Sad times

The engine was running really hot and kind of stupid, so I did a compression test. Bad compression on 6/8 cylinders. There was also water in the oil, and lots of thick, white smoke billowing out of the tail pipes.

Head gasket: FAIL

So now I get to save up to buy new head gaskets (cheap), resurface the cylinder heads (cheap), and while I'm at it, I may as well replace the intake and exhaust valves (cheap) and the rocker arms (cheap). Add 10 hours to get the thing all apart, replace the pieces, and back together (expensive), and I'm not going to be working on this beast for a while.

Spring cleaning

After 42 years of cruising, showing off in front of girls, racing on PCH, and sitting in a garage covered in dust, the car has gotten pretty dirty. And not just in the usual places.


I decided that it was time to start cleaning out the grime. I tackled two major areas: inside the doors, and under the hood.


First, the doors. This is what they looked like when I started:

Notice the layers of sludge.

Underneath the door panel lies an array or levers, hinges, rods and pins that control the door latch mechanism so I can open the door from inside or outside. The mechanism worked OK, but the sludge needed to go. There really isn't much to it; just start taking pieces off and cleaning them. I used two cans of Gumout Carburetor cleaner and a brass-bristle brush. The carb cleaner works great because it has a very strong jet spray to force junk off, and because it's basically super concentrated petrol and it eats away gunk. Just a little bit of scrubbing does wonders.


The most difficult part was getting everything out of the door. Not just detached from the door, but actually out from inside the door. I sat there and fought with it for 20 minutes before I realized something: the door had a trap door built just for the purpose and getting things out.

Durrr.

So once I figured that out, it was easy. The whole process of taking it apart, cleaning out the pieces, and putting them back in took about 25 minutes per door (minus durrr time).

After that, it was time to clean the engine. Autozone had a sale, 4 cans of engine cleaner for $10. My kind of deal. I also got some aluminum foil at the 99¢ store. 

Here's the engine before:

Notice the half inch of crap all over.

I wrapped the foil around any parts that might not do well with getting water all over them. The air filter, distributor, and other wired areas were covered under the foil. It certainly wasn't waterproof, but I wasn't planning on hitting those areas directly.

Once everything was wrapped, I sprayed generous amounts of cleaner all over the place. I got in every nook and cranny. (What the heck are nooks and crannies, anyway?) After letting it sit for 15 minutes as per the directions on the can, I went to town on the dirties spots with an old toothbrush, or possibly my brother's toothbrush that I took without his knowledge. Scrub scrub scrub. This is what it looked like when I was done:

Purdy.