Engine bay prep and paint

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Joined
Jul 26, 2010
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461
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Location
Morris County, NJ
My Car
1971 Conv; 1 of 17; 351C, 2V, Auto
Engine is out on a rebuild so I decided to cleanup the engine bay.

Do I need to strip it down to bare metal, spray primer then paint?

Or, just rough up the existing paint with 320 then 400 sandpaper, prime the bare spots and then paint?

Also, any suggestions for the satin paint would be appreciated.

Thanks guys!

 
Scott, you are such a great resource for our forum! Thank you, sir! Your post helps me personally as I (due to "minor" hood issues) decided to take an engine bay detour and was asking myself questions addressed in your video. Much thanks!

 
Hey guys, is there a video made by Q on leafsprings installation? Has anyone done it?

Thanks,

 
Engine is out on a rebuild so I decided to cleanup the engine bay.

Do I need to strip it down to bare metal, spray primer then paint?

Or, just rough up the existing paint with 320 then 400 sandpaper, prime the bare spots and then paint?

Also, any suggestions for the satin paint would be appreciated.

Thanks guys!
Here is what worked GREAT for me. I had a recommendation to get a 5-gal bucket of "clean-up thinner" (cheap lacquer thinner) from a body paint shop, and a scotch-brite pad (fine). Get yourself some damn tough gloves and soak the pad in thinner and watch the crud melt away.

This process will remove the engine compartment paint... easily... it did on mine. What i would do was begin the scrubbing with the pad and thinner, and then move to heavy paper towels soaked in thinner to wipe the bulk crud away. If you aren't too aggressive with the pad, you can control how "deep" you go, how many layers of paint to remove. I got good at leaving a very clean "original red primer" after paint removal. I still think that original primer is better than anything you can get nowadays - they had awesomer chemicals allowed back then!

This can create a mess of melted paint & grease, but the process of final wipe of the surface with thinner leaves it perfect and smooth for recoat with primer or paint (whatever you need)

In my case I had every single thing removed from the engine compartment, so this was easier to tolerate.

Good luck - for my money this is better than sandpaper, and takes far less elbow grease. If you do use sandpaper, I do recommend a paper towel wipe-down with thinner afterwards. It leaves a great surface for painting.

Jay

 
my advice remove the fenders.

then degreaser and powerwash it.

Then you attack the nasty areas with a wire wheel.

the less nasty areas you can just scuff up.

then prime and paint.

i used normal flat black paint on mine, as others recommended that was 6-7 years ago now have had zero issues. high heat or not doesn't really matter the engine has a large air gap around it and the aprons and firewall will not get hot at all.

I went in stages:

the reason to remove the fenders is it will make things easier to mask and you can clean up the cowl and outside aprons area

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I