How To Paint your Engine Cover

[Drawnnite]

now before i start this was done well is being done on an Ecotec engine cover.
this process is transferable to other engine covers and other coverings such as rocker covers, air and fuse boxes etc.


TOOLS and MATERIALS
1. Paint. - Primer, for Base coat
- Main Colour and any other colours you may want to use.
- Clear Coat
- Tinned Paint for those pesky areas
2. Sandpaper. Wet and Dry 240,320 and 800+ grits
3. Masking Tape
4. Stanley Knife (sharp)
5. Dust Mask
6. Degreaser or Wax and Grease remover
7. Paintbrush
8. Patience



PROCESS

1) take your engine cover off your car if not already done so, or not using a spare one.

2) CLEANING
- Clean the Cover with Wax and Grease remover, or simply use Degreaser like i did.
- Follow the instructions on the pack. making sure the cover is pretty much spotless upon completion.
- Wipe down afterwards if required.


3) SANDING
- Using your 240grit Paper sand the whole cover. i chose 240 grit to start with as it cleared off most of the old paint
- after using the 240, use the 320 Grit paper to smooth it out a little bit.
- you can use finer grit papers here if you wish.
-an electric sander as seen on page 2 is your best friend


4) PRIMING
- The next step is the Base Coat, whereby you Prime the Surface. wearing a dustmask is highly recommended
- Make sure the surface is clear of all dust and bugs, leaves etc with a rag or duster.
- in a Well Ventialated area and using a stand (i turned over a box) place the engine cover.
- spray 3-4 light to medium coats of your primer, leaving about 10 minutes between coats
- More coats can be applied, and a very light sanding inbetween is highly recommended.


5) PAINTING
- Now the Fun begins. If you are painting just the solid colour. follow along from (a)
- Lightly Sand the Surface first
- Paint the areas you want as a different colour first. a few coats, 2-4 should be plenty. leave 10 minutes between coats, sand between coats if required.
- once dry, Tape up the areas you want to be Kept this colour. such as works, symbols and other areas (like the "pipes" and writing on my cover)
- Cut these to shape with the stanley knife. take your time to get it correct.
- (a) once you are all happy with that, sand back the rest of the cover lightly with 320 grit.
- now paint with your desired colour. 3-4 light-medium coats should be plenty, sand inbetween if required.
- if you are unhappy with the colour sand and recoat in a different colour if required


6) UNTAPING
- for those that have done multi colours, take your tape off after the paint has dried, this should peel off easily.
- if the lines are not 100% perfect just touch them up with some hobby paint, or spray paint into a little tub and use with a fine paintbrush.
- also use this paintbrush for wordings such as that of "sequential injection" which it is impracticle to tape up.


- you can repeat the taping and paint process multiple times for different lines if required (pics of this will be up soon)

7) CLEAR COATING
- once you are happy with the results of your painting it is time for a clear coating.
- this is done the same way as the painting, in a well ventilated areas, multiple coats (3-4) leaving time to dry between coats.
- if required you can sand very lightly inbetween coats with some 800+ grit paper

8) FINISHING
- now stand back and admire your work.
- put back onto the engine of your car. use new grommets if you wish (about a $1 each from Holden)

pretty much how it can look. i just need to clean it up a bit more and then it is 100% done.


how it looked in car:



NOTES
i grabbed a 2nd engine cover from the wreckers ($15 =P) for this project.
took me about 7 weeks all up. i did about 1 stage per weekend, and had a few mistakes. single colouring should take 2 weekends. 1 to sand/prime/colour 1 to clearcoat.
i was unhappy with the intial dark grey paint as it looked blue, thus i sanded it back and repainted as black, to match the car
A Texta of the Same Colour is your Best Friend for hiding mistakes. (im my case, black texta)
if doing rocker covers i would highly suggest changing the rocker cover gaskets. and put them in the correct bloody way! =P

[truckinjames]

i painted mine

[calais06]

Does the paint have to be heat resistant?

[SP00KSTER]

it's best if you buy heat resistant paint because it wont flake off. just get some engine paint thats all it used.

Heres mine, i deleted the text and also filled in the strips and then painted it with black and tried out my air brushing skills on it. what do you guys think?


I dont even run it on my car though. dont really like the look of engine covers lol.

[calais06]

it's best if you buy heat resistant paint because it wont flake off. just get some engine paint thats all it used.

Heres mine, i deleted the text and also filled in the strips and then painted it with black and tried out my air brushing skills on it. what do you guys think?

I dont even run it on my car though. dont really like the look of engine covers lol.

Oh thats pretty cool!

Reason I was asking is cos my friend wants it colour-matched coded to his bright yellow car, and can only get a different shade of yellow in engine paint.

Thanks

[SP00KSTER]

you can use other paints, but if you do get a heat resistant clear to go over the top that way it will protect it.

[GothicKidd]

Painted 2 Engine Covers with Just a couple of layers of normal Flat black and seems to hold up well! even did rocker covers with a couple of layers..
1 engine travels 2000+ weekly and is holding up well..

