Celebrity Makeover: Auto Parts Edition

There is a nice satisfying feeling that comes with installing shiny new parts in a car. Taking an old greasy rusty part and making it nice and shiny again may be even more satisfying. 

Here's the crank pulley/balancer when I took it out (left). Center is after a trip to Dad's shop and some quality time with the bead blaster. Right is after POR-15 rust treatment, primer, and ceramic paint. Little functional difference: even as rusty as it was, the rust would have needed several more years to seriously impair the function of the part. But it will just feel so much nicer to bolt the part on the right to the car than the part on the left.

Bag of nasty parts crusted in old oil and dirt. Did I mention I am replacing every seal I can think of on this engine? Hopefully after this the oil will stay on the inside of the motor where it belongs.

Cleaned up, bead blasted, rust treated, primed, painted.

The oil pan also spent some much needed time in the solvent tank. Again thanks to Dad for use of the solvent tank: a very handy piece of equipment not often found in the garage of a shade tree mechanic. When I was a kid, I remember a lot of people used to have DIY solvent tanks made out of 55 gallon drums.

Flywheel as it was on left, returned from a trip to the machine shop on the right. Family friend Paul, who is an actual real mechanic, pointed out that you can see where the clutch transferred material to the flywheel in the two years the car sat without being driven. Probably could have gotten away with just using it as is, but the irregular flywheel surface mated to a new clutch could have led to unpleasant clutch chatter. And a toy car really should be pleasant to drive. Not to mention, it's just more satisfying to put cars together with parts like the one on the right. 

Taking parts to the machine shop to be resurfaced used to be a very standard practice. Now most people just replace with new, and it took me half a day of hunting and googling and phone calling to find the right shop for this job. But they did it very nicely and about half the price of a new flywheel. There are still plenty of machine shops in Indianapolis, but most of them do high end work for racing cars etc. And I even had an offer from a truly brilliant engineer and machinist (a friend of Dad's) to do the job in his shop (I thought I should probably save that favor for some more complicated problem down the road). So yes, plenty of machinists in Indy - but the regular old machine shop doing everyday jobs for auto mechanics at affordable prices is apparently becoming a thing of the past.

Some of this parts beautification is just pure vanity. But the first generation Miatas actually had a very nice looking valve cover for a mass produced car. Still, I was going to have a hard time tolerating the rough cast finish and especially the Mazda branding machined into the top. Nothing against Mazda, but definitely not period correct for a 1950s British roadster. 

So here above is after polishing the surface smooth, filling in the Mazda lettering with metallic epoxy, self etching aluminum primer, and painting. This is just rattle can spray chrome and will not bear close inspection - but I must say rattle can chrome has come a long way in my lifetime. It doesn't really look like chrome, but it can pass for polished aluminum which should look plausible for what is pretending to be a mid-century sports car.

Brother Ray pointed out that I need to clean the paint off of hose fittings and inside the oil filler. Rest assured this will be done.