CA questions???

If you have a concern about a wire size its always more better to error on the heavy side. I am a major proponent of over building.  And yea, give it a bath , at least you can get a wrench on it, there will be more opportunities to get greasy before your done. And I assume your changing all the fluids anyway.  Gary

Go for it - I'd use something like Simple Green in the washer to give yourself a shot at cutting the baked on grease and dirt. Always amazes me how hard it is to get that stuff off!

As far as the pressure washing is concerned, as Dave said "Go for it". The ole' girl needs a good bath. The only thing good about the crust and grease is that rust doesn't start where all the grease is.  lol!  As far as the wiring is concerned, if your staying with the 6V system, your main leads to the Gennie, Ammeter, etc will be #10. Sub circuitry for lights, and Ignition 14 gauge works just fine. Make sure your 3 position switch is grounded, and all grounding connections clean and rust and crud free. You should be good to go.
Steve@B&B

If you don't like the smell and/or chemical nature of oven cleaner, you may want to use the high pressure nozzle initially to break thru the crud (and blast some off). Then pour some of your favorite comcentrated degreaser (simple-green, purple-power, etc) in a spray bottle (I use empty windex or bath tub tile spray bottles) and spray down the tractor and let set for 5-10 minutes (apply more deagreaser to areas as needed) and hi-pressure wash again. Repeat the degreaser, soak spray cycle a few times and the paint that remains will be clean and free of oil/grease 

Sounds like you're making good progress. My son and I have a 3,000 PSI pressure washer that we bought reconditioned from Home Depot. It came with a rotary tip. That thing is awesome! The tip somehow oscillates as it sprays. It's like a zero degree tip, but it rotates in little circles. Hard to explain, but it makes a faster job of washing stuff down because it covers more area than a zero degree tip. Just make sure you have enough pressure and flow for it. Works very well for removing caked and baked on grease and even old paint.

Well, she cleaned up pretty good. Took a couple hours with the pressure washer but she looks a bunch better.

No paint to speak of on the engine

Rear end before

After


Only real ugliness I found was a broken mounting hole on the exhaust manifold, the "fix" works so I'll leave it for now.






Edited by Larry in OK - 28 Feb 2010 at 8:01pm

It cleaned up real nice, Larry. When I got my ca I sprayed it off at the car wash, but it didn't clean up that good. Did you try using the oven cleaner?

I'm thinking about getting another to match, the wheel on the other side is more square than round and the tire is showing cord in the side wall ion the inside.

Looks good Larry. I need to get the pressure washer to mine. It's not really greasy, just dirty. Of course, now that I run it from time to time, oil leaks are developing from the dried out gaskets. I'm afraid to get the washer out. Last time I washed down a trailer I was repainting, my wife said "next time you have that thing out, we need to wash down the house". It may be a while before the C gets a proper bath.LOL!