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We had a pretty cold day today high of 14. I think windchill felt like 6°. So it took me a little while to get the garage warm enough to where I felt like working so I decided to clean the valve spring assemblies. I was feeling lazy and wanted to just use the ultrasonic cleaner, but I did end up scrubbing a little bit in gas to get the gunk off of the springs. Starting to get things apart, seeing how dirty they are and how long I was gonna run them. I ended up running them two 20 minute cycles. they cleaned up pretty good for the most part, but I did need to scrub some heavier caked on oil gunk with some gasoline. Got the first set done and cleaned up, I was getting ready to cover them with plastic bags to kind of keep the dirt and dust from getting on them after I cleaned and oiled them. Also, I had pulled The oil pump bolts and the pick up tube and ran them through a cycle of the ultrasonic cleaner. But the pick up tube had a pretty good coating of old laired on oil so I cleaned it with gasoline first and it got quite a bit of it off and then ran it through the ultrasonic to get it cleaned inside the pick up tube where it was harder to reach.
this turned out really good and was happy with it. Didn’t assemble anything today. Just cleaning cleaning and more cleaning.
I broke down and snagged up a parts washer to be able to scrub my heads. Got tired of trying to drain the tote that I was cleaning stuff in when I was done. I’ve been pondering back-and-forth whether or not I needed one and I’ve had several things over this last year that I could’ve used it for so I just grab the cheapie from Harbor freight. it’s been pretty cold here. I think we were at negative one Saturday morning when I got up and it took quite a while for me to get the garage warmed up, but I finally got it up to around 50° to where I could start working. Since I bought a new tool, I had to of course, put it together so that took roughly a half hour to 45 minutes to assemble and get filled. It wasn’t too bad and then I could get back to work on the engine. I went ahead and grabbed some of the harbor freight degreaser and I’ve heard good and bad reviews on it. I figured I’d just check and see myself and it didn’t work too bad. Normally I use super clean and I still think super clean is probably better, but I was impressed with a little elbow grease The Harbor Freight degreaser worked fairly well and it got quite a bit of that black burnt on carbon out of the exhaust ports and the chambers. I won’t say it did perfect, but it did more than I expected. Then after I got done scrubbing the first head, I rinsed it in a water bath and deactivated the cleaner degreaser, and then put it up in front of the wood stove to dry. The initial water dripping off of it didn’t take very long. Then I just set it up on the wood stove and got it really hot to evaporate all the moisture off of it and out of the bolt holes. I was pretty impressed on how clean it got it, then I worked on the second one and got it pretty close to clean not as clean as this one, but I ran out of time and had to clean up and shut the garage down, so I’m probably gonna do a little bit more scrubbing on the other head although I would’ve loved to have had more progress I’m happy with the results. All I can do is keep plugging away, but we’re getting closer each step I take.
Last edited by Ralston76; Jan 26, 2026 at 10:24 PM.
I was able to get back out yesterday. And since it went so well last weekend with the Harbor Freight heavy duty degreaser, cleaning the carbon out of the combustion chambers. I decided to scrub the valves and get off what I could and since this is a water-based degreaser, it doesn’t work very good when it’s cold so I made a new batch and I just use hot tapwater. That seems to make this stuff work the best so anyways while I was out there scrubbing away my youngest boy, the seven-year-old and my middle girl his younger sister she’s 4 they came out and they were playing in the garage while I was scrubbing away and they decided to make a mess with bubbles, but they were having fun. Anyways, my four-year-old daughter asked me if I had any small rubber gloves because she wanted to help. I didn’t have any out in the garage, but I sent her in the house because I had got my wife a box of the small ones and I told her they’ll still be big on her, but this is all I have. So I let her scrub away on one of the valves to her heart’s desire. And if any of you know when you have kids working with you, it always slows you down. But just remember you gotta stop and think they won’t be young like this for long and you don’t wanna miss an opportunity to make some memories. And she was having fun so I stopped and enjoyed it for a minute watching her smiling because she was helping. This is what they were looking like when I first started. The exhaust valves anyways they had quite a bit of carbon on them. And this is how clean they were getting. Pretty impressive for some water-based heavy duty degreaser but like I said, it has to be warm temperature or it doesn’t work very good. So I got one set of valves cleaned dried and then I did one more round of seating the valves with valve grinding compound. Just because the heads sat from last weekend and I had cleaned them with that heavy duty degreaser and it’s corrosive according to the label. So I wanted to be sure that the valve seats didn’t get corroded up and make sure that they had a good seal. also if you look in the back of the picture, my seven-year-old wanted to help after he was done playing so while I was assembling the first head, I let him scrub the valves from the second head. I was showing him that I had to keep them in order to go back in the same spot that they came out of. So he only took one at a time over to the parts washer, and when he was done, he rinsed it in the water bin I had sitting on the floor to deactivate the heavy duty, degreaser and then set it