week. I have decided to paint the block Ford Blue. It is not the correct color (Galaxies had black engines) but the air cleaner and valve covers arrived last night and the badges are in blue (see the picture below) so it is going to look sweet. I shall sandblast the manifolds and spray them in silver.

This is a labor of love.

The Engine is out

Did I ever work. Good Lord I was under, over and under that car all day and what is more I forgot the damned camera again. Sorry yawls I will snap some more on my next trip. Anyway I got the transmission off first just to make the lift easier and then two bolts later the engine was swinging from the bucket of Gene's tractor. As usual the body shop was the County's social center and I was surrounded by good ol' boys with plenty of (good and welcome) advice.

So I will be back underneath to sandblast the front end and then the engine bay. Fortunately the original engine bay color was black so it should be fairly easy to make a nice job of that. Then to clean and detail the engine. It should be black with a gold pan and valve covers but the top is going to be chrome so I figure I can paint the pan anything I want. Maybe even like this in Viking Blue to match the body. The world really is my oyster.



I was going to perform all the upgrades after the car was back on the road but it occurs to me that with the engine out this might be a fine time to replace the generator with an alternator, it will certainly be easier to weld new brackets with the block hanging off a chain.



I really am having way too much fun