Baking Brownies

I got the rest of the head disassembled and all of the parts bagged and tagged. I bought a used cam chain roller and a new valve off of ebay to replace the broken/bent ones. I spent last weekend cleaning off all of the mating surfaces that will be getting new gaskets. There was some old gasket glue on them and I wanted them to be clean, smooth and shiny. I also cleaned off all of the buildup in the combustion chambers and in the valve ports. When I cleaned out the exhaust ports, 35 years worth of carbon dust came billowing out. Good thing I did that outside. I also noticed that the exhaust valve seats were pretty cruddy. I think they were not seating right which might have led to some of my low compression and poor engine performance. Although it is hard to see in the picture below, there was a whole lot of crud baked on there.

I also painted some of the other parts I had previously cleaned and given the brushed metal finish to. The brushed metal parts are painted with a clear enamel and the satin black parts are painted with a black enamel. The enamel should be heat cured for full hardness, but I didn't want to stick my parts in my oven. So, I hung them in front of a small space heater I had for about 20 minutes each. The second picture is the tachometer being "baked". They got too hot to touch and hopefully that is enough. I still have some more parts to do as well as the carburetors.