Metal impregnation

:drive: In the early 90s i needed a job............the job center which i visited had a card in the window......METAL IMPREGNATOR said the listing.........apart from a fire eater and im not joking..........yep a fire eater there was not much else going..........What is a metal impregnator i asked?...............The reply still left me scratching my head but it was local to me and i was keen for a job............The interview was arranged for the next day.........on arriving on site i was escorted arround a small plant..............The plant had a over head crane............The plant had several hundred alluminium engine blocks and cylinder heads all in crates......I showed interest at this as anything to do with cars appealed to me from a early age and a day later i was told........yer got the job.........the engine blocks hot from the production line were stripped of the bearing ladders ...........then the gleaming blocks were carefully loaded into a large circular basket..........aprox 20 blocks were loaded in this metal basket and likewise a large number of heads were also added to simular baskets..and bearing ladders to were done...........the overhead crane slowly came down ...........i hooked it up and the basket which was large enough for 2 men to stand in was hoisted away to a large tank...............it was positiond inside the tank...............Whats the tank do i asked?............... well not beating about the bush.......A man operating the plant said come and have a go......it was explained like this...........the baskets lowered in tank.............press of a large green button closed the domed lid with a hiss of air as it shut and locked..........pulling a lever down i was told,this operates the vacuum which sucks all the air out of the alloy castings................he said alloy castings are pourus and need sealing,hence the need for a plant like this...............after a short time another lever was pulled down .............this drew a resin from a simular sized tank...........a tube showed red coloured resin filling the tank of castings,,,,untill the fill mark was reached and pumping stopped.........the tank was then presurised for another period of time allowing resin into the porous cast....................when this process was complete the basket of castings were put on a platform where on pressing a pedal they submerged into cold water................this was repeated several times to wash excess resin away.................The basket was then lowerd into a tank of hot water,where it stayed for a short period...........The curing of the resin the guy explained................The plant got very busy and i learnt to operate the plant on my own...........has it was announced it would be a 24hour operation....due to a very high demand from the costomer who wanted more heads and blocks ..........................have you guessed yet what the blocks and heads were for? and who the costomer was...............The blocks and heads were the k series and yes rover deliverd them by the thousands..........the resin in the blocks was not visible........i asked how rover were to know how there blocks had been treated?......the resin shows under ultra violet was the reply ..........my first encounter :tada:

Fascinating, Thanks!
It's always nice to hear inside information about the manufacturing process. :broon: