A Little Cleaning Goes A Long Way!

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

It's been a while since my last post...you know the one.  The epic "take your engine out of your truck" post.  It looked like this:

Epic, I tell you!  However, upon closer examination, you may notice a wee little bit of grease and grime in that pic.  Not to mention a wee bit more on that transmission I took out.  It looked like this:

So, with the engine removed and the space free and clear, I did what any other sane truck owner would do:  I climbed inside the engine bay!

What a perfect way to access all of the nooks and crannies that need a good cleaning!  I brought along my go to cleaners, some disposable gloves and a roll of paper towels.  For the really nasty stuff, I also brought along my scraper, a flat bladed screwdriver as a precise scraper and a wire brush.  Having at it looks like this:

No, I'm not working that hard, but I am making a somewhat disgusted facial expression...!  Working on the firewall turned out to be quite rewarding.  Under that layer of crud was near perfect paint!  As I got lower, towards the toeboard area, there are some spots where there is rust and/or missing paint.  But the area directly below the hood is near pristine.

In the front of the engine bay is the crossmember that the radiator support and front motor mount bolt to.  After removing the engine, that crossmember looks like this:

To the right, you can see the area covered by the motor mount.  It masked the crossmember from the oil and mud.  The area between the radiator support and motor mount area wasn't so lucky....  It had a solid 2 inches deep layer of oily, coolant soaked crud in it.  This area also got pretty rusty.  At this time, I do not know if that's going to be a problem or not.  I'm not quite done clearing the rust out, so I don't know if the structural integrity was damaged or not.  Here's hoping that it is still ok!

The frame rails were also covered in a layer of crud.  They looked like this:

Driver's side

Passenger side

All in all, this is a ton of work.  To do it, in such a way as to not make a huge mess, means going slowly and deliberately.  That means it's going to take me a while, which means the refitting of the replacement engine will have to wait.  That means getting the replacement engine into the truck will also have to wait.  However, this is too important of an opportunity to pass up.  Getting the engine bay cleaned is important to me.  So off I go, back to my old friends Super Clean and Formula 409.  Once it is all clean, I plan to use that awesome Rustoleum rust converter primer and their industrial flat black paint on the exposed parts in the front.  I'll likely do some spot priming and painting on those areas on the firewall that need some help.  I'll post pics when it is all done.  So for now, enjoy that summer!