Day 25 - Engine restoration shop

Okay, so time for another update with some nice progress. A few months ago I told my work colleague that I was restoring my car. Turns out his family had an engine restoration shop since 1979. He took care of all the arrangements and I was promised to be able to help out myself to reduce the price. This is the story. :)

Last Friday I went to the garage to load the engine in to a van.
There were large quantities of ice and snow outside the door of
the garage so I could barely get in and out. Luckily I was able to
move the engine stand easily on the snow...

...and even luckier, it was at a perfect height so I could easily
put the engine down on my own.

On Saturday me and my colleague and great friend Hans went to
the restoration shop Motorrenovering AB in Ljusdal, Sweden.
They had large premises and lots of nice and expensive machinery.
Apparently they are very successful and have a lot of work!

Unloading the engine to get started!

The heavy and greasy, but bare 400 cui engine block.

Camshaft, crankshaft, rocker arm shafts, valve covers and some other
minor stuff getting ready for the first hot tanking. I'm happy at this point. :)

Most of the grease and dirt is gone, but still some rust and paint.

Washing by hand, to get rid of most of the dirt.

And then blowing everything clean with compressed air, so that
water wasn't still there in the cavitys.

The engine block after the first hot tanking...

Getting the hot tanked pistons ready for ultra sonic cleaning.
These will probably not get back on the engine, but we cleaned
them anyway. You never know...

Making sure everything is arranged and that we agree on the
positions. The man on the picture is my colleagues father.

The engine block after two runs of hot tanking. I am moving it
over to wash it by hand...

A lot cleaner than it was before visiting the shop! :)

Another picture of the pretty clean engine block.

All the stuff I brought organized for the employees who will
attend to it during the week! Everything is prepared for them!

Once again, double checking to make sure the pistons are in
their correct places since this is very important.

Some paint, some surface rusting, but otherwise clean components!

And finally. I was thinking on going with these pistons when
I assemble the engine again. What do you think? ;)

That's it for today! I was hoping we could get one of the guys working at the shop to go there over the weekend but there wasn't any time so I left the stuff for machining during the week. Once I know more about the progress I will be sure to update. Sadly there will not be any pictures of machining, but I think we'll survive!