.....so I can clean and reseal it. I also really need to clean out the valley pan that is surely packed with sludge before firing up this 389.
The factory 2-barrel intake takes the large base Rochester carb. To remove it you must pull it towards the passenger side to get it off of the 4 studs that retain it on the drivers side, rather than pull it straight up.
As expected there's plenty of rat droppings and debris sitting on top of the valley pan.
The intake ports look fairly clean with just a thin coating of black deposits. There may have been a vacuum leak from the look of some of the intake gaskets.
Cylinders #2 and #4.
Cylinders #6 and #8.
Cylinders #3 and #1.
Cylinders #7 and #5.
A small amount of water did make it into the #2 intake port, but luckily enough the valve was closed so water didn't get into the cylinder. I'll close the valve and pour a little Marvel Mystery Oil into the port to clean it up a bit, a few flakes of rust should be easily digested without hurting anything.
I stuffed the ports with paper towels to get ready for all the gasket scraping.
The exhaust crossover uses separate steel shim gaskets to seal it on each side, there's actually a formed lip stamped into the gasket that fits inside the port.
Scraped and wire brushed clean, pretty much ready to accept some new gaskets. I had to get these areas as clean as possible in order to minimize the amount of crud that will drop into the engine while removing the valley pan.
The sludge accumulation isn't too excessive for a 56 year old engine, however there were a few large flakes that had come loose from the underside of the valley pan resting in there. After many years of sitting the thin layer of sludge just dries out and flakes off.
Now I can assess the condition of the cam and lifters, there's sure to be a couple of cam lobes that are going flat.
The valley pan will eventually come clean after a good long soaking in some cleaning solution.
The top side will need to be bead blasted, after masking off the underside and any openings in the top side to keep the blasting media from getting inside.
This opening is where the road draft tube connects, as you can see it's packed with crud.
Putting the 389 to bed for the night.
