cleaning gasket surfaces

[2FastLX]

Go to Auto Zone and buy a can of gasket remover. Spray it on the deck trying not to let too much get into the cylinders. Let it soak in for a few minutes and get a razor blade scraper and carefully scrape the block pulling the chunks away from the cylinders. That's the way I did mine. It's a pain in the arse, but it's the safest way I could come up with to keep the block free of debree.

Using any kind of scotchbrite pad or a similar item may do more harm than good. I tried that on mine and when I was rotating the crank around to get the next piston up for cleaning I noticed a few of the fragments from the pad had gotten between the piston and the cylinder wall.

It's a pain leaning over that fender and trying to scrape gaskets off the block isn't it?