on the table for me to dry it and put it back in it spot. And the funny thing about it, is this kid, I can’t get to sit still for anything. He’s always jumping around from one thing to another can’t get him to focus on doing any of his chores and yet he will sit here and scrub parts to my amazement. I stopped and just watched him from a distance and couldn’t believe he was focused in for so long. he ended up doing all the valves on the second head. The amazing thing was I did not have to even re-scrub any of them. He did an excellent job and really surprised me. Anyways I knocked the first head out while he was cleaning the valves and got this one set aside. Then I was drying the valves my seven-year-old was cleaning and I was reseating them with the valve grinding compound. After he was done scrubbing the last valve he decided he wanted to go back inside and play, so after I was done grinding, I rinsed off all the valve grinding compound and gave a quick scrub to the heads in the parts washer before I assembled them. Also, that second head that I didn’t get scrubbed completely clean last weekend. I finished scrubbing that one up. Then dried it off again by setting them on the woodstove getting them hot and evaporating all the water that was left on them and in the screw holes. Then after I got the second one assembled, I decided to scrub a little bit on the valve covers and then set them on top just to keep the dust off of them And here they are waiting to be assembled on the engine. But I think first I will get them painted so I’m hoping we’re gonna get some warmer days soon so that I can keep the temperature up in the garage and hopefully I can get a decent coat of paint on these. That’s all I did this weekend so I drained the parts washer cleaned up my rinse water bin and shut the garage down for the night.
Last edited by Ralston76; Mar 1, 2026 at 08:59 AM.
I didn’t get to work on it last weekend. I had to go run and help Jchet729 with the garage at a rental house. But this weekend I got some more degreasing and cleaning done, Knocked out the timing cover, the thermostat housing neck, the EGR spacer under the carb, and the oil pan. Also it has quite a bit of surface rust so I think I’m probably gonna sandblast it a little bit before it gets painted but it cleaned up good. Was working on tapping the EGR port. And I plugged off the EGR port in the intake manifold. Gonna do the bypass just did the 1/2 NPT plug. Learned about that in the 385 series threads on here on FTE. After I got all this done, I went in and watched a movie with my oldest daughter. Then, after that was over, she went to bed and I came back out for about another half hour, and I was cleaning the threads with a dye on the timing cover housing bolts. That’s another thing I still have to do. I have a bunch of bolts to go through and clean the threads on so that’s probably gonna be in the near future.
Last edited by Ralston76; Mar 1, 2026 at 09:03 AM.
I was able to get out yesterday and clean some more parts. When I had helped Jchet729 clear out the shop when they were selling his mom‘s place. He had given me another little handheld sand blaster gun. This one was a little bit different than the one I had. It had a smaller tip and nozzle so I figured I’d try it out and use it as a soda blasting gun. So I wanted to clean up a few of my aluminum parts to see how it worked. Before picture Just showing the coolant passage, all crusted up. And after soda blasting. This was after. It did OK I’m not super impressed with it. But when I’m blasting with the other gun, I need to have my air pressure at about 90 psi. I’m wondering if I played with the air pressure if it would make a difference with the soda blasting. I don’t know I’ve not messed with this before, this was my first time, but it did clean the guck and muck off of it. I was hoping it would brighten it up a little more, but this will work for a driver. And while I was at it, I decided to grab a couple of steel parts and some of the bolts. And see how the baking soda worked on those as well. A cool tip I had bought this boltster just for tearing apart my engine, this worked awesome to hold the bolts and I just blasted them right in it. While I was at it, I decided to grab the harmonic balancer and see what would happen. Like I said at this point, I’m just experimenting. I was pretty impressed at how well soda worked on this. I was not expecting this to come that clean without more aggressive, blasting agent. I was really impressed when the numbers started to appear. You can see it really good here because the soda is down in the grooves. Call me impressed on this part. I also went ahead and started cleaning parts in the parts washer. While I was at it. I grabbed the fan and unbolted it from the clutch. Just to clean it up it had some mud Dobbers in the clutch fins and I want to give a quick clean to the fan. I’m gonna blast this and then paint it but that’ll have to be for another day. It just got a light cleaning. And these were all the parts after a soda blast. I was a little bit impressed and also I was hoping for a little better results but like I said this was my first time messing with soda blasting and I’m wondering if I change the pressures if I could get better results. I know that the other stuff I use if I get into higher pressures it won’t flow into the airstream. I’ll still have to play around with the baking soda. And this was the fan and the fan pulley after I cleaned them in the parts washer. The next time I’m out, I still have more blasting to do so. Hopefully, I’ll get most of the rust off of this and clean up the pulley and some of the other Steele parts. So that’s what I was up to this weekend. I still have to blast the oil pan and both valve covers and get those ready for paint. I’m still waiting for the weather to get a little warmer. We had one really nice day here but I didn’t get a chance to prep parts I had to work on my wife’s van but we are a little closer.
