Dear mid-60s Buick fans of a certain rascally Buick station wagon,
I have some news from TA-Performance regarding the engine for my trusty wagon. I spoke with Mike Tomaszewski and the engine is back together and on the test stand. Mike chose some very nice head castings and switched to the more reliable lifters so he hoped that would be the end of the leaks and valve train noise. The leaks are indeed gone, but alas, Mike thinks he is hearing a slight amount of valve train noise. He wanted to investigate the matter further to make sure whatever was causing the noise was harmless.
In the meantime, I decided do something to upgrade the appearance of some of the parts that had remained here. During the previous rebuild I had carefully repainted the pulleys, brackets, and other parts that were waiting for the engine's return. Well, when the engine came out once more my paint job didn't look exactly stellar. For example, here is the A/C compressor and Alternator bracket:
That's a bit discouraging for carefully painting using a recommended brand of engine bay paint. So I decided to take things up an notch and have these parts powder-coated. Here is the same part after having been powder-coated:
A friend of mine recommended a local outfit about 1/2 an hour's drive away. Okay, I did go with high-gloss black instead of low-gloss GM engine bay black. However, I would assume you can have your Nailhead engine parts powder-coated to a very close if not exact match to GM engine bay color of 1965. You certainly cannot beat the durability. Here is the water pump pulley after just one year of minimal use:
Here is how it turned out after powder-coating:
If you want to see all the before and after photos, you can seem them in this online gallery:
https://canebas.smugmug.com/Biquette/Drive-Train-makeover/Power-coating-Biquettes-engine-components There is even an online slide show if you want to view the before and after images in sequence:
https://canebas.smugmug.com/frame/slideshow?key=wQhTjM&autoStart=1&captions=0&navigation=0&playButton=0&randomize=0&speed=3&transition=fade&transitionSpeed=2&clickable=1The slide show will just run automatically. However, if you want to control the speed just click on the image and it will allow you to do that as well.
The whole collection of parts cost me a little over $150 to powder-coat, so it won't break the bank. Whether or not you want the shine, any part that you have powder-coated will certainly stand up to the
wear and tear far better than regular paint.
Cheers, Edouard