Today I started on the tear down:
The engine's internals turned out to be in VERY good shape. Barely any cylinder ridge, all the bearings where nice, no scratches on any journals - I mean, it barely needed a tear down - but how do you know? You don't - so you do the tear down, check all the parts, do a full cleanup and rebuild it even better than it was....
Of course the 56 Chevrolet is still here, and there's a few minor items left before I can deliver it. This being winter - and the owners not really having anywhere to store it yet - I can take some time to get these items done. Today I detailed the wheels and tires:
In addition to touching up the wheels with some flat black, I cleaned the tires. For the white wall stripe I used Wax and grease remover, which is a light solvent and takes an grease and grime off, then some Spray 9, to make them shiny white. For the black portions I used WD40! This stuff has thousands of uses and leaves a perfect sheen to tires. I see I forgot to take a photo of the entire thing, but will tomorrow.
Lastly, I ran it up again and did some more tuning. This time though I found my exhaust ducting and ran it out the door. You can see that it's nothing more than flexible dryer ducting. It's not very durable, but if you take care of it, it'll last a while - and at $10 for 6 feet, I can buy a lot for what a length of real shop rubber exhaust hose costs, which is about $200. Still, much better than filling the shop with fumes then running it out the wall fan.
Don't forget to check out the website at www.E-tekRestorations.com for lots of "How-To" and some new photo's of Mrs E-tek! ;)
