I've watched a few videos about cleaning an engine block using electrolysis, so I decided to give it a shot:
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It was pretty simple: I filled a five gallon bucket up with about four gallons of water, dissolved 1 1/2 cups of washing soda in it, dumped it into the 44 gallon garbage can, filled the same five gallon bucket up with four more gallons of water, dissolved 1 1/2 cups of washing soda in it and poured it into the garbage can. I then dropped the block into the garbage can, filled the garbage can up with water from a garden hose until the block was covered, hooked up the electrodes and turned my little Schumacher battery charger to the two amp trickle charge mode. I let it sit for almost exactly 48 hours. The results? Eh, it turned out okay. I did not pre-clean the block at all and it was FILTHY. (I think this engine had been dribbling engine oil from every gasket for at least 20 years and was driven regularly on the beach at some point because the block had a fair amount of sandy gunk that was caked on.) I ended up hauling the block into the bed of my F-250 to hose it down with my pressure washer. It's still not 100% clean; I'll have to work on it some more, but it's better than it was. My lesson: I will wipe/scrape all the really thick gunk off the engine block before I use electrolysis to clean one again.
Here's how the block came out (this was right after I pulled it out of the garbage can, I had not yet wiped the water off and coated it with WD40):
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Here it is after I wiped all of the water off and got it sprayed down with WD40:
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Here's how the block looks now:
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I checked all 16 of my pushrods for TIR; the tolerance is .015. Most were around .005, but this one was right on the edge:
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Based on the measurements I've taken so far, I now know I need to order a set of standard-sized rod bearings, standard-sized main bearings and standard-sized cam bearings. I haven't measured the pistons, rings and cylinder bores yet so I've still got more to do, but at least I'm moving in the right direction.