You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning and you just know you can't go another day looking at your roached aluminium engine covers?
No, nor did I. Until yesterday, when that feeling arrived and - mid way through the opening set of Djokovic vs Verdasco at the French Open - it was still there. I like watching the tennis, so this feeling meant business.
Quick Google search led me to a great how-to video on YouTube (big shout out to HackAWeek, here's a link to the vid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LM3PKY8Jvg), showing a great method on how to do the job, involving Drano. I've never tried restoring aluminium before so really can't compare this method to any other, but for what it's worth it definitely seems to save time. Essentially the Drano attacks the surface of the aluminium, stripping the surface corrosion and oxidation - of which there was a lot on my engine. Meaning, in theory at least, that you don't have to sand as much - the Drano does the work for you. God knows it had its work cut out.
Decided to start with the valve cover. The thinking behind that was it's easily the cover in the worst shape of all - both in terms of corrosion and, well, shape itself. It's like a giant molar tooth, takes some cleaning. And I figured if I started with an easy cover and
that turned out to be a ball ache then knowing the hardest was yet to come would be a miserable prospect. In at the deep end. Here's how it looked to start with after giving it a good clean -
Not exactly spotless has to be said. Major oxidization, heavy pitting and a general sense of malaise and ill-being. Figured there could well be some kind of clearcoat on the thing, or at least some vestiges thereof after 37 years or so of hard service so gave it a good douse of paint stripper first -
- which I'm fairly confident did bugger all. I did however learn a good lesson from the process, and that is it's a terrible idea to apply paint stripper on an uneven surface using a stiff-bristled toothbrush wearing a t-shirt. You end up wearing the stuff, and it burns like a bastard. No running water in my garage either - a shitty gift that just kept giving throughout. However. Wiped off the stripper and nailed the thing with my favourite go-to, carb cleaner. Job done. On with the main event.
The Drano part. Schlepped about 5 gallons of water from my balcony 5 minutes away from the garage, and piled in about 10 tablespoons of Drano into it. Actually, not Drano but the closest thing I could find at Canadian Tire, who had a hundred different liquid Drano's but not the crystals. I wanted the no-fucking-around stuff, and figured this looked the part -
It has tiny aluminium shavings in there, so you know it's good. Gloves on, eye-protection donned. This shit is caustic. In goes the valve cover and pretty quickly it starts bubbling. That's science getting deep down and dirty. Stuff's happening in there - crap being eaten off the surface of the aluminium - and I figured 20 mins was about right. It came out looking like this -
- which is exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks to the Hackaweek guy I knew that blackened aluminium not only meant that there was no clearcoat left on the thing, but also that the Drano stuff had done its job. Gave it a good rinse off, and then it's elbow grease time. With a Scotchbrite pad and some soapy water the next stage is to scrub off all the black. Once you do, you get to pretty clean aluminium underneath. It's definitely a job you want to set a few hours aside for - after a couple of hours I guess I'd finished one half of the cover. Not perfect by any means but that's fine, I'm not after perfect anyway. Anything's gonna be better than what it looked like before.
After the scotchbrite scrub, it's time to polish. I don't have a bench polishing wheel at the moment, so with run-what-you-brung chutzpah I hooked up a polishing wheel to the drill, got some red tripoli polishing compound and had at it. An hour or so in and a neighbour appeared at the garage door, telling me that the sound of my drill for the last hour was giving him conniption fits. Fair enough. Here's how it stands -
- the top right part and the central part have been polished and not looking too bad at all. The pitting isn't going anywhere (that would take a decent sand to get out but that may be a job for the next owner), but it's night and day to how it looked before. Needs a bit more work (well, a lot) but I'm stoked with how it turned out. Hackaweek, I owe you one mate.