Clutch and brake masters are in. Pedals hooked up. Lines plumb. What's the best and safest way to clean a winters worth of shop dust and grit off an engine?
I don't know if its the best way, but its been pretty effective for me... I move the motor over towards the open overhead garage door, make sure any place where anything could get into the motor was closed off or covered, then I blew the motor off with compressed air. The dry air under pressure seemed to work better then anything else, here in my old welding shop. Most of what ac***ulated was dry dust and small grit metallic grinding dust, so the compressed air worked pretty well. If any of that stuff was oil or water soaked, it was pretty difficult to blow that moisture soaked stuff off. With that, a paper tower with a dab of a cleaner on the towel was used on the stuff that wouldn't blow off. After the wipe down, another round of compressed air was used. When the job was finished, and all the leaks were fixed, everything under the hood got the full motor cleaning detail with the spray on engine cleaner. I should probably point out that any water requirement in my shop would come into the shop with a water hose from outside of the building. My shop does not have water plumbed in.
New stainless is fun to weld. Did you use stainless wire? Most places around here used regular wire, it welds good enough, but regular wire can surface rust on stainless pipe. Depending on the job I was working on, I used both types of wire on stainless over the years. Stainless wire used to cost a lot more then regular wire, some customers didn't want to spend the extra money. Some people want to really squeeze every quarter dollar.
I ended up buying a small 2lb. spool of stainless off Amazon for like $23. It will last me forever. I messed up and didn't read the description on the hanger kit and accidentally ordered plated mild steel hanger stock. I didn't realize it until today. I still used it. It is what it is, not worth stopping progress over. It welded nice and I didn't burn off much of the plating. Hopefully tomorrow I can get back on it and finish it up. Need go throw in some V-bands. I also figured it would be stupid to not put a resonator in there so it doesn't sound like every rice burner did after the original fast and furious movie was released.
The Jalopy Journal
