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Engine Painting - in situ or ex machina?


6219_Rules

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I have asked this question before on the CLC forum and got some very good answers, but I thought I would see what you all had to say.

I want to detain my 1947 flat head. At this point I cannot afford to have the engine rebuilt. SO how can you paint it and detail the engine compartment with it in place? Or should you?

What have you all done and how did you do it?

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Randall, you can paint the engine and compartment. Clean the grease and oil off everything. Mask off stuff with aluminum foil and tape, note buy good tape. If your going to take awile use the blue 3m tape it doesent stick on forever. Then use a grey scotch brite pad to ruff up the items, dont get to crazy just enough to get the paint to stick. Buy good paint for the engine and get around three cans so you can put alot on. Heres a trick for you, if it will fit the can you have put the tip and red straw off wd40 on the paint can , it will spray a small fan and you can get around the carb, exhaust, etc. turn can over and clean out the straw after use. An other item for you, i use the spray paint from walmart called color place for flat or gloss black and they have satin black but its around a dollar fifty, the primers good to. The quality of the paint is good and most every color of paint and primer is .99. They even have a clear thats good. Good luck jim ps use light coats.

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Should I pull all the plug wires, hoses and the like or can I simply tape them up?

I need to pull the air manifold and carb. The water pump should be the same color as the engine but the generator is black. From what I can tell the whole engine compartment is black. Does anyone know if this is true? The pictures I have are not that clear to me.

Someone painted the manifold a terrible bright, bileous green. I rather like the original khaki green which can still be seen on the engine and oil cap.

Oh and you mentioned primer...should I prime the engine? What would the primer be needed for if not the engine?

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the primer is only needed to cover bare metal. i just included it for general priciple. and example would be if your generator was all chipped up and you wanted to sand down all the chips. first you would sand them out with 240 grit or so then put on some primer around 3 coats and then sand with 400 and reprime then scuff up the primer with a scotch brite and put on three coats of paint or so. remember the can labels and see about recoat windows i have seen a few spray cans that will wrinkle if you dont recoat fast enough. pull the plugs and wires if possible buy some corks or something to gently press into the plug holes. when your ready let me know i will walk you through the steps as you do it jim

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Randall, I faced the same dilemma last spring with my Packard. While I knew the engine would be better off out of the car I didn't have either the money or the means so I just took everthing off one side of the block and scraped and degreased using various wire brushs and even steel wool on it until all the old paint was removed then painted it with Bill Hirsh Packard green paint. Then I started on the other side. It took almost a month to do everything putting in 2-4 hours a day. Not a bad job but, mindless scrubbing and cleaning and very time consuming. I took the head off and did this separate since I wanted it off anyway to plane it and look at the valves and cylinders. I put spark plugs in from the backside when I painted the head to keep paint out of the threads. I then topped it off with Chrome acorn nuts! I sure wish the rest of the care looked this good.

Good luck! laugh.gif

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I always prime my engines when I paint them. The paint last longer that way. I normally use the best paint I can, I have found that money saved by using cheap paint is not really saved.

I normally prime and then shoot it with an PPG Acrylic enamel and have never had problem with paint coming off.

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