I took one of the heads off tonight after screwing with the timing covers seal forever.

I took some tips from here about scraping it clean with a razor blade and using a shop vac to suck up all the junk.

I can't scrape any more material off the deck even with a new blade. But the deck still has a slick coating on it. There is also sort of an "image" of the head gasket on the deck. I read to use a scotch brite pad to get some of it off, but that seems like it would dump shavings in the cylinders.

Will all that come off eventually, or does the "image" remain. I just don't want to scrape for the next couple weeks and not get anywhere.

thanks

 

That "image" is just leftover gasket material dye, OR oil stains from the oil that accumulated around the intake edges.

Best way to get rid of that is to use a rag and carburator cleaner. Spray it on the rag and then "wash" the whole gasket surface with it. You'll be surprised how effective it is.

 

Lacquer thinner in a gallon can works better, and costs about ¼ as much by volume as the spray-can stuff.

If there's material left stuck on there that you can't get off, you can turn the motor so that all the pistons are down in the bore a bit, and use duct tape to cover them and the lifter valley over, and use whatever it takes to get it off. I like those 3M "Regalite" and "Roloc" pads and a die grinder.

 

A good trick to use if you get amount of material down in the bores is to position each of the pistons in the down position, then take a rag and put a good coat of clean oil on the walls and then rotate the motor till the pistons come back up to the deck on back down a little. The oil should pick up most of the junk and leave a ring of it near the deck that it easily wiped up. Worked well for me.

 

Laquer thinner and a scotch brite pad seems to work very well in getting the film of head gasket off.

To get the trash out of the cylinders I'm going to smear a ring of oil around the top of the bore and then rotate the engine around so all the junk sticks to the oil. Does that sound like it'll work ok?

 

Works fine for me. If you can use the heaviest oil you have to make the particles stick better. I've used a shop vac to help clean up, too. It works well for getting those stray particles around the upper rings and out of the cooling passages. It can be a little messy for the vacuum though.

 

Yeah, I've been using the shop vac. I used it to evacuate the cooling system. Put the vac hose on the water pump and let it fly. It worked great. No coolant came spilling out when I took the heads off.