Proper tools, proper environment, uh-oh!

I finally picked up a work bench this week. I desperately needed a place that I could assemble, disassemble, clean, and store my tools. I found it on Craigslist for $75 and I'm extremely pleased with it. The guy selling it was in the process of moving his mom out of her house and into a retirement, so I feel extra good because I did a good deed helping him out. I remember when we had to move my grandmother - it was not a particularly pleasant experience due to the emotions, so I'm glad I could help.

The workbench (cleaning and organizing underway):

As an added bonus, the vise was included - this will come in very handy and I'm glad I didn't have to shell out another $50-100 to get a new one - and the top drawer was FULL of fasteners. It took me nearly an hour to clean it out.

Drawer:

I also stopped and picked up a few tools I've been needing. I got a digital caliper (I have a real nice analog german one, but I figured digital is just easier to deal with), a valve spring puller, and an impact wrench. The valve spring puller is essentially a giant screw clamp that compresses valve springs so you can pull them out in one piece without mucking up engine internals. I was a little confused as the instructions said you have to use some air attachments but apparently that's for situation where you're not pulling the top end off first. The air basically prevents the pistons from falling into the engine.

So once I got everything cleaned and organized, I figured I'd take the first step and pull the oil pan on the motorcycle to get a look at what I was dealing with. Man am I not pleased. First of all, the thing was missing a bolt that holds on the oil pan. That's right - you see the 10 holes? Only 9 of them had bolts. One was open. On top of that it looks like either make-a-gasket or paint is on the part where the one bolt was missing. I'm assuming gasket material since there was no bolt.

Oil Pan as removed:

I got started cleaning it up, and there was all sorts of gunk in there. It looks like there's a gasket that's been shredded? Either that or maybe this is part of a ring and that's what's caused my compression problem? I don't know but clearly I have some detective work to do. Maybe this is remnants of that gasket material? I'll probably also go ahead and buy a new oil pan gasket.

Gunk I pulled from the oil pan:

So once I got started pulling that gunk out of the pan, it took me a while. A combination of some large tweezers I have, several rags, q-tips, engine degreaser and brake cleaner got it looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. If you enlarge the image, you can see at the top left where there's still some remnant gasket material. Yup that was the open hole.

A much cleaner oil pan

The other issue is that there's a good amount of gunk on the oil pump screen. I'll have to visit the forums and ask for some advice on how to remove that as I don't want to damage that screen.

Gunk on screen:

Another problem I noticed is that there's some rust inside on the gears. Not sure how big of a deal this is - again, I'll ask the good folks over on the SOHC forums their opinions.

Screen gunk and rusty gear (bottom right)

Not sure what this part is but you can clearly see the rust:

Well, more to come. I was hoping to get the top end off and start disassembly today, but that may have to wait.

***Edit***
I managed to get the screen cleaned up with a combination of a very soft bristle brush and a rag. I think it's looking much better now. That's not rust (I don't think so anyways) I think it's just a remnant of the photo.

Cleaned screen: