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American Woman Motorscene

TORQUE QUEEN

How Clean Can She Be?

By Sue Elliott

My friend Barri Denison is a clean freak. She cleans her bathroom every single day. I, on the other hand, have never been known for my undying devotion to scrubbing. People don't actually call me or my home dirty (at least not to my face), but nobody would ever call me a clean freak.

Not surprisingly, my casual attitude about cleaning carries over into the automotive world, too. Yes, I love my vehicles. And I do hate having to go through a half-gallon of wiper fluid just to see where I'm driving. But topping at the car wash never seems to be convenient, and the last time I washed my car myself, I was in high school.

Then a strange thing happened to me. I was working on my 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle-a project car that I picked up for $550 and am turning into a really nice daily driver. The old greasy, grimy engine had been pulled out of the car, and Ed Taylor and I had finished rebuilding it. The 350-cubic-inch V8 was all clean and pretty, with plenty of brand-new aftermarket parts and pieces on it and inside it. It was ready to go back into the car.

Unfortunately, the car wasn't ready for it. I couldn't put a beautiful, clean, better-than-new engine into a greasy, grimy, nasty engine compartment. Even I knew it was time to break down and clean.

So, I did. I put on some tired, worn-out aerobics shoes, a pair of jeans that were too short but still comfortable and a T-shirt I never did like, then I climbed inside. There I was, with some harsh engine-cleaning chemicals in a bucket, and an assortment of brushes and Scotch Brite pads, using more than a little elbow grease. I cleaned the steering box. I cleaned the firewall. I cleaned the master cylinder for the brakes. In short, I cleaned and I cleaned and I cleaned.

It was two complete evenings' worth of work. And you know what? I actually enjoyed cleaning. I couldn't believe it. But I could see the progress right away. I was working on my car, and I was getting real results. It was actually kind of empowering.

Of course, cleaning the engine compartment wasn't the only part of the experience that was empowering. So was rebuilding my engine-with the help of an experienced engine builder, of course.

At this point, some of you are probably thinking, "Okay, I could see cleaning the engine compartment, and maybe even spray painting a few things to make them look nice again. But rebuilding an engine? I could never do that."

Well, if I can, you can. But only if you want to. I had always wanted to do it-at least once. And the funny thing is, rebuilding an engine doesn't take long, and there's really nothing mysterious involved. After all, if you think about it, the engine builders on the assembly line at the factory were definitely skilled technicians, but they weren't brain surgeons. If they could put together a motor in less than two hours, you and I certainly could do it in two days. And, with Ed's help, I did.

It was, naturally, a learning experience. Among the many things I learned was that there are more opportunities for sexual double entendres in engine-building than in any other pastime I can think of. For one thing, you have to apply lubricants to just about everything. It's also imperative to have the right tool for the job at hand. And there's a whole lot of time spent beforehand, getting things ready for the actual act of engine-building-more time, in fact, than is spent in the act.

But perhaps the biggest lesson to be learned from engine-building is that nothing is more important than getting everything clean. (There's that word again. It's a clean theme.) There's no point in putting together the engine at all if you aren't going to clean everything, because little metal shavings, packing popcorn and any other extraneous matter will eat an engine quicker than you can say, "Gentlemen, start your . . ."

The good news is that I seem to have learned a thing or two about cleaning, because my engine not only lasted long enough for me to complete any number of pithy automotive sayings, it also is still running strong a couple months later.

And, when we put the engine on a dynamometer (or dyno, for short) before dropping it back into the Chevelle to measure the power it produced, among other things, the results were most pleasing. Obviously, for starters, it held together. (I breathed a big sigh of relief. This was my first time, after all.... No virgin jokes, please.) And the engine made 345 hp and 403 lbs.-ft. of torque on the dyno, which is definitely a good thing. (This is no wild, racing engine, after all-just a mild, street motor with not-terribly-expensive pieces inside.)

Of course, for a non-clean-freak like me, preparing the engine parts and the engine compartment did feel like a lifetime's worth of cleaning, cleaning and re-cleaning. And I haven't even touched the car's interior yet. Fortunately, I have a reprieve from that job for the time being, while I save up enough money to have the bodywork done right.

I thought about learning how to do bodywork and apply paint, too, but even experts at engine-building usually leave this stuff to the experts at bodywork and paint, so I thought I'd learn from their mistakes. On the other hand, you may have the patience for sanding, sanding and resanding. But it feels a bit too much like cleaning to me.

I guess I'll never be like my friend Barri-or like Art Peterson, who drag races the cleanest '69 Pontiac GTO you've ever seen. Now he's a clean freak. He's out there in the pits, in 102-degree weather, detailing the car between races. He races it, brings it back to his trailer, cleans it, races it again, cleans it again. On a good day, when he wins several rounds, he could clean the old Goat a half-dozen times. That's one way I'll never be.

But I am glad I spent those days and evenings cleaning engine parts and the Chevelle's engine compartment. There's nothing like putting effort and energy into something to make it feel like it's really yours- and to develop even more pride in ownership. Besides, I learned a ton of things, and I can tell people I built my own engine. (That alone is worth the late nights.)

Anyway, I seem to have developed what non-carlovers might consider an unnatural fondness for my Chevelle. Of course, as with most toys when I haven't played with her for a while, I start to think I might sell her someday. Fortunately, all I have to do to fall in love again is take her out for a quick drive. She's a strong runner these days, thanks to that engine rebuild. And she's special, in part because she took up so much of my time.

Of course, even more amazing than that is the fact that, for now at least, if you look under her hood, she's really, really clean.

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