I still need to do a little more grinding on the bottom of the chassis to clean up some of the weld splatter and sharp edges. I’m also planning on welding steel floorboards onto the bottom of the chassis to better protect from road debris. I wanted to get a better look at the bottom to see if I needed one or two pieces of steel. The bottom of the round tube is essentially flush with the bottom of the square tubes, so it looks like I can use a single piece.
I finished taping up the engine block, heads and timing chain cover and cleaned them thoroughly before painting them with three coats of Eastwood’s high-temperature ceramic engine paint in gloss black. I haven’t pulled the tape yet since I want the paint to be fully cured before touching it. Touching the overspray on the tape showed that it will be easy to leave fingerprints in the paint until it’s cured.
All of the surfaces on the heads and blocks that were painted were a fairly rough case surface, so it doesn’t result in a truly glossy surface, but I think it looks really nice.
The timing chain cover is a smooth casting, so it looks much more glossy.
While I taped up most of the front of the engine, there was a small oval part of the casting that had been sanded smooth and engraved with the Ford Racing logo and block part number. I didn’t mask that off and painted right over it. I took some 320 and 400 grit sand paper and sanded off the paint on this oval.
This left the paint down in the engraved areas. It’s unfortunate that the “c” in Racing” wasn’t engraved properly, but I still really like the way this looks.
