2019 Work

I got to looking at the engine bay at the end of summer 2018 and realized that over the course of the years the paint had really started to look shabby. There was some rust on the battery tray, chips all over the place, the exhaust manifold was covered in surface rust, the carbs weren't shiny anymore. In short, it was time for a refresh.

The idea when I started was to pull everything but the engine itself, clean up the metal, paint with a rattle can, clean or repaint all the other bits under the bonnet and then put it all back together. I also decided to sent the exhaust manifold off to Jet-Hot for ceramic coating as well as send the carbs out for a full rebuild.  Little did I know where this project would ultimately go.

I started by pulling the wiring harness back through the firewall into the interior and removing the exhaust and intake manifolds. The plan was to then mask off the block and repaint with a rattle can.

Here's what things looked like after I pulled the wiring and the manifolds.

Looking at what I had when I got to this point I concluded that really the entire bay needed to be primed before being painted. I decided this because the paint was not in good shape and I really wanted to make sure there were no contaminants that would mess up the new paint. This was the first step down a slippery slope. I started by masking off and covering the engine with plastic and then priming with 4 coats of high build primer. The result was really nice. I also, at this point, concluded that rattle cans were not the answer and the only way to get the finish I wanted was to use a "real" spray gun. Off the Harbor Freight to purchase a couple guns (a regular gun and a detail gun). I bought the el-cheapo guns that only cost like $13 figuring worst case I'll just toss them after the project. Note, you do need to completely disassemble and clean these things before use as they have all kinds of oily gunk inside them when they are first unboxed.

Things now looked like this:

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It was at this point that I started thinking about what it would be like to try and get a spray gun with a regulator and a moisture filter in the engine bay to paint. I hooked up the detail gun and practiced moving the gun around in the engine bay trying to keep a constant distance from the various surfaces. Quite simply, there wasn't room to move without bumping the air hose on things or having to turn the gun upside down.

I decided that painting the bay with the engine in place was going to be a real challenge and probably wouldn't yield the result I wanted so...

Now things looked like this:

Much better and as much room as I was going to get for painting.

Of course, at this point my garage looked like this and my wife's car was out in the driveway not where (in her opinion) it belonged :)

Now it was finally time for paint. I've never shot paint before but I figured...how hard can it be?

I purchased a pint of paint mixed to paint code 96 (Sapphire Blue), a quart of reducer, a bunch of strainers, mixing cups, etc. I read, watched, re-read and re-watched a bunch of background material. I purchased a sheet of steel and primed/painted it multiple times. I practiced on the car without any paint in the gun. In short, did everything I could think of to prep for this since, once I paint there's no going back. On the big day I reduced the paint 4:1, set my gun pressure to 30 PSI, donned my paper disposable painting outfit, put on a mask and went at it.

3 coats of color, 10 mins dry time in between and it turned out looking pretty good.  You can't see it in the pics but it has some orange peel, nothing that wouldn't sand/buff out easily though.

After wet sanding and final polish, it was time to put things back together. I failed to take more than one pics as things went back together but it was simply the reverse of taking things apart. Really no problems at all, just time consuming. The engine slipped right back in without any damage to the fresh new paint.

Here's the final result. There are some places where now that its together I wish I had spent a bit more time wet sanding (like the shelf under the wiper motor) but overall I couldn't be happier.