I still haven’t taken the engine from the warehouse out to the shop… Getting the crate out of the back of the truck will be a two man job, and Michael’s been gone a lot this week. So it’s been time for some housekeeping and a little on-the-job training.

Before I dig into restoring the wiring harness, the engine bay desperately needed cleaning. So the Sy got dropped back onto its wheels and saw the sun for the first time in months. It sure is easy to push with the engine and transmission out, although with no weight in the front it has the stance of a stadium off-road truck. Having the truck parked outside for a while also gave me the opportunity to sweep up the remaining cubic yard of ATF-soaked kitty litter on the floor of the shop.

Here’s the "Before" shot looking down into the engine bay. Everything got soaked with Castrol Super Clean degreaser and hosed down with the pressure washer. Nothing like a little billion-psi water to get past all the seals in the front differential and connectors that couldn’t be pulled up out of the way!

After I got finished, it looked much better, although it wasn’t up to Michael’s standards. Next time I’m at the shop I’ll hit it again, since it can’t make things worse.

Remember this little guy? My jazzy bright orange thermostat housing was about to become a lab rat. As soon as I get it loose (after the gallon or so of WD-40 has a chance to do it’s work), I’m going to port the inlet to the turbine housing to match the exhaust manifold. Since I have zero experience porting things, I thought I’d get some practice on something made from the same material that was cheap and expendable in case I screwed up. Since I happen to have a spare thermostat housing, I thought "porting and polishing" it would be a perfect way to develop some rudimentary skills before tackling the much more expensive-to-replace turbine housing.

The first step was to clean it inside and out in the blasting cabinet, using 100 grit aluminum oxide media. This stripped all the paint off in a hurry, and cleaned out the scale inside as well.

This is the rough, "as cast" interior of the housing. Note the sharp transition to the neck and the mold parting line.

Check out the slick porting kit… flap wheels, stones, cartridge rolls, cross-buffs, and mandrels all ready to go.

After some work with the grinding stones in the die grinder, the sharp edges are gone but the finish on the inside of the housing is still pretty rough. You can also see where I slipped a little and marred the gasket surface in about the 10 o’clock position. Good thing this is just practice, huh?

Some quality time with an 80-grit cartridge roll and the 120 grit flap wheel has things looking a bit better…

The last step is polishing it out with oil-lubricated cross buffs in medium and fine textures. The result is shown here. While it’s not mirror-smooth, it’s pretty good for only a half-hour of very cautious work. Now, I feel confident enough to work on the turbine housing inlet without worrying about doing something stupid and rendering it useless. The key is to take your time and pay attention to what the tool is doing, stopping frequently to check your progress. That way you know where you’ve done enough and where you need to do more work before moving on to the next grit.

In addition to getting some valuable hands-on experience with porting tools, I now have bragging rights to the only Syclone in the world with a ported and polished thermostat housing!