[Drawnnite]

you dont require heat resistant paint. just what i had at the time =P
the chrome on there is just that aus export stuff. came up awesome.
and that dark blue/grey is also aus export paint. i just didnt like the colour.

hoping to paint the stripes on it this weekend. clean it up and get the near finish pictures up.
then just get a paintbrush, some paint and "perfect" it and then be done with it
probably get a set of rocker covers from pick a part and do them next.

and that airbrushing looks awesome.
how did you fill the lines etc in?

[Calaber]

I painted my cover with acrylic while I was touching up the front spoiler. Simply rubbed back, undercoat, rubbed back then acrylic colour and clear. No probs with paint peeling -v the plastic cover doesn't get hot enough. Details were just hand painted.

It would look a lot better if the rocker covers matched but I don't have a spare pair laying around.

[SP00KSTER]

and that airbrushing looks awesome. how did you fill the lines etc in?

to fill in the lines i just used some standard 2 part body filler, El cheapo brand from autobarns, sanded the lines first with 40 grit to get rid of old paint and give the filler something to hold on to then just filled it in.

[azazeldeath]

Slight thread dig, but I thought I would offer some advice for painting engine covers. If you want to leave parts unpainted (like taping them up) and its a rather complex shape you can use grease to 'paint' the area you want unpainted in grease, personally I used ear cleaners for the fine detail.

I did it for my VZ Alloytec covers. I wanted all of the V6 Alloytec left black, and some other parts black while painting the rest Impulse Blue.

I just left the paint to dry, grabbed a rag and wiped off the grease. Left the area paint free.

[bloomers]

I just left the paint to dry, grabbed a rag and wiped off the grease. Left the area paint free.

What was the edge of the paint line like? I suppose it would depend on how carefully the grease was applied and how soon after drying it was removed.

[Drawnnite]

so anyway. i should have had this finished but ran into a problem.
painting the top stripes i messed up, and trying to correct ruined the whole job. have sanded back and have started to respray.

however i went to the paintshop and asked if they do chrome paint in tins, so the same problem wouldnt happen.
the closest they had was this. and it came up exactly the same as chrome.
only bought a sampler tin (shown is 4L tin), but there is plenty in there, plus i have some other project planned for it.



so if your ever looking for chrome paint in a tin. there it is =P
needs to be the "aluminium" colour though

[Mk2]

Can you post a couple of photos of your cover in this chrome-like paint?

[azazeldeath]

What was the edge of the paint line like? I suppose it would depend on how carefully the grease was applied and how soon after drying it was removed.

The edges were perfect. It was almost as good as taping, except saved alot of time for the fine detail (I think for the curves tape would have made the finish bad).

[Drawnnite]

Can you post a couple of photos of your cover in this chrome-like paint?

probably will not have the pic of the chrome on the cover, but i have tested it elsewhere next to the spray chrome.
ill get a pic of it by the weekend and post it up.

[Drawnnite]

Can you post a couple of photos of your cover in this chrome-like paint?

ok so finally got the pics off my phones.

first one is a bit average because of flash but shows the 3 main colours.
the chrome from the rustkill paint is on the left, but is made brighter by the flash.
right is the from a spray can. it comes out exactly the same.



this second pic shows how the chrome will look on the black. as you can see i made a mistake and it didnt go as i had planned. thus sanded it all back and am repainting it now. hope to have it all done by next weekend
but hopefully gives a rough idea of how it will look near the end.
also the V6 part is still taped. if your wondering why it looks wierd.

[Drawnnite]

just been spraying and did some runs too thick. bloody spray can kept cutting out halfway through and so forth. definately wish i had a proper spray kit.
made it half presentable and i am not going to redo for a 3rd time =P
will get pics up once dry and youll see why it is best to prime before painting.

its a bit of a shame but i guess it is going in an average engine bay, youll never see it anyway =P

[Drawnnite]

so anyway. update on how it looks.
just requires a bit of fancy texta work. clear coat and im done with it.
the chrome does hide some of the imperfections.

(click for bigger view)



also planning on doing this to some rocker covers. might have to go search for these next weekend at pickapart or so on.
should look all good after that.

[BuckeTs]

nice work mate! I've laid 3 coats of satin black on mine so far... but ive been a slackarse since and haven't done anything for a couple of weeks. Might get into it this weekend again.

[666-GMH]

Not quite as good as two colours like the guy above, but whatever, i was hungover.
Not like im packing serious shit under the hood so.

[Omerta]

Thanks for the write up.. Might have a go at painting mine soon.

Just starting to collect things to mod my VS, this will be a nice fun job to start off with I reckon

[a9er]

thanks for the write up as about to put a ecotec in a vk and was wondering how to neaten them up.

[DAKSTER]

I painted my cover with acrylic while I was touching up the front spoiler. Simply rubbed back, undercoat, rubbed back then acrylic colour and clear. No probs with paint peeling -v the plastic cover doesn't get hot enough. Details were just hand painted.

It would look a lot better if the rocker covers matched but I don't have a spare pair laying around.

First time I've seen under your bonnet mate, very tasteful and tidy.

[azazeldeath]

Forgot to post what mine looks like.


Need to fix up the air intake pipe. I tried chrome paint on it ages ago and it just flaked off within 2 days.