Last edited by Ralston76; Mar 1, 2026 at 08:46 AM.
So I started right after lunch today. I had a few things I had to do this morning. Last time the few steel pieces I had left that I wanted to blast. I pulled out and separated and put all the parts I was gonna mess with up on the table. There were a few small dents in the passenger side valve cover. I wanted to get knocked out a little bit, and then I went around, straightening all The bolt holes and making sure the lip edge was straight. There was a few bent edges. Then I blasted the EGR Valve spacer, the oil dipstick, and tube, and the center part of the fan blade. I also had to straighten up the dipstick tube and the cap that went up by the hook of the dipstick it had come loose and come down so I had to fix it and peen it back on. Then I ran out of my coal slag that I was using to blast with. So I just went back to the wire wheel and cleaned up the oil pan and the valve covers with that. It worked out pretty good. Then did another round of rinsing and decreasing just to get any of the blasting grit off of the parts and the debris from the wire wheel Then I just put them on the woodstove and let them get hot and evaporate all the moisture back off of them so they would be ready to paint. And while I was at it, I decided to grab the old spark plugs, ran them through the degreaser and set them on the woodstove to get the water baked off of them. I taped off the heads getting them ready for paint. Also, some of the other small parts and then installed the spark plugs in the holes to keep any paint out of those then I got everything painted. Just threw the valve covers right on top of the heads. That way I didn’t need to tape the tops off. I had separated the parts into the different colors I was painting. I was hoping I didn’t get any overspray from one color to another on the different parts. I think I had them separated far enough; anyway we’re gonna go with it. I’m gonna call this done for the night cause I’m not gonna breathe all the fumes in the garage. I’ll stock up the wood stove and try to keep it warm enough so the paint can cure and that’s about all I’m gonna do tonight. I hate to do it, but I think the truck’s gonna have to sit outside tonight.
Last edited by Ralston76; Mar 7, 2026 at 08:11 PM.
Thank you, I still have the water pump bolts to clean up. And I just ordered a water pump so hopefully I’m gonna be assembling here soon. and I still have a few mounting brackets I’m probably gonna clean up and paint. But this cleaning is getting old. I think I need to get back to some assembly.
Got started late again not until 11:30 but I put in a good full day work for about a 13 hours. I installed the oil pump and the pick up tube and then realized I forgot to put the oil pump shaft back in so I took it all apart and did it twice. But it was good practice. I was happy to be assembling the engine and not cleaning parts. That set the stage for the rest of assembly. It forced me to slow down. Take my time and think before each step. Next, I put the oil pan on and just screwed it down loosely so that I could install the timing chain and have it ready for the timing cover. Next, I jumped over to the timing chain. Got it all installed did a few rotations checking top dead center with the dots lining up on the gears. Everything looked good so then I oiled up the chain and lubed the fuel pump eccentric. I was just about to install the timing cover, then I realized before I could put it on I had to put in the front seal, so I did that real quick and then got the timing cover Loosely installed, then centered it up with the spacer. Tightened the oil pan, torque to spec with the Sealant in all the corners. and then snugged the bolts on the timing cover. Then I rolled the engine over and started working on getting the water pump put on. This took quite a while. I still had to clean all the water pump bolts. I just knocked them out with my wire wheel on the bench grinder. They cleaned up pretty good. Then I got the water pump installed with the new gaskets that came with it, they looked better than the ones that came in my overhaul kit, so I went with them. Then, as you can see in the picture, I got the heads install installed and torqued down. And at this point, I was gaining motivation to keep going. I wanted to get this thing buttoned up to keep the dust out of it. I installed the harmonic balancer, but did not torque it down just gave the crankshaft a couple of rotations. Ran in and ate supper and then got right back out and started knocking out installing the lifters, pushrods, and the rocker arms and got everything torque down. Then did a few more rotations. I had taken the spark plugs out and I was verifying top dead center on number one and I was having so much fun with it blowing my finger off the spark plug hole that I decided to check all of them. I was getting excited that my engine was starting to come together. Some of the lifters still need to be pumped up they weren’t opening the valves very far, but everything is working. By this time it was getting late, but I still was pressing on trying to get the engine sealed up for the most part. At least all the big holes to keep dust out easier. But I was having so much fun. I just kept pushing myself to press on and keep going. Then got the new, gaskets out and sealed all the corners on the china walls and got the intake manifold installed and torqued . It’s looking a lot more like an engine. And then I put the gaskets on the valve covers and cleaned up the bolts and then just screwed them in finger tight. I’m gonna pull them back off eventually and pump up the oil pump and get oil through the system before I started it up. This was a really good day for motivation toward the truck and I was really happy to see it come together. Then I closed up Shop pulled the truck in and then headed in the house for the night.
