The Great Bronco Engine Transplant-Small Projects

A week ago, I removed the engine from Ms. Granada. Since then, I have been working at small projects to prepare the engine for transplanting into Mr. Bronco.

I removed some of the accessories and brackets that I will not be needing. Also the exhaust manifolds went away. The big job was working at cleaning the caked on oil and grime off the engine. Using a "eco friendly" cleaner, I worked for two days cleaning the muck off. This left me with a much cleaner engine, but now some rust was showing. So today, I used a wire wheel in the drill motor and scaled much of the rust off. I then painted the engine with three coats of high temp paint. I will be curious to see how well the paint holds up. I could not get to all the rust off nor could I get every bit of oil off.

Also this week, I received one parts order. The radiator and remote oil filter kit arrived on Thursday. This coming week I should receive packages of parts on Tuesday and Thursday. These are big orders and include most of the parts that I need. Unfortunately, the two parts I need the most(oil pan and transmission adapter) are not scheduled to be here until mid November. That's OK. A friend tells me that a project like this is a marathon and not a sprint!

I still had time in the morning for a bicycle ride to the boat where I worked on a couple of small rigging jobs. While waiting for more parts, I will have time to do other things. There is always something going on!

Three coats of "Old Ford Blue" paint.
And before I removed it off the valve cover to paint, I took this picture of the tuning data. Important stuff I will need.