I needed a break from the forum, so I took a week off. I'm still probably going to limit my time here to direct responses for a little while. Too much time spent on the internet is bad for you mmmkay. All this time off the internet has allowed for more focus in the garage which means I need to update this now If I ever want to catch up.
My TA order arrived which allowed me to rebuild the rocker shafts and oil pump.
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The TA buttons fit really nice. I'm glad I chose theirs.
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10mm socket and a hammer sent them home.
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Valvetrain installed for good!
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This again. Yuck.
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Once again, TA makes good stuff.
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Then I read this eye straining instruction sheet about blueprinting my oil pump hoping that my findings lead to no additional action needed.
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As it turned out, I was good to go. This pump looks great and it's well within the tolerances for installing a booster plate. No shimming necessary.
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Packed the pump with more than enough petroleum jelly.
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And sandwitched the plate between the cover and the filter housing.
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I purposely left the oil cooler adapter off, spun on a cheap filter, and got ready for paint.
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Finally installing the timing cover was a big win because it allowed me to finish painting the block. Dry paint on the block meant I could install everything else.
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Everything else includes these fancy new poly mounts from HR Parts
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I bought a brand new water pump for the Buick 350 I had years ago, but never ended up doing anything with that engine. Those pumps are identical to the V6 pumps, so I guess it's a good time to paint it and throw it on. Who knows. Maybe it will fix the mysterious accessory squeak.
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My minty stock valve covers look gungy against the freshly painted engine now.... not sure what I'm going to do about that yet.
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The starter motor is still the huge and heavy stocker. I'm just not ready to drop the money on a mini starter when this one looks and performs fine. Plus, it kinda sounds cool to me.
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Then my intake came back from my machinist buddy. After the baking, none of that tan stuff budged. I ground a little portion down a bit to find that it was only on the surface. Odd. We determined that a shitty powder coating must hove gone bad and got stained by fuel and oil. Painting this would be the only way to pretty it up.
I wasn't too happy about that. I hated painting aluminum parts because it traps heat and tends to look like shit. I figured I would give it a try. It was only $150, so if I didn't like it, I could sell the repaired and modified intake for more than I had in it. If I liked it, I would score!
Heater pipe bolt hole fixed.
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EGR tower removed.
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Did some more cleaning in the parts washer and took the stuff home to paint. After doing a bunch of online research I decided that Dupli-color DE1650 was what I wanted to try. I saw examples and liked that it was made specifically for cast aluminum engine parts. It wouldn't have a blue or beige tint like others or have a cheesy chrome or silver finish. It was supposed to look factory. I must say that I was very impressed.
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Before/after
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So here's a more fair comparison at least for Buick parts. I obviously can't spray the intake without doing the valve covers which kinda sucks, but it was to be expected. There's a clear difference here, but it's mostly just in uniformity. Look at the the spot on the nearest valve cover closest to the intake. That's not overspray, That's just a great match where the aluminum still looks clean and uncorroded. That's how I realized that there was no point in holding back. I would have liked to keep these valve covers uncoated with the original sticker, but they simply don't look that great anymore. Time to update.
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First, the plenum and a little demonstration of how goofy this paint is. It's super runny, but the only way to fix it is by spraying some more on top of it. It makes no sense. Plus, the runs come out looking black. See all the dark spots? They completely disappear after a second coat.
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Paint showed me just how damaged the plenum is too. I don't know what happened here. It looks like somebody beat it with a hammer? I guess there will be no rib polishing.

Oh well. That's more work than I wanted to deal with anyway. I'm too excited to finish this thing up for reasons I'll explain later.
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I don't have enough gaskets to put this stuff on permanently, but I find it easier to store stuff in their homes when I can. Here's the RJC power plate for stock plenums.
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Longer ARP plenum bolts are just sitting there for now, and the Racetronix EGR delete plate is installed with RTV. It's kinda odd that there's no information on this. I thought you would just use a gasket, but the plate isn't keyed deep enough to accept a gasket and the one bolt is the only thing holding it down. I'm surprised that's adequate. A couple guys mentioned tapping and plugging the holes, but then why have a delete plate? Plus, the exhaust hole is square. The other idea was tapping the intake hole for the vacuum booster which is a nifty idea, but I wasn't sure I could actually make it look nice while properly plugging up the exhaust side.
I've seen pictures of the bottoms of the intakes filled with some sort of epoxy, but I'm surprised that holds up to exhaust temps. I'm going to see if I can tap the round passages on the bottom side. It seems like the most secure way to at least soften the blow to the underside of the block plate.
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Valve cover time. So long sticker.
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It came off super clean so I super glued it to my stronghold of random stickers. lol I started questioning myself right about the time I took this picture. The valve cover looked pretty good after a nice degreasing and wipe down. Did I really want to do this?
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Yep
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Same treatment for the accessory bracket
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You can see here that I have the crank pulley and intercooler fan installed, but I am very unhappy with their conditions. For some reason all the bolt holes on the crank pulley are stripped out beyond repair. I can loctite the bolts and torque them to 10 ft/lbs but that's it. The intercooler fan looks like shit too which is a shame because it's a worthless but quirky little feature that I would like to keep FOR the looks. I can't have this, but restoration has been incredibly frustrating. The steel hub was originally yellow zinc plated, but this one was rusting before I bought it after the racoon incident. I tried painting it black to hide that but it didn't hold up at all.