Half baked plans

I got the re-bored cylinder head back.  Unfortunately - we had a miscommunication.  I thought I had asked for the cylinder to be cleaned, painted and bored.  The shop that did the work heard "bored".  So - the good news is that a freshly bored cylinder is at my house.  The bad news is that it looked all mungy/ugly on the outside.

I started with Orange degreaser, and did the big spots with my nylon brush.  But that wasn't getting between all of the fins.  So, I put it in a small bucket with the rest of my degreaser and let it soak all day.  It looked like I had most of the grease off, so I rinsed it off and blew the remaining water I could see off with my air compressor.

Let it dry for a little bit, and I sprayed it with VHT (very high temperature) exhaust header paint (black).  Now - if you read the instructions for this paint, in order for  it to be completely impervious to everything (and good to 2000 degrees F), you have to cure it.  I didn't even read the directions for "if part is on vehicle" - since that is moot.  But here they are for "if part is not on vehicle":

Place object in 250 degree F Oven for 30 minutes.
Let cool for 30 minutes.
Place object in 400 degree F Oven for 30 minutes.
Let cool for 30 minutes.
Place object in 600 degree F Oven for 30 minutes.
Let cool.  Paint is now cured.

Wow - my oven doesn't even go to 600F.  But, I'm not going to let that stop me.

Got out one of the old pizza pans that my wife bought years ago, and put the cylinder head in the 250 F oven.

That seemed to go OK.  Next the 400 F oven.  Hmmm - lots of smoke.  Didn't get all the grease off, did we?

Next - cranked the oven as high as it would go (somewhere north of 500 F).  Yikes - that's not a good smell.  Vent fan on.  Window open!  Puffs of blue/white smoke coming out of the oven.

That was a long 30 minutes.  My wife came in the kitchen once while this was going on and said "Ewwww - what's that smell?".  I opened the oven and showed her - she didn't say anything and just left (the kitchen, not forever).

Once it was done - I took it immediately out to the garage to cool.  Luckily - leaving the window open all night allowed the smell to dissipate.

So - there are some blotches of grease around the bottom flange, where I missed some spots with the degreaser.  But - overall - it looks pretty good.  Hopefully I'll find out someday how durable it is.