So I got a little more done. Turned out to be a really nice day. We got up to 89°. It was ridiculously warm all the neighborhood kids were out running around and playing and I got to work with the garage door open and the fan, pulling a breeze through. So to get things going, I pulled the nipple off of the old water pump. Got my bench grinder out with the wire wheel. I just have it mounted to a board and then I clamp it to my workbench when I need it and then I put it away when I’m done that way I have more room to do stuff. But I went ahead and cleaned up the nipple with the wire brush and got it looking pretty good. Then got it installed on the new pump then I jumped over to the exhaust manifolds. Got them up on my bench and was checking them with a straight edge. They weren’t too bad. One of them was still pretty good. The other one had a little bit of a gap on one and was gonna require a little bit of surfacing to try and get them even. I keep this old glass table top that I use to flatten stuff. My dad brought it home years ago and was always going to build a base for it, but he never got around to it so I talked him out of it years ago and I always use it when I’m restoring old hand planes for woodworking. And I thought this would be a good use to try and flatten the manifolds the best I could. So I just glued some sandpaper to it and then by hand just grinding away. This took a really long time. They’re not perfect, but they are really close with the straight edge. I got one of them that may have a little bit of a Valley but I think it will seal up with the gasket so that’s all I’m doing with these because my arms were burning and I couldn’t do it anymore. Close enough is good enough. Next, I grabbed all the bolts and then I started up with the wire wheel on the bench grinder. They turned out OK and yes, I’m just reusing them. I’m not buying new ones. I ended up installing them with a little bit of anti-seize on them so hopefully they won’t get rusted and stuck in there. I may replace them later and it will be nice to get them out easier And my buddy that I got the engine from when I was taking the fan off there was one bolt that was an odd size. It looks like he may have a re-tapped one of the holes to make that bolt work, cause it was a different thread and it would not fit in the new water pump. So I did run and get all new bolts for that. So today I got the water pump nipple installed, the manifolds installed, the dipstick installed, put the fan on, the crankshaft pulley, I grabbed a new oil filter when I went to the parts store. I still have a little more to do. I still have to put the new freeze plugs in. And I still have the carburetor to rebuild at some point, but I got quite a bit done today. It’s getting there.
Last edited by Ralston76; Mar 23, 2026 at 07:51 AM.
So I set the table up like I normally do for holding parts and let my middle son know I had the table up and if he wanted to finish his model car he could. So he decided to come out and work with me. The last few times I tried to get him out here. He had other things going on and we just couldn’t find a good time until today. Helped my middle boy get set up real quick and got him situated to where he could continue working on his model. And then just as I was getting ready to knock some freeze plugs out my oldest boy came out, so I handed him the punch and hammer and made him do it. And I showed him how to knock them sideways so that we could pull them out with a pair of pliers But of course, the first one he did, he knocked it clear into the block and I had to dig it out. There’s nothing like learning when you make a mistake, but this was an easy one to correct and he did the others perfect. So then after we got those out, we were scraping the crud that was right around them cleaning the holes out getting them ready for the new ones and then his friends came by and he decided he wanted to go play. So I went ahead and got my set up situated and started knocking the new ones in. And then the youngest boy comes out was asking what I was doing and wanted to know what these were. Are you gonna paint them like the old ones were. I told him no I just left the old ones to paint the block. We’re just gonna leave the new ones The way they are. So we jumped to the other side I took the manifold back off and then cracked the motor mount loose and then let him it off. He’s still at that age where he really likes to do the ratchet and then I handed him the hammer and I held the center punch and let him knock the freeze plugs out of this side. Yes, under my breath I was praying he didn’t slip off and hit my hand, but he did great. Of course he knocked one into the block also and we had to dig it out, but he thought it was fun getting to work on the engine with me. Then his younger sister came out as we were hammering the last one out and she wanted to hammer too, so I got some nails, grabbed a piece of wood and got her set up with hammer and nails and that’s when my youngest boy went to play with his sister hammering nails. I think they did this for almost 2 hours. Anyways, I got the new freeze plugs in on this side and put everything back on and torque to spec. So then the alternator tensioner bracket needed straightened. When the engine had been moved and stored at my buddies parents place it had gotten set on this side and it bent the bracket. So I got the big hammer out, pulled my chunk of railroad track out started hammering on it to get it flattened and straight again.
