Started cleaning the engine…ugh. It doesn’t cost any money and it had to be done eventually. As you can see from the new pics, it’s a very, very messy project. I started off by vacuuming the all of the bird seed out of the flats in the lower manifold. That’s right, bird seed. Unscrewed the fuel runner and managed to break off one of the screws. The whole manifold situation is starting to annoy me. I’d like to replace the upper and lower at some point but they are taking a very low position on the list of priorities. They may end up ugly but they will still work and can be replaced later. I tried pulling the fuel runner but it’s getting hung up on something. Didn’t waste a lot of time trying to figure that out.
So I started to clean the engine by spraying on Super Clean and scrubbing with a rough sponge. It worked ok until I hit some of the thick stuff. At that point the sponge was just clogging and smearing all the grease around. Not effective at all! I decided to use the wire wheel on it. Good news is that it works pretty quickly. Bad news is that the grease has to go somewhere. It went everywhere! There were little dots of grease all over the place. I managed to get one side pretty much done and then got tired and cranky so I quit. I can feel a little bit of that sense of accomplishment for getting it done but man does it suck in the meantime. I think I need to keep using the wire wheel just so I can get through it with some kind of speed. Before I use it again I’m going to have to figure out how to protect the surroundings. And yes, the wire wheels leave wire in you. I had to pick out a couple of pieces. Just gotta keep at it!