Nice weather again today, took the afternoon to clean up the port job on thr manifold with the dremel and match the manifold to tb gasket. Its not perfectly round or symmetrical but its a lot better than it was. Trying to hog out cast aluminum with a 25k rpm dremel and a tungsten carbide cutter not so easy. Polishing with the dremel was great though, 2 passes on low and high with course drum and the same with the med grit. Finished off with mothers aluminum polish and a felt drum on the dremel.

Thought about gasket matching the intake runners but it looks like id be cutting away the casting on the injector holes, which may cause issues with spray pattern (leading to tons of other issues). Plus, doing it with an dremel would take a good 12+ hours labor. Eastwood is 2 towns over and has a nice air die grinder kit made to port with for $20. May invest in it and see if i can borrow some shop time and compressor from a friend.

Started prepping things for paint. primed the throttle linkage on the new manifold and painted it flat black 2k high temp. need to finish up the last coat tomorrow in gloss black 500*. Also primed the plastic iac/linkage cover. Thinking of painting it red. Tb gets a coat of primer and red paint tomorrow and ill be modifying the NA plate. Spark plug cover will be taped up and painted red to match iac cover, keeping the stock black with silver lettering. Manifold gets reprimed and painted with matte black 2k paint and finished with black gloss 500* paint.

Still undecided on valve cover and fuel rail...may just polish with some heavy grit compound

 

Took today to paint again. Scored an ipd single gauge pillar pod from another forum member at Swedespeed. Bit rough condition but very salvageable. Filled in the one major cut with plastic weld epoxy after cleaning it up with a razor blade. Taped a flat thin piece of cardboard to the inside and packed the channel full. Also fixed a couple breaks in the plastic. Let dry overnight and sanded the entire pod down, shaved down the epoxy spots flat, sanded them again and primed the pod. 2 coats self etching primer and 2 coats of high temp flat black paint (overkill but on hand) and it looks brand new. Still needs clearcoat before install. Damaged areas no noticeable unless you really look.

Throttle body is ready for red paint once i can find a source for high temp spray cans. Linkage bracket is finished in high temp gloss black. Linkage cover is primed and ready for red paint. And the intake manifold has been soaking for the last 48+ hours in zep 505 degreaser in my home made "parts washer" (3/4 gallon zep 1/2 qt simple green to 12 gallons water in a 25 gal Rubbermaid storage box - caution:will strip paint)

Hopefully pics post with this reply....

 

Looks like pics wont upload from my phone...

Got the throttle body cover painted red today, as well as the throttle body. I have to tape off the tb and spray the linkage black yet.

One more night in the degreaser bath for the manifold and ill pull it out to take to the power wash to rinse. Scrubbrd the ports a bit again and went a bit deeper into the runners with a stainless steel brush and knocked a crap load more stuff out (globs of jellied, dissolved oil, carbon, swarf from port/polish, etc). Whatever is left should essentially be loose enough to rinse right out with high pressure car wash. I'll let it dry overnight and tape off the ports/flanges and primer.

Pulled the spark plug cover to prep for paint. Definitely time for a pcv job and a new oil cap gasket. Must have been about a half quart of oil under the cover. Pretty black, looks like its been gathering over awhile. Taped up and ready for primer tomorrow. Im going to sand after priming this one then hit it with gloss. The tb cover came out more orange than id like with the rustoleum 2000* matte red, so i may repaint that too. gloss goes on quite thick though so i may just get a high temp clear gloss and try that first.


Definitely need to clearcoat the gauge pod. It looks chalky after fully drying.