Engine Painting pt I

So today I wanted to get a start on the engine painting. I needed to flush as much of the scale and weird coolant system deposits before I could continue. I am going to be replacing all the core/expansion/freeze plugs since one of them was corroded through. The motor mounts were in the way of me getting to four of the plugs on the bottom of the cylinder water jackets. I had to pry the engine, transmission, and transfer case up an uncomfortable amount and slide a metal bar under the whole setup so I could remove the mounts and get to removing the plugs. After using ancient Egyptian technology and some modern English vernacular, I was able to accomplish this task.

I then got to pressure washing/flushing out of the engine. There was some weird grease-like gunk on one side of the engine's cooling system. At any rate, I removed a fair amount of scale and will feel a little more confident of the cooling system. I may go to more drastic measures down the road to descale the cooling system, but we shall save that for when it comes up. So I pressure washed once again, and like before without incident. I included some pictures of the jeep outside catching some sun.

I then got to stripping--I made no money and scared the neighbors.

I then got to stripping the engine. I went to ACE and bought some intense chemical gloves (as intense as ACE gloves get). As a precaution, I wore nitrile exam-like gloves, stripping gloves, then the intense chemical gloves. The intense chemical gloves began deteriorating after 15 minutes of stripping. I never caught a single whiff of the MEK or got any in my eyes (I had some chemist goggles on). The respirator I got is way awesome, fits great, and it buzzes when I talk. I brushed, wiped, and scrubbed the whole engine block down with the MEK and it did a good job at removing anything the pressure washer didn't get. I then did some rounds of blowgun action to clean off any lint, brush bristles, and glove fragments (MEK is sweet, it will remove anything from anything, as far as engines are concerned).

I then wheeled the jeep into my garage, this time I was able to get it up there myself via:
1. putting a block behind the tire
2. PUSH!!!!!
3. Quickly kick the block forward an inch
4. Repeat 1-3 ad nauseum.

I then laid down the first coat of the engine enamel. Unfortunately this stuff bakes on, and is not solvent resistant until it has cured. Which means I have to be careful in everything I install until the engine can run. Or I could point some halogens at it. I still have a lot more painting on the block to do, but here you can see the progress. Tomorrow I will continue my painting of the block and start the header painting.

Hopefully I will have the core plugs by Monday. Also I discovered that some new motor mounts wouldn't be a bad idea.