Preparing for the engine strip.

I'm planning to paint the timing cover black and have the crankcases left in natural aluminium. While the engine is still in one piece I decided to give the sand cast crankcases the once over with a nylon abrasive brush followed by coarse, medium and fine scotchbrite.

This is how it ended up.

I'm more than pleased with the result, it looks clean and understated, the next step would be polishing and I think that would be a step too far.

As I'm going to paint/powder-coat the timing cover I needed to remove the patent plate. Note the timing cover was scratched before I started.

Some internet research suggested that it was a simple case of slipping a screwdriver under the plate and levering it off to leave the rivets. This bit went to plan.

I then tried to remove the rivets. The internet said that they should come out easily by holding the heads with some small vice grips and pulling with an anti-clockwise twisting motion. When I tried it just resulted in the heads of two of the three rivets shearing off. I felt better when I saw that the same thing has happened previously.

I'll have to redrill the holes, I'm not sure whether it would be best to do this before of after paint.

The last thing I turned my attention to today was the boss for the breather. I've never been happy with the welding.

So using a dremel, round file and nylon abrasive brush and emery cloth I set about cleaning things up. Here is where I got  by the time I decided to call it a day.

Its looking better but needs more work, I had load of problems with voids appearing when I ground back the weld, along with pitting in the original case. I did wonder if I was doing the right thing but figured the worst that could happen is the breather mounting falls off and I need to get things redone and I'm confident I can find a better alloy welder if needs be.

I still need to tidy up the weld underneath the boss but its difficult to get to with the engine in the stand so I'll wait until the timing cover is off.