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I been thinking about how I want to do this. I suppose I'll shampoo and paint the block, oil pan, starter and tranny - but I'm not settled on the rest.
I'd love to disassemble the alternator and any other clearly visible drives, along with the IM and valve covers, and redo them too.
With my limited experience all I'm thinking is either paint, powder-coat, chrome (too expensive?) or anodize. Any other options available and what are your thoughts?

You can powdercoat all the accessories if you got the cash. The block you can paint, but it might be a bit of a pain the the but because you will need to get it perfectly clean so the paint will stick. If you clean it witha power washer and some good engine dgreaser it will look pretty good. just keep up with it and you will be happy.

I love to keep my engine clean. but you gotta keep on it. I'll have mine looking mint then i'll drive to Toronto which is like 1hour away and then its dusty and stuff again..lol

if u want ur engine to look mint u wanna polish your im and vc. and anything else u can polish lol. or even if u wanna paint, u need to sand them properly first. if you have a few hours on your hand you could do the IM and VC on your own, if you dont u can get it polished professionally. i had a polished VC and i gotta tell u that thing looked amazing.

I believe in polishing all aluminum. It can help keep the engine cooler, too. Paint can block the heat transfer a little. It's not hard, if you use accessories like polishing balls on a drill or dremel. And you don't have to worry about it chipping, flaking, etc... Then, for the non-aluminum parts, pick a color that you can match to the silicon stuff. Anodizing is awesome, but will fade, if not done REALLY well. I LOVE a polished alternator.
Well, I'm easily distracted by shiny stuff, anyway.
Whatever you do, I want to see it!

By the way.. Nice boat! I helped my uncle build a Yacht from sctratch with a Maine Lobster boat hull.

Solo_ryder did a great job on his motor/trans.. check out his worklog...

I polished my intake and t/b... my valve covers I used engine cleaner/break cleaner... then used a wire wheel on a dremil.. cleaned it up nice.. Then I used pressure washer to clean it up.. wiped it down with some rubbing alcohol to get all the grease off.. painted with engine paint. The block I stole the Idea from solo.. used break cleaner .. works great.. however you need alot of it..

A good start to either polishing or painting is hitting up a local memorial shop, a place that makes headstones. They should have a bead-blaster that'll take a lot of the work outta polishing or prepping for paint. The place I found generally charges about 5bux a part, which is dirt cheap for how much time it'll save.

what is the fastest way to polish ur intake mani? with a drill and just a polish ball, thats it?

you have a cool idea but unless its gonna be a show car youll be wasting your time and money

Hey Jutzi, you are close to me, where is this memorial place that you are talking about?

Just cleaning up intake and valve covers, and paint the Valve covers will make it look clean, if you have rust showing else where, clean it up and rustcoat it... its an older car. and if you DD its hard to keep too pretty..

Ok I have the engine nearly stripped down and I'm going to try the polish idea first.

If that's too hard then I'll hit the VCs and IM with a coat of zinc-chromite primer followed by enamel - red for the VCs, black-chrome for the IM and black epoxy for the oil pan. The block I'll degrease and pressure wash after everything is reassembled and it'll remain unpainted.


I would like to go with the polish idea though, just to keep things looking natural. I'm even having all the brackets, clamps and clips gold zinc-chromite plated. I think the "cadmium" look appears more stock than chrome or stainless, and because I'm having it dome at work, I'm specifying a heavy plating



Thanks for everyones' input!!

Ok they are as shiny and clean as there gonna get and I'm not sure I like them. I'm thinking engine enamel over primer.

I just had my valve covers powder coated. If you have the money to do it, this is the way to go IMO. I am going to have the block/heads hot tanked here soon, after which I plan to paint the block and heads with high temp paint. It will be easier for me since everything will already be disassembled and cleaned from the hot tanking.

Here is a pic of my front valve cover (wrinkle red + polished letters):

Those look AWESOME!
Looking forward to seeing it all done.