In the last installment the engine and most of the parts were cleaned, painted and ready for reassembly. This time I'm concentrating on getting the engine bay ready for re-occupation. First, a quick reminder of what it looked like straight after the engine was pulled out:
The driver side was in much better shape on account of being regularly bathed in power steering fluid...
The first thing I did was take off the hood, which is a two-person operation. Then I gave the entire engine bay a good going over with the pressure washer. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my blog before, but the truck was originally white with a beige interior, so it had a white engine compartment. The pressure washer took a lot of the loose paint off the sheet metal, particularly the crossmember, which is now more white than black:
It was at least a week later when I next had time to work on the F250. I began by removing the remaining heater and power steering hoses and the battery tray and then I poked the wiring harness back through the firewall into the passenger compartment:
After that I gave the engine compartment its second cleaning - with warm soapy water and a scotch bright:
There was some waxy residue at the driver side which I thought might be a mixture of dirt and power steering fluid residue, so I started scraping it off...
This is quite a bit later. I ended up scraping down the entire inner fender and then scrubbing off the residue. I discovered the inner fender (at least) has been replaced; the residue I removed was, I think, someone's attempt to replicate the texture of the original engine bay on the replacement sheet metal.
The seam sealer was missing at the base of the firewall, and since I already had several tubes of sealer in the garage, I broke one out and filled-in the gap:
Almost ready for masking....this is when I figured out it would be much easier to remove the grille than mask it off.
With the grille off, I used the RAV4 to tow the truck six feet up the driveway and then rolled it back on top of my "painting carpet" and that was it for another weekend.
The following Saturday was Turlock, so I set my alarm for 5:15 am and had a fab day out. The next morning, after a suitable lie in and some brekkie, I had Amy Sheep help me re-assemble the tent/paint booth over the front of the F250.
The picture below shows the view from further up the driveway. The tent is set up on top of the same carpet I used last time. I also added a mixture of masking paper and a tarpaulin to keep any overspray off the driveway.
This is the "inside" view just a few minutes into the masking process:
Masking complete! I've always enjoyed this part of painting process almost as much as I enjoy peeling off the tape afterwards.
I covered up the brake booster and most of the steering box. If I was making a show quality vehicle, I would have taken these parts off and painted them separately.
The holes in the firewall where the wiring loom passes through were stuffed with paper. The white ring around the opening indicates that the rubber wiring inserts were left in situ last time...and painted over.
I painted the hood hinges at the same time, even though they don't work properly. I plan to get new springs initially; if that doesn't help, I may end up getting new hinges.
The next day after work I took off the masking paper and packed away the canopy. After the next few photos were taken we pulled the truck up the driveway once more and rolled up the carpet.
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