59 Chevy Apache, new valve covers!

Good afternoon! How exciting it is designing an engine and how it’s going to look when it’s all put together! Valve covers probably catch the viewer’s eye right off the bat when looking into an engine compartment, maybe except for the air cleaner!

When I picked out my first set of valve covers, I thought they were THE prettiest things I’d ever seen! They’re new, shiny and without a blemish, but unfortunately, due to un-forseen circumstances, those pretty valve covers and other things under the hood will look horrible as the story goes!:(

While our new garage was being built, the 59 Chevy Truck was stored in a metal building, gravel floor, with a nice fitting waterproof cover over it. Several months later when we went to bring the truck home, I pulled the cover off, popped the hood, and behold~ the engine, especially the aluminum parts were covered with water droplets and stained! oh crap!:(  The pics below are after using Flitz cleaner, and with a little more elbow grease probably would have been fine!

I know, I know, but I’m quite picky these days!!;)

But, I think of valve covers like lady’s shoes! Why have just one pair??? 😉 I actually wanted new set of valve covers and these Proform will do just the trick!  They almost reflect an “old school” look, but new at the same time!

I purchased these ProForm aluminum valve covers through ebay, but the company selling them is BarnettPerformance.com.

I Love the new look!!! 😉

Spending a great deal of time also cleaning up the intake manifold helped to, plus all the metal AC/PS/alt brackets from Alan Groves were rusting as well and needed freshening up! Then I went with all new green drive belts! Spared no expense!

Now, backing up a bit, not terribly long ago, I did some work for a friend of mine on his 82 Trans-am, and he gave me a Moroso water pump and Chrome alternator! How sweet! The water pump just needed some polishing and it cleaned up just fine. Though weight isn’t really a factor to me, this Moroso water pump is incredibly lightweight!

The Chrome alternator wasn’t charging, so I took the guts from my old Delco alternator(relatively new) and installed them into my Chrome alternator, and all is fine!

I feel the outcome was, in my opinion, totally awesome!!! The engine compartment now “POPS”!! The folks at the next car show should hopefully be impressed!

This comparison below, I just never could get the Aluminum valve covers to “glisten” no matter how much I polished them!

But I love the notion that my engine now looks more from the era due to the nostalgic looks that the valve covers offer!;)

I thank my friend AJ for the parts and my husband for letting me buy new valve covers, and the labor, well was pretty much free, since I do all my own work;)

That sums up another little blog in the adventures in Classic Cars and Tools! I hope you’ve enjoyed it!! dne’ 😉