Painting the engine

Long time since the last post - I've been busy though. :)

I've gotten most of the engine painted, although it needs another couple of coats to look the way I want it. I've run out of paint though so I'm waiting for that at the moment.

The hardest part when painting the engine has - of course - been getting it clean enough to paint. There are a lot of nooks and crannies in an engine and it's surrounding parts.

With the use of power tool wire brushes and generous use of brake cleaning fluid (as suggested by a member of the V8Buick.com forum) I got most of the parts clean enough to paint though.

The second hardest part of this is getting paint in all of these nooks and crannies, without getting too much paint on all the other parts of the engine. I still have a couple of places where I'll need to touch up with some more paint.

I had initially planned on painting all of the bolts for the engine in black but that proved to be too time consuming (putting the engine together, paint it, taking it apart, paint the bolts, put it back together once more) so I just painted the bolts for the intake as for now.

I might paint other bolts - for accessories and such - in red (as these parts are in black), all depending on how much time I have.

The single biggest problem I encountered was when the gasket for the oil pan crept out as I put on the oil pan. I didn't notice either so it sat like this for a day or two. I managed to reseat it pretty good though so it should stay tight.