Clearance for Valve Covers
An Article by Tim Ronak
January, 2002
Page 5
How to Build Clearance to Easily Remove the Aluminum Valve Covers (cont.)
After all of the welding and grinding I masked the entire engine bay off and took great care to mask off the id plate with duct tape to prevent any damage as I was unwilling to remove it. Then I did remove the JAL Tag and sanblasted the entire area to clean off the old paint. It was really tough as the previous owner had it sprayed with crappy stuff and was very hard to blast off where is was not cracking. Where the factory coating was it came off easily with the red oxide primer being a little more persistant.
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
As a glance at the end result, here is the job, after sand blast. It may be a lot clearer on how this all goes together, and how much it looks like a production-type design, rather than a "big hammer". Here is the firewall after sandblasting. The finish is clean, and neat, but needs to be protected by the steps on the following page.
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