Here she is last fall in her new home just prior to getting the engine pulled.
My buddy stopped by for some "Olde Tyme" wrenching and we pulled the motor. The goal is to replace all the crusty old gaskets in the motor and give it fresh coat of paint in preparation for mating it to the new transmission and nestling them back in their proper location between the fenders.

Here's the 389 freshly scrubbed and back in the garage.
It's still got plenty of gunk to be removed but this is the result of 3 cans of engine cleaner, 6 rounds of pressure washing and scrubbing with both nylon and brass detailing brushes.
50+ years of road grime and oil tends to stay stuck to things.

Closer inspection. Here's the valley pan with the intake off, lots of crud that the pressure washer couldn't reach.
Also the first sight which gave me some cause for concern. A couple of the push rod ports around the EGR port were blocked. Not sure what to make of that yet, the plan is to still just clean things up and replace the gaskets.

Sadly, I only have myself to blame for this.
If I hadn't ignored the engine compartment for so long I probably could have prevented the battery tray from rotting out.
I'll need to patch the core support too.

 

On the plus side I managed to find an original replacement tray at Franks Pontiac Parts.
It's a little pitted but it's all there and solid. Notice anything missing on the old one?
Nobody reproduces this part so it had to come from a donor.
They make them for '64 but not for my '63.

 

 

I've cleaned up the rust and loose paint on the valley pan.
It's now sporting a coat of WD40 to slow the reappearance of surface rust while I work on other things.

 

Here's the motor after stripping off the remainder of the accessory brackets and fuel pump.
I've taken apart the harmonic balancer. I'll probably replace it with a new one from Butler Performance when the time comes.

 

I spent a recent sunny afternoon scrubbing the engine bay with a nylon tire/wheel brush and Simple Green.
It was pretty bad in here, compounded by the mouse urine on the fender wells left by the rodents who'd previously taken up residence in the hood insulation.
It is also now sporting a coat of WD40 to slow the reappearance of surface rust while I work on other things.

Some more tear down; just about everything but the heads and timing chain have been removed now. I have tried to remove the heads by now but they are not willing to part with the engine. The driver's side is just plain glued to the block; the passenger's side has a stubborn head bolt that resisted over 30 minutes of overall impact wrenching. This included applying heat... I've since been letting it sit with liquid wrench.

Here's a close-up of the gnarly looking heads. I'm still debating whether to get them professionally rebuilt or just build a budget hot tank and clean them up. While cost is a factor, it's not the primary factor. If I get them professionally rebuilt I'll likely have them machine the heads for better valve seals and install hardened exhaust seats. A more efficient valve profile is a given.

Finally got the heads off. Stupid is as stupid does. The "frozen" head had a head bolt I'd missed last session, once loosened the head popped right off. Funny how that works. The last bolt on the passenger side head required a little more persuasion. In the form of a 1/2" breaker bar and a 48" jack handle. I was terrified of snapping it off in the block but it was just a bit of rust right at the neck of the bolt keeping it from budging.

If the heads didn't look so gnarly, I'd say the one thing on the engine that looks particularly nasty is the lifter valley. I'm now thinking about replacing the lifters, I'm afraid they won't pump up at this point. And if I do that I might as well replace the cam and the pushrods too.

 

On the plus side, aside from some schmutz on top of the pistons, the cylinders themselves look fine and everything's been rotating with no issues. I think the rest of the bottom end will be OK.

 

 

So, I've got just about everything off the short block now. I spent a while scrubbing this side of the block with Simple Green and a brass detailing brush. Needless to say, it's tedious work. I've still got to attack the other side but things are cleaning up.

 

So, I broke down and ordered myself a new parts washer instead of jerry rigging a red-neck hot tank. It's big enough to fit two heads in, but just barely. Here's the first head going into the crystal clear bath for a soak.

 

And here's the second head joining it's partner for a bath. The cleaning solution doesn't look so crystal clear any more. It was shortly after this that I learned that just because two heads fit in the tank, doesn't mean two heads should share the tank.

 

The Standells would be proud. This is also the point at which I was reminded of Archimedes' principle. And discovered that a 20 gallon parts washer built in China should not be expected to be water tight. It's only 10 gallons of cleaning solution, but it found its way out around the port in the side that the power cord runs through. Thankfully the tank tapers so that the run off only dripped into the draining pan below.

 

I'm impressed. This is the result of only about 2 hours in the bath and a little scrubbing with a brush. After this I set one head in to soak along with the valley pan. They'll sit a couple of days and then I'll swap in the other head to keep leaks to a minimum.

 

Okay, I said a couple of days but that turned in to a week in the bath. Just look at the difference... Not only did it soften the gunk around the valve springs and rockers, it loosened all of the carbon in the cylinder chambers (not shown), and as you can plainly see, it took off all of the paint and even some of the rust. Krud Kutter Parts Washer, says it's safe for use on just about everything, but paint apparently... Plus it contains a corrosion inhibitor. It ain't cheap, but I'm a fan.

