3 hours with razor blades... what do you think of this block surface?
 

Before I go on, I have searched and googled tips on how to get a clean block surface. Most of what I'm finding that involved any kind of sanding or roloc wheels has mentioned aluminum oxide that would grenade my motor sooner rather than later.

So I've been working at these 2 cylinders for 3 hours and I will say that they feel ultra smooth but in the pics, you can still see a few dark spots left behind from the previous gasket. You can't feel them, but they are obvious to see. This is with razor blades and brake cleaner and wd40. The 3rd pic shows the remaining 2 cylinders just for comparison's sake.

Please tell me this is enough... or point me to a faster and better way.:sigh:

Looks perfect to me, I would have likely stopped long before it ever looked that good LOL.

Slap some gaskets on there and bolt that cylinder head on.

My buddy showed me a trick. Take a piece of glass and fine grit sanding paper w adhesive backing. Use it to sand the deck surface. You’ll see the high spots quick. Work that until it’s flat. The piece of glass was only about 6x6.

Thanks for the advice and I've really wanted to go the sandpaper route but is there no concern of granules or grit getting down in the motor? I'm not too worried about coolant passages because I'll just blow it out with compressed air but what about into the bores and into the rings? Or into the oil? I plan to do a double oil change as soon as it's swapped in but even still I imagine it doesn't take long for contaminants like that to do some damage.


I'm not looking for a 1000 hp race truck but I'm throwing on some 799 heads with a valve job and new HG's so I wanna make sure I get this good enough for that.

I spend about 5 minutes with a roloc disk to clean my motors. never heard of anyone grenading a motor after using this method. I've used it on both iron and aluminum blocks

What color bristle wheel do you use? green, yellow, white?

I use these on engines.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.per...a8673d3820.jpg

^^^^ Those are the ones. We used those on a buddies BMW M3 deck as he heard the same thing about scotch brite pads.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.per...753101c4e6.jpg

Very well, gentleman. Will update soon. Hopefully this thread will be helpful to someone else as much as it's helped me. 🖒

Can of WD40, and a stack of scotch brite pads always worked great for me. Good wash down with brake clean before assembly does fine. Fire it up and give it hell.