I spent some time tonight after work gathering up a few supplies and cleaning up some stuff - a new light over the work bench, some wires wheels for the drill, and some degreaser for electrical components.

Rear of the block before:

Rear of the block after:

Cleaned up some of the alternator mount before I got tired of sanding/wire-wheeling:

Starter before:

Starter after:

And because I was bored, I decided to take the starter apart and figure out how I could disassemble things in the event that I wanted to paint the case.  Wasn't able to remove the solenoid to allow for complete disassembly but I was close.

Above is the rotor and exciter for the starter motor.  Juice is provided to the rotor, a magnetic field is induced in the coils, and it starts to spin to try to match itself up with the opposite pole in the stator. 

The rotor then drives these planetary gears, which then drives the gear that actually interfaces with the ring gear on the flywheel.  I never thought I'd see this again outside of MEMS 1029.  The solenoid must also somehow engage/disengage the starter gear from the flywheel gear, not sure exactly how yet because I couldn't get the solenoid off.  Tiny etorx heads that I did not have the patience for tonight. 

Also took the plastic cover off of the alternator and looked at it.

That's all for now.