It turned out pretty good no complaints. It should work just fine. So I set this up on the table in preparation for decreasing in paint. Next, I wanted to modify the bracket that holds the alternator and also on top it held the air pump that was locked up, which I’m not going to put back on. I didn’t want a big old chunk of metal just sticking up and because I’m still doing this as cheap as possible I decided to cut it up and then grinding edges and then prep it for paint turned out pretty good. I’m happy enough with it. Here’s the chunk that I cut off. I took a picture of the two parts together and sent it to my brother. We had been talking about what I might do to it. It’s still gonna look a little ugly, but at least it’s a lot smaller. Just showing off the ground down and rounded corners, smooth out then I put all the parts together and ran them through Some soda blasting to knock some of the rust off and degreaser. Also, I added the bracket that holds the throttle cable and the bracket that holds the coil. They need cleaned up also. After I got them painted, I let them air out a little bit outside. It was like 58° so it wasn’t too bad. I could let them off gas for a little bit and then I brought them into the garage and hung them up to cure. So it was a little bit late in the day by this time. And I wasn’t sure if I was wanting to be up this late but I decided to go ahead and tackle the carburetor and do the rebuild on it. I think it was about 530 P.m. when I got to this point So that’s why I was debating tearing it apart cause I knew I wouldn’t stop until I got it back together. Just as I was working to get the fuel bowls off, my middle boy got done with his model car so I had to get a picture of him with it so that we could show it off. Pretty good for the first model he’s ever done by himself. I was really impressed. He went through the instructions and did everything by himself. I only had to help with a couple of things to show him how they go together I’m pretty impressed with this young dude. So I had the carburetor all tore apart. It went through a few cycles of the ultrasonic cleaner and because I couldn’t fit it all in one go. The bottom plate was just a little bit too big and it stuck up out of the solution so I had to flip it and then run it again with a few other parts. So it’s an old crusty carburetor, but it should work just fine. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in it completely before but someone has messed with it.Throttle blades are a little bit rusty, and it took a while to get all the black carbon out of it. I didn’t get all of it, but I got most of it. Don’t know what vehicle this was running on, but it looks like it might’ve had some issues. JChet729 had given me this years ago probably pushing 20 years now and he was like here you want this, I was like what is it. he told me it was a 650 Holly it was wore out and needed rebuilt. Someone else had given it to him, so I told him just throw it in the cabinet over there. This was out at my parents house and it’s been sitting there for years so I guess now is my opportunity to use it. So when I looked up the numbers on Holly‘s website, I found out it was not a 650 like I was told it ends up, It’s a Holly 750 vacuum secondary which I was like Yep that’ll work. It wasn’t very dirty inside. it was fairly clean, a little bit of light grit But nothing heavy it cleaned up pretty good on the inside. So by the time I got it all put back together. It was really late like 1:30 in the morning and so I put it on the motor put the nuts on the studs to hold it on just finger tight and I got a problem. I’m gonna have to order a different spacer. This carb won’t work with the EGR valve spacer; man it’s forcing me to spend more money. What’s the wife gonna say? Well, I got one coming this week so that problem should be solved. And it’s a phenolic spacer so less likely to have my carb boiling over and vapor locking. I’m sure I’ll run into a few more issues before this is done but it was a pretty good work day.
Last edited by Ralston76; Mar 31, 2026 at 07:32 PM.
At least they are out in the garade doing something automotive related. Good on them and good on you there dad. Here is how you get the "model maker" into Ford trucks.
