Garage Clean Up

We (Miguel and I) had a very successful Sunday morning this past weekend. We picked up an engine hoist from a local equipment rental and loaded up the old engine into the trailer.  Not before emptying the oil pan though because the recycling place won't take any parts with fluid still in them.  Mind you, the oil has been sitting for 25+ years. Simply taking out the oil pan plug wouldn't do. Oil dripped out for a couple seconds then stopped. We knew there had to be more than that. So we unscrewed the oil pan, which was a lot easier than I was expecting.  Gave it quite a few bangs with the mallet hammer to loosen it and the oil pan came free. What we discovered looked like black, gooey, slimy sludge. It was gross. 

We also threw out the transmission, the whole front in (front crossmember, breaks, torsion bars, a-arms) and a few other metal parts. We took the whole trailer load to TKO Recycling (Rancho Cordova, CA). They will recycle just about anything. 

Gettin down to the nitty gritty

So it's been about 7 months since I've been able to get some time to work on the truck.  This weekend was very successful though!  Since we've got the whole front half of the truck down to the frame, it was time to start cleaning and polishing it up.  And let me tell you...it looked a lot worse.  With the right tools (thanks to my friend and neighbor) it took no time at all.  Of course, it's hard to get into all of the nooks and crannies, but that's later.  There's still some spots to finish but in two evenings we got a lot cleaned up.

Cleaned section on the left, still dirty on the right

It looks ALMOST brand new again

I went back and forth and back and forth and back again between cleaning it by hand or taking the whole thing to a shop to media blast it.  We settled on doing it by hand, which isn't awful!  It's been fun actually.  I'm learning how to use tools I've never used before.  I may or may not invest in my own pressurized abrasive blaster to get into the tight places and crevices.  We'll see.