Saving Granddad's Falcon

[dhbfaster]

Expecting sun and low-er humidity tomorrow and the engine is about ready to be painted!
Should I have any concerns using Teflon tape for the water fittings?
And what about for the water temp and oil temp sensor fittings?
I read something about sensors needing good (ground) contact with the block (advising against using Teflon tape.)
Any thoughts?

[Luva65wagon]

Don, I use either Loctite or Permatex pipe thread sealant. Not Teflon tape.

[dhbfaster]

Well, here it is, Engine painted. Not bad for a first timer.
I decided to paint the other parts for the front of the engine separately, and decided to go ahead and paint over the freeze plugs. I think it looks pretty good...still wet and very shiny in this picture however.
Roger, I used teflon tape on the water fittings. Should i change it to permatex or Loctite tread sealant? No biggie if I need to, it looks like I'm going to have to touch up around the valve cover anyway. If I do need to however, I'll go loosen it a turn tonight before it gets to final cure.

[Luva65wagon]

Technically Teflon tape is not a sealant. It keeps the threads from galling at best and may slow leakage down. But generally it is to allow mechanical sealing of tapered pipe threads. It will not lock anything in place. Loctite-type sealants lubricate the threads and have a sealing property 2nd to none.

[dhbfaster]

Gotcha. Just put the order in for some permatex.

[Luva65wagon]

That'll do ya.

Motor looks nice. You may find after bolting stuff on that your masking left bare metal exposed. You may want to hand-paint those areas once things get installed. But looks really nice. I'm fond of black motors these days.

[PhilC]

Though I'd share some pics of the process Don's car is undergoing. These are examples of the way I remove dents and prep for epoxy.

This happens to be the driver's fender and I chose two dents on the crown near the door edge to show off.

The first is a shot of two deep dents from the backside of the fender, out of sequence, but the one with the steel rule shows the depth before I started. I roughed them out with a door skin dolly and hammer (has a nice high crown) and the next one is after working them a bit more. At this point, all my reference was from the exterior using a block with 80gr to show highs/lows.

I continued working the lows, slowly bringing them up and running a well worn body file over the surface to highlight what I was doing. Rather than take pictures after each step, I was just repeating the same one over and over until I was satisfied, I just took a few shots after I was finished.

More next post.