Here you go. Poor Man's Hot-Tank: I used about 2 lbs of "crystal drain cleaner" from Home Depot in a plastic trashcan full of hot water. The lye in the cleaner made the water even hotter. I dropped a plastic submersible fountain pump in the bottom of the trash can to keep the water moving. Pump survived just fine. You don't have to keep the water hot, but it helps to more quidkly dissolve the drain cleaner. One thing you want to avoid is just dumping the stuff in the water all at once. As lye dissolves in water, it releases a lot of heat, enough to melt through the plastic trash can if you're not careful. So stirring is a must, and it's a good idea to slowly add the stuff to the water so it disperses quickly. I already had the 6/1 block in the can, and brought the water level up just high enough to fully cover the can.
Just make sure no aluminum or brass/copper parts are still in the engine, and it's best to degrease the engine as much as possible before stripping.
Start:
After 24 hours:
Flywheels. I just clamped some boards together to make a box and lined it with two layers of trash can bags. After 24 hours lying on the cold concrete slab the solution was still warm, so it was generating its own heat.
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
-- MacBeth, Shakespeare, for your edification.
And after 24 hours, you can see what became of the green paint:
Block came out pretty clean clean after 24 hours soaking. A few areas didn't get fully stripped. 48 hours would have gotten those, but I wanted to get going with the rest of the project, so I cleaned it up with a flap sander disk in a $9.95 Harbor Fright 4 1/2" angle grinder. The white residue that you can see inside the crankcase was filler dislodged from the surface of the metal by the action of the stripper. It seemed to be something like drywall compound or plaster. It washed off with a stream of water from the garden hose. Inside of the engine was spotlessly clean. No evidence of grit under the paint.
Enjoy!
Quinn
