What have people tried and tested when cleaning a block ready for paint? mine has plenty of rust on one side but the other is covered in oil so is ok, whats the best form of attack lol.

 

Wash it with tfr aka traffic film revover dry it and get a wire brush and some wire wheels and a drill and get as much possible cleaned with that then get thinners or petrol or paneL wipe and give it a good last scub down then paint a few times with heat proof paint

 

ok mate thanks for that, will give it a go

 

get it blasted!

 

or get it dipped at local engine recon place

 

i dont think that would be a good ideasand+in the engine block

 

just do what we showed you ours turn out ok dont they

 

patto stick it in jacko's block washer!!
then ask him to paint it for ya
**edit** doh jacko beat me to it!

steve

 

that only gets rid of grese and oil steve its the rust thats the problem ho and the old paint

 

Jako if you dont mind me asking what colour is the blue block as i want to do mine in that colour and also parts for under the escos

 

own special colour mate

 

dont get it blasted !

its like, people get their heads blasted, steam clean in and think great !

once, took the bungs out the front of a yb head and put the steam cleaner down it and sooo much sand came out it was unbeleiveable !

we never blast anything other than external parts for the presentation

 

iv herd scs havre a jimbo for cleaning erngnes its a large tool with multiple atatchmernts lol

 

can you sell me somelooks a great colour

 

its not a partuculary clean job; so i would just take it to any decent machine shop; will charge you pittance

 

if you've only taken the bungs out once as above then that is something you should look at more closely when rebuilding an engine.

apart from the brass bung in the head face all other galleries in the engine are simple straight holes which can be cleaned perfectly well with the proper brushes etc irrespective of what dirt or sand is in them. getting the engine 'cleanish' is a world away from cleaning it properly and in the case of this rusty block any cleaning process will introduce dirt.

removing the bungs is essential for engine preparation

 

it may have escaped your notice but the engine block is cast with sand

 

i very much doubt jimbo dont know all of what you said above and he has seen a fare few engnes built lol andy g charlie shaw rod birley oh and his dads car in hs sig

i

 

once was used to show a example of me doing it one time

 

well i'm still confused as to why you think blasting it is a problem. hundreds of millions of engine blocks have been cast using sand. then the parts are machined which introduces swarf into the oil galleries. before the engine is built up with the other parts (which have also been sand cast) the whole lot is cleaned.

the design of the galleries is such that simple gallery brushes can be used to remove all the rubbish in them. 99% of the sand / dirt / old oil deposits in an engine block come out with 1% of the effort. the last 99% of effort removes the last 1% of rubbish. maybe you dont look for the last 1%?

where exactly does the sand go that you have a problem getting at?