There's no place like Kansas (beige)

Ive been silent, but not idle. As long as I have the engine out, I wanted to do something about the engine compartment. Its got a ton of scratches from previous work and is quite rusty.

Given that one day I intend to strip and rebuild, I dont need it to be perfect. I just wanted it to look ok and stop the rust.

Coleoptera Primer

Transform and rolllll out

I had hoped that I could find an off the shelf color that was close enough, but none were even in the ball park. So I ordered a spray can of Kansas Beige L91D from PaintScratch.com. Considering the age of the paint, its a pretty close match.

After the paint was done I started threading the rubber gaskets back through: the engine hatch gasket, the engine gasket, and the transmission gasket.

The hatch and transmission gasket slid right in, just needed some patience to work them through the track. The engine gasket would not go at all. The track is far too beat up and bent. In some places its bent too open so the gasket wouldnt stay, and some places too tight so it wouldn't slide. I ended up cramming it in with a pry bar. Now I know why the track is all scratched up; Im sure I wasnt the first to do this.

Clean and painted

I scrubbed what seemed like pounds of oil grime off on the engine tins. I cleaned with degreaser, wirebrush and brillo pads, then a fresh coat of black paint.

filthy german undressed

The last few weeks have been disassembly and cleaning. I removed the exhaust, heater boxes and the engine tins. The exhaust is solid, but needs paint. The heater boxes are very rusty, so I think they will be replaced. The engine and the engine tins are lousy with oil/roadgrime, so some heavy cleaning and repainting is necessary. There was as much as an inch of grime collected on some of the tins.

You can see where the oil has collected on the cylinder heat syncs. Im thinking it was blown there by the cooling fan.

Exhaust: dirty but intact

Dirty, dirty engine tins

Testing the Power of the Purple

Intake removed

Now Im making progress

Finally!

After many false starts and much second guessing, I finally got the engine out. Most instructions talk about "how easy!" dropping the engine is. "Its only 4 bolts after all!"

I knew the bottom two bolts were studs attatched to the engine and all I needed to do was remove the nuts on the front of the bell housing. I got stumped for a few days because those bolts are completely obscured by the transmission retainer bracket. I finally figured out I needed offset wrenches. Harbor Freight to the rescue...

Next problem was the upper bolts. The right hand upper bolt is easy to see. The left one is completely obscured by the fan housing. You may remember that I started the engine removal because I couldnt get to the bolt that let me remove the fan housing. Now the fan housing was in the way. Ugh.

I found the bolt hole on the front side - it looked empty. I used my phone as a poor mans scope:

Looks like someone decided that last bolt was too hard to deal with. I cant really blame them, Im not sure how I'd have gotten to it anyway.

After this it was just like the instructions: pull,lower, pull, lower.

Today I lifted the car the final few inches to get it out from under

Now I can see what Im doing. Time to clean, paint, and replace as needed.

Jumpin Jack Flash

You know what happens when you accidentally pull out the fuel like at 10:30PM on a work night?

Its a gasgasgas

I figure thats about 6 gallons. Im glad Ive been obsessively collecting glass jars "for no reason."
I yanked the fuel line looking for the final screws still holding in the fan shroud. I had been avoiding taking out the engine becuse it scared me a little. It has now officially been harder to *not* remove the engine. I jacked it up today. Next Ill remove the heater box tubes and perform an engine-ectomy.

Low Carb Diet

Got the Carb out...

Generator is next

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming

After a too long break for holidays and vacation Im ready to get back to work. One of the things I noticed the first time I inspected the engine were two pipes so rusty they had breached. It turns out these are called heat risers and are meant to use exhaust heat to pre-heat the fuel/air mixture. Since these tubes are compromised they are dumping exhaust gas into the top half of the engine compartment.

A few months ago, on one of the first chilly days I decided to try the heat, and got a cabin full of exhaust fumes. This may be due to the heat riser breach, or rusted heater boxes. Since I can *see* the heat riser problem I decided to tackle that first.

The heat risers are part of the intake manifold and cannot be replaced seperately.

To get to the intake Ill have to remove the air filter, the carburetor, and the generator. I removed the rear hood, becasue it was only a matter of time before I hit my head. And it does make it easier to see

Heres a shot of the engine before I started tinkering

Amazingly the air filter just pulls off, no bolts

Next up: Carb removal