The engine is slowly coming together. We’re hoping that it’ll be done by Friday so we can go to the practice event down in Ft. Myers. The drive down will be the freshened engine’s break-in period.
The cylinder head has come back from the Cylinder Head Exchange. We reused the valves as they were all fine. New guides and seals were installed, after the head was surfaced and the valve seats re-cut.
The block has returned from the machine shop. It was hot tanked and bored 0.5mm over.
We’re now waiting for the crankshaft, which is being machined to fit factory undersized bearings to clean up the scoring from the spun rod bearing.
Meanwhile, we stripped off the all of the paint on the AR24 rims that we’re using for autocross tires, including all of the powder coating. This was actually easier than it sounds. After failing to remove much of anything with a bead blast cabinet or a wire brush, we went to Lowes and bought a huge “muck” bucket and 3 gallons of Methylene Choride paint stripper. Pour caustic goop into bucket, put rim face down in goop. Wait a few hours, rinse off caustic goop and the remains of any paint. repeat 3 times. A word of cautio: this stuff will eat through just about anything, including nitrile gloves.
The rims were then taken to John Purner at Complete Custom Wheel. He shot blasted them for a cool “as cast” look and they were sent out to be anodized to retain this vintage look. Anodizing is cheaper then expected, approximately 20 bucks a wheel. Cheap is good as it effectively doubles our investment in these 12 lb. wheels.
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