The Shovelhead Diary II

25 September 2005

Saturday, Estle showed up early Saturday morning. He was eager to drag me to Northern to purchase a parts cleaning tank. I think he was tired of watching me work over that plastic tray full of kerosene. I was satisfied with the job the old kerosene and tray we were working in, but I have to admit after spending some hours cleaning parts in the new tank, that it was a damn site better than our old tray full of kerosene. The chemical cleaning agent we got is some strong stuff, and will get to skin pretty quick if you work with the stuff unprotected. It was nice being able to let the parts soak in the stuff and have the hose direct a wash over them and be able to brush them nice and clean. The following pictures will attest to that.

We are making progress, sometimes its pretty slow at other times it seems to jump in big leaps. We are closing in on a rolling chassis, and now the engine is getting into the rebuild process. The new cleaning tank should help speed up the process. And we will try to remember to take more pictures as we work, but sometimes it real hard to do that and work at the same time.

Now thats one fine cleaning tank, makes us look real professional....	Cleaning the crank shaft and left side case.	Lifting the crank and case out of the soup...	Crankcases at one time were black, what you see is the left over paint...
the brown patina on the flywheels are a normal color.	Right and left side cases after cleaning...	Case halves come together, reading for a coat of new paint.	Putting in temporary case bolts.
The cam cover was cleaned, and will get the polish treatment, I love the look of the old generator Shovelhead cases.	The primary cover had a hole in it, someone welded up the hole and left a 1/4" of weld in a ugly lump when they were finished. It waited all this time for me to come along and smooth it out.	There is some more weld on it and all of it will get the smoothing out and polished to a high shine.	Cleaning the oil pump.
Cleaning the oil pump.	Cleaning the oil pump.	Cleaning the oil pump.

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