Chris Williams' Journal

Well it appears my choice of colour was too bright. It turned out almost exactly the same colour as the rocker cover. Still looks OK. I had a bit of a brainwave and hot pressure cleaned the engine again which was very successful. We are on water restrictions here and I'm not supposed to use a hose to wash a car. I hooked up a 20ltr bucket with a ordinary garden tap and connected my pressure cleaner to that. Sat the bucket up high and filled it with hot water. This gave me about 10mins hot pressure washing which worked better than I could have hoped for. The hot water took all the grease and grime off and all of the flakey paint. After that it dried very quickly and I finished off the drying with the garden blower.
When it was dry I painted the entire motor with the red paint. I initially was only going to do the cast iron bits, but cutting in around the nuts and the sump and timing cover became too hard and these two bits were really grotty anyway, so I painted it all except the manifolds and the rocker cover. I used the swivel on the engine stand to tilt over the motor to make the painting easier and it was here I found that I'd positioned the motor too high on the stand. Very top heavy and I had a hairy moment when I almost 'lost' the motor as it tipped over too fast for me to comfortably control. I almost lost control and struggled at one stage with the weight of the motor in one hand trying to get the locking pin in with the other.
I'll support the motor on the winch and lower it on the stand, getting the centre of gravity closer to the pivot point of the stand.
Got a phone call from a friend, Graham, tonight and he told me he has a chain block for me. This will be great as the winch I'm using now is not designed for vertical lifts and it is dangerous to use. The chain block will be so much easier and, more importantly safer.
Should be able to pick that up over the weekend.
Here's a photo of the engine painted.