Painting My Aluminium Valve Covers

I didn't like the chrome valve covers on my engine and they were pretty badly corroded to boot. I searched for better ones and found a message from Overdrive forum that had some aluminium valve covers for sale. I went to see them and bought a pair.

Too bad that they didn't have Corvette text on them but they were still much better than the old ones. The surface was quite rough but I was planning to paint them anyway. At first I thought about polishing them but in the end they were a bit too pitted.

And a LOT of sanding followed... I started by getting the worst scratches out by wet sanding the covers with a 280 grid paper. Then I wet sanded them again with 400 grid. It took many evenings and a lot of hours to get just one smooth enough to paint.

The one on the left is sanded with 400 grid paper

After sanding both covers by hand, I had abandoned all hope of just polishing them. Besides, I really wanted to see how they would look like painted satin black. So I went to a paint store nearby and bought some aluminium primer and good quality black.

Finally, it was time to paint. I set up a "booth" in our sauna as it had the best ventilation. And it would be the easiest place to clean... I began by spraying two dusting layers of the primer. Those were followed by two heavier wet layers. With four layers of primer, I had a pretty nice, light gray surface.

Four layers of aluminium primer

The instructions on the primer can said that I should let the paint dry for at least a few hours before adding the top coat. So that is what I did. Again I began by two light dusting layers.

First top coat layer

Second dusting layer

And then came two wet layers.

Four top coat layers

The can had just enough paint for the four layers. And finally, after owning the valve covers for nearly six months, they were painted! But not done yet.

The covers were left standing for a couple of weeks and then it was time for the final touched. I decided to remove the paint from the top of the valve covers and polish them. Paint was removed with 280 grid sanding paper. After getting the paint off, I first used 400 grid to smooth the scratches and continued the polishing with 600, 1000 and finally 2000 grid paper. This left a really smooth surface.

And the valve covers were done! I'll just have to add the plastic allen plugs in their holes and put the covers in the car when the engine is back together. And then hope that the paint lasts...

New Gauges

My fuel gauge had let out a puff of black smoke during my cars electical troubles. After that it has been, umm, slightly unreliable. When there's gas in the tank, the needle shows well over the full limit. When the tank is almost empty, the needle suddenly drops to zero. I hope that the problem is only in the gauge so I bought a new one. Well, used but working...

While at it, I also bought a voltage gauge. I know this model comes to use in the -77 model but I think it's much more useful than the old one. I heard that I'll have to drill a new hole to the back of the gauge panel and run some new wires but that should be pretty easy. I hope...

Rebuilding the Holley Carburetor

Now it was time to rebuild my carb. The model number was 80457-S so it was a basic four barrel 600 cfm street carburetor with electric choke. It was working OK but there seemed to be some problems. We took the air filter off and checked how it was supplying gas. Some booster venturis were working correctly but some didn't atomize the fuel properly. Large drops of fuel came out instead of a nice spray. I hoped that a good cleaning and rebuild kit would fix this.

Starting point

Once again I visited US-Parts and they had the correct rebuild kit in storage. Armed with it, I began disassembling the carb. As this was my first carb rebuild, I searched for good online instructions. I found a few but the one on Chevy High Performances page had the best pictures I saw.

Float bowls removed

Metering block out

Carb disassembled

I didn't really run into any major problems during the rebuild. I took pictures during disassembly so I could reference them while putting the carb back together. I also had a piece of cardboard and I pushed many bolts and other small parts through it so I could get all of them back in the same place. Oh, and that I wouldn't drop them...

When the carb was in pieces, I sprayed it with some CRC carburetor cleaner. This got the dirt off but there was some oxidation on the surface that I could not get out. So the Holley didn't look like new but at least it was now clean.

Stuff in the rebuild kit

One small mistake that I made was that I took the choke cap off unnecessarely. Luckily this video advised how it should be set back. Rest of the assembly went quite smoothly. I just compared the old gasgets to the new ones in the kit and put everything back together. Finally I sprayed some lubricant to all the the joints and other moving parts and the rebuild was done!

Carburetor rebuild done!

Now I'll just have to test the carb after getting the engine back together...

Intake Manifold Out

My friend visited during the weekend and advised me on how to correctly remove and install the distributor. We removed the distributor cap and marked the position of the rotor to the firewall as it happened to be pointing straight rearward. Then it was easy to pull out the distributor and remove the intake manifold.

Everything seemed to be OK inside the engine so I just covered it up so no dirt would get in. My friend took the manifold to a machine shop so they could plane the thermostat housing and media blast the old paint off. I'll paint it again when I get it back.

Next I will rebuild the carburetor.

Opening the Engine Again

To prepare for the coming projects, I decided to start by opening the engine. I labeled all the hoses and plug wires and got to work. First to come off was the carb. I disconnected the hoses while being careful not to spill any fuel and removed the nuts holding the carb in place. With the Holley in hand, I drained most of the fuel inside into a cup and left the rest to dry out.

Next were the valve covers. They were simple to just screw out and remove. Then I had to remove some of the cooling liquid so it wouldn't spill out while removing the intake manifold. After getting about 5 liters out, the water level was low enough and I removed the upper radiator hose and thermostat. I didn't remove the manifold yet as then I would also need to remove the distributor. I wasn't quite sure how to do that correctly so I'd do it with a friend.

I was on to a good start.