The tare down is taking much longer than I had hoped because of time or lack there of...
To date I have the case open cam cover off, one head completely stripped and rebuilt and most of the smaller bits off opened and checked.
Nothing realy to complain about withthe exception of some damaged threads on two studs and one stripped banjo bolt. The cam in the engine is far better than the spare I have. The spare head is a far nice one than the one on the engine. I keep finding crud in places but nothing near as bad as I expected and the machining continues to improve the deeper I get into the motor to more critical parts. It apears to be a case of India saving shiny for where its needed rather than where it looks good.
Plaster is used to make the casting look better in a lot of places and this makes for some ugly clean up.
So far the name of the game has been to strip, scrap, clean bead blast fill and prime a little. Spot putty is as far as I will go to make a casting look good and I only go so far as to fill tiny voids. Ive used a little Devcon WR2 epoxy on some parts to smooth casting like the water outlets so a hose will not leak.
Painting is a combination of what ever they had so I have two shades of green inside, red blue and some bare cast. My paint job consists of Glyptal 1201 inside on beaded clean parts. My exterior finnish is red oxide prime, some spot, and intermediate coat of Guillevin "School Bus Yellow" industrial enamel with a final top coat of geniun CAT high gloss.
The CAT paint looks like a million bucks but the colour high lights every defect so on some parts I've begun to sand with an 80 grit -120 - 240 and a light sand between the first prime and spot and the final prime. I'm trying to keep the amount of paint on this to a minimum. These parts are cast and should look like cast when done I also only have 3 can of the CAT paint left before I have to go to the dealer and buy more or switch to a substitute that may not match.
All the fasteners have that blue panit on them too so they go into the steel shot machine for a spin. For rust prevention I follow that up with a light coat CRC Clear electrical varnish. I need to chase the threads on some holes and studs with paint in them for that I ordered a 17 dollar 5/16 Brittish fine tap and a die. Not a common item here in Canada so I might be waiting a few days.
Very little work is needed to clean up these castings for paint thanks to the glass bead. This is a must for doing and indian engine. The casting themselves are sound but the surface prep done at the works was awful. The dampness of the plaster combined with a dirty virgin casting leads to such a poor bond with the factory blue in some places I can remove a lot just with a thumb nail. This is a pityy because the hammered finnish bllue used at the works actualy seems like good paint and would have looked and held up well had it been done right the first time. Internaly there seems to be a mix of about 3 differetn products to seal in anything missed durring the clean up. A lister green that looks like just a standard oil paint, a light green hard finnish low gloss sealer of some kind and a red low luster finnish that looks like Glytal
Why all the plaster?
These casting aren't bad, my guess is they do this so often that now its habbit and the rough grind marks from preping the casting must scream to be plastered to them.
Knicks are dents in the casting are few, but the spare head had a little rougher go than other machined surfaces. Machining surfaces go from crude but acceptable on the head and cylinder block to some realy well done clean and flaw less finnishing on the block and covers.
Thats about it for now. My two year old realy tries to help and this didn't make for much progress today....
More pictures when the next batch of paint dries.
And I think I'm going to make my own manifolds and a third water outlet out of steel and try and make it look like the cast parts.
Doug
