Hurricanes, the Venturi Effect, and Baking Soda

Well, Hurricane Isaac is coasting by, so Ian and I decided to return to cleaning the block. A week ago, we spent time at the local car wash armed with Simple Green and a stuff brush. We removed lots of crud from the block. We ended up with a pretty clean block. However, it wasn't as nice as we wanted.

I had read about soda blasting and thought this would be a good option for us. Soda (think Arm and Hammer Baking Soda) is a soft media that won't damage the block. However, i can be expensive to have done. I stumbled across this cool article:

http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-on-the-cheap/soda_blaster/

and really wanted to give it a try. So, Ian and I made our pilgrimage to Harbor Freight (how awesome is that place) and bought a blaster attachment for my air compressor. That, connected with a tube stuck in a baking soda box, creates a Venturi effect and blasts the soda out of the gun. Cleaning power and learning physics all in one! Very sweet!

All in all, the experiment was pretty good. It did an ok job, got more gunk off, and was fun! However, the humidity in the air tank caused the tip to clog, and that was a pain in the butt. Plus I'm not sure my air tank was powerful enough. Maybe next time I'll. also invest in a bigger tank.

Down To The Bare Bones

After a month and a half hiatus (summer schedules, vacations, hockey) Ian and I spent Sunday finishing up the tear down of the engine.  Again, Mark joined us for some moral support and mechanical labor when we needed it.  After a visit to our friendly local auto parts store to purchase a cheap(!) $8 pulley puller, we managed to take off the fan, remove the remaining portion of the fan shroud and the engine mount hanger bar.  This left us with the cylinders.  They seemed stuck, but with some judicious but gentle tapping with our rubber mallet, they came free and slid out. 

Now it's time to remove the pins from the pistons and (gently) tap out the wrist pins that holds the piston to the connecting rod.

Ian using a hammer and a screw drive to gently remove the wrist pins 

Once we removed the pistons, we rotated the engine counter clockwise to see if we could use gravity to help us separate the case halves.

I love my engine stand

Without a special tool to split the case, we relied on some good whacks with a rubber mallet on a couple areas on the case that were "tab" like.  We were pretty stoked to see the case start to separate.  Once apart...

How cool is that?

Ian said "this looks like a replica model!" I had to laugh and agree because to this point, none of us had ever seen this far into an engine except for the old "Visible Engine" model (that we never completed - hope that's not a harbinger of things to come with this engine!)  We had successfully gotten to the heart of the engine!  It's amazing how small the engine actually is.

Nope, don't need the mallet any more!

And with the case halves separated, we had a chance for some photo ops.

Split case

And finally, there are always some parts left over..

Boy, I hope we can put this back together. 

Next, we are going to have to de-grease the case something fierce.  It's really grimy. Then it's off to the machine shop to machine for bigger cylinders, full flow oil, inspect for any cracks, and quite probably align bore the main bearing saddles.

I should say, the best part of today was this: Ian and I were quietly standing over the empty engine case, when he turned to me and simply said, "I love you Dad".  Makes this whole descent into madness worth every second.