No big updates with the turbo build. Iv been working on the motor thats in the truck keeping it happy and on the road. I did a bit of cleaning up and mocked up the motor once again. While doing so I pulled the pan to get it painted. Decided to pull some rod and main caps just to get an idea of how the motor was looking. Nothing out of the ordinary for 190K 300ci but now that I have seen them I want to replace them. So plan now is to replace the bearings on the bottom end. I was going to swap to ARP rod bolts so might as well.
I decided to spend an afternoon buffing the intake manifold to a shine. It really turned out looking nice. My plan was to paint it but I wanted to give this a shot first. The aluminum was pretty hard so it took a lot to sand it down to the point of being able to buff it. I sanded it with 320 on a DA when building it and I regretted doing that!
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I also took the time to sand blast the now rusty exhaust housing and shoot it with color. Iv had a test bottle of Cerakote. This is a ready to spray “C” series coating that does not need to be baked on. After I blasted the exhaust housing I did pre bake it in the oven at 400° to burn off any oil left on it. I didn’t do an amazing job spraying it on it was thicker then I thought it would be but I really like the way it came out. The true test will be when I get it running.
Fortunately for me and unfortunately for this build I did pick up another project. Iv been hunting for a cool family rig for a few years now and finally pulled the trigger on a 72 C10 suburban. Flew to Oklahoma and drove it back to the East coast over the course of a few days. Im excited to take my son to car shows!