painting engine?

[imported_paradigm]

any recommended paints (duplicolor hightemp line?) and/or tips if i would want to repaint the main engine components to clean this beast up? i'm guessing prep it (clean / sand) and then mask it off...spray away...let dry?

 

[TriumphGT6]

Duplicolor High Temp paints would be the best route. Just take off your valve cover and degrease, sandblast / sand then paint. Your exhaust shield should come off too. Your intake, I'd label and disconnect your hoses, tape off, go over it a few times with a hand wire brush, then paint.



Personally, I'd go with Flat Black for your Valve Cover, Aluminum for you intake and exhaust heat shield. It'd look real nice and clean.



On my Vette, the former owner bought Corvette Central's Valve Cover and Intake paint(exact factory color match) for $9. Then he filled in the grooves on the cover and TPI intake with yellow paint to match the spark plug wires. Here's a picture from about March right before I painted my rotor hats and calipers:

Post pics when you're done!

 

[Eliot Ness]

Your thoughts are pretty much correct.... high temp paint, good clean/prep, and mask everything off. Overspray will tend to get everywhere so be sure to cover the whole car and anything in the area you don't want overspray on. You can use painters plastic to cover the bulk of your (clean) car, but be sure to tape very well.



I would try metal polish on as much of it as you can (try a drill with felt bobs), and a soft wire brush on a bench grinder will do wonders at cleaning up bolts, nuts, and other small metal parts that are corroded. It's also a great way to prep small brackets and anything else small that you can remove.



Anything that you can remove will make your life easier and it will also look a lot better in the end. Without pulling everything out it will never look 100%, so think about how much work (time) you're willing to invest and then decide if just a polish of the exposed metal parts and maybe painting the valve cover will freshen it up enough to be acceptable.



The following thread by White95Max shows how he cleaned up his engine bay:



http://autopia.org/forum/showthread.php?t=59381

 

[Accumulator]

Yeah, the more disassembly you do the better it'll turn out.



The really corroded pieces oughta get media blasted or at least wire-brushed/sanded, which isn't as expensive/tough as it sounds.



Sometimes it makes more sense to just get new pieces, depending on the cost (sometimes they're a lot cheaper than you'd think).



If you want to keep this a simple/manageable project, I'd do the valvecover and heat shield as well as you can (taking them off to do them), then consider the following:



Sorta half-@$$ed alternative (primarily for unpainted areas) that I did on my beater-Blazer: Use a brass brush on a Dremel/etc. to remove the worst of the corrosion (like where cad plating has been compromised and where aluminum pieces have oxidized). Then use a metal polish on the aluminum and an engine dressing (or even just something like 303) on the pieces that were cad plated. It works better than one might expect and you can always go back and do it properly later.



I've also had surprisingly good luck with BlackFire on some of these pieces, even slightly rusted black-painted pieces; it's sure not a concours level fix, but again, it works surprisingly well. I did this on the MPV's (pretty nasty) rear brake drums after last winter as a temporary fix...six months later they still look good enough that I haven't bothered doing the job right. So I tried it on some semi-rusty underhood pieces on the Blazer and sure enough, it was a nice improvement. I've tried using both the BF cleaner/polish and AIO, both seem to work OK, then I apply BF a bit thicker than normal and give it plenty of time to dry before I buff it off.