Yesterday was a nice warm day so I decided to try and get some paint on a few things while I had the opportunity. Here's the core support and fender-well below the battery tray with a fresh coat of rust encapsulator. This should hold until she's running again and I can start doing little "fixer upper" projects, like really cleaning and painting the engine bay.

 

I didn't want to neglect the whole engine bay though. I spayed a couple of good coats on the recently cleaned cross-members and parts of the fender-wells too.

 

Here's a shot of the oil pan shortly after its session in the parts washer. Before this shot I had already taken a hammer and block of wood to the good-sized dent in the sump, but you can still see ripples and creases where they don't belong.

 

Here it is again after an hour or so with a hammer and dolly. I've managed to get most of the crease out and re-contoured the sump so the oil will drain where it's supposed to. Previously the dent was keeping a good portion of oil at the back of the pan. It still needs a shot of primer and paint before winter. It ain't perfrect but I'm not building a show car and I don't want to weaken it too much.

And here's one of the valve covers after coming out of the bath. All the paint is gone but it's still got some rust spots here and there. I took a wire wheel to each of the covers before hitting them with a spritz of rust encapsulator.

 

And here's both of them with a fresh coat of primer over the rust encapulator. I plan to get them each coated in paint before winter arrives.

 

Another week, another warm fall day. I finally broke out the engine paint to cover some of the bare metal. Here are the valve covers after getting a new coat.

 

 

I did some research trying to find the best/most correct paint for the engine. I settled on PlastiKote PLA-208 even though it can be tough to find. I ordered mine from Butler Performance. Although it's hard to tell in the photos, the color is a nearly perfect match to the original paint. I laid it down over the original paint on the oil pan and, even new over old, it was almost impossible to see the difference in shade.

 

I ended up soaking the valley pan the longest of any of the parts because it was gummed up the most internally. Finally satisfied that it will breathe and won't be dropping crud back into the engine I applied a nice shiny coat to it as well.

 

And last on this day, but not least, the intake was treated to the rattle can. It's been coated top and bottom which, as near as I can tell, was not how the factory did it. It seams they assembled everything and shot the engine as a whole.

 

Another tool ordered. The rear main oil gallery holes are sealed with pipe plugs and I had no way to get them out, so Amazon to the rescue. These made quick work of two of the plugs but I didn't have a good alignment on one and nearly stripped it out. I'm going to have to lay the block face down on the floor to attempt the last one again. Hopefully I won't end up having to drill it out.

 

The crank and pistons are out. The pistons went into the bath for a week to soak the crud off. I'm debating whether to have it professionally hot tanked, but the way things have been going I'll probably end up just using a prodigious amount of elbow grease to finish cleaning things up.

 

The pistons are out of the bath and looking much better. Mixed into the pile you'll see the main bearing caps as well. I might need to replace the wrist pins but I'm hoping not. I'll let you know when the time comes. Once these came out of the washer I set the crank in for a soak.

 

And, yet another tool ordered. While inspecting the cam bearings I saw some questionable lines and shadows that caused a good bit of concern. So I bought a cam bearing remover/installer. Simple and straight forward, I've read horror stories about bearing installation with these, but I guess I'm going to press my luck with it.

 

This is the #4 cam bearing. This is the one I was concerned about and, as it turned out, rightfully so. At some point it started to come apart. At the center of the photo you can see where a chunk came out and got embedded in the bearing face a little further over. YIKES!

 

And this is the rearmost #5 bearing. Evidence of oil gallery holes being plugged on this one. Especially concerning because the cam galleries help to feed oil the crank journals. Lack of oil feed is not the kind of stroke you want in your engine.

 

Here a peek down the cam bore. Overall things don't look too bad here, but this view shows that I've really got may work cut out for me in the cleaning department.

 

And because it was a fairly warm day I decided to end with a little painting to add a sense of accomplishment. The timing cover and crank pulley got scrubbed and shot with color.

 

After the winter break my first prioty was to finally remove the last oil gallery plug. As you can see from the photo, that didn't go so well. As previously mentioned, my first mistake was trying to reach it with the block on the stand. And as much as I'd hoped otherwise, standing the block on the floor didn't improve the situation.

 

So, what's a guy to do? First, deal with life during a pandemic. Then, after some months, a lot of research, deliberation and soul searching I decided to bring it to a good local machine shop. Here's the internals in the back of our SUV...

 

... and here's the block in the bed of my FIL's p'up to get the ball rolling. I knew going in that this option wasn't going to be cheap, but it was going to be the best solution to end with a solid foundation.

 

In just under 2 weeks I got the call from the machine shop that the engine was done and ready for pickup. This photo is actually from a day or two before that when I stopped in to visit to see how things were going.

 

Back in the bed of the FIL's p'up, this time being unloaded for the last time. The owner of the shop told me he was surprised the engine hadn't dropped a valve. At least one of the valve retainers had almost worn through due to the oil pressure issues the block showed throughout the teardown.

 

And finally home again. The engine ended up needing to be bored .030 over due to uneven clylinder wear. So, I've essetially got a 395 ci engine now. Not that I have any plans to hop it up. It's supposed to be a cruiser, not a race car.