So, once the oil pan was replaced, the condition of the motor was pretty ugly. Not only had the paint not weathered well, several years ago I had to pull the heads and apparently did not do a very good job of re-installing them. The antifreeze ended up leaking and corroding the heads and the block. Between the paint burned off the top of the exhaust ports, it was no longer anywhere near show quality.
It quickly became evident that the only way to correct the problem was to pull the motor. At this point, there was not really a good reason to leave it in the truck. The first hurdle was to modify the engine hoist, adding 18″ of height to the mast. We also swapped out the hydraulic cylinder with a new air over hydraulic unit to make the pull much easier. It took one day to remove the intake, heads, accessories and brackets from the engine. Once complete, the engine was hoisted out and affixed to a new engine stand. Now we had full and easy access to make our updates. Like everything else, once we got started, it was easy to fall down the rabbit hole. The paint had not held up well on the block and now was our chance to fix that. Starting with the block using a wire cup brush with a grinder, all of the corrosion and paint was cleaned from the motor and re-painted.
Next, the heads were masked, covered and blasted to ensure the metal was clean and ready for paint. They were then thoroughly cleaned, painted and reinstalled with new high performance gaskets. It’s amazing how much easier it is torque down the head bolts on an engine stand versus leaning over the core support and trying to do so with the motor in the truck. The work was definitely worth effort when all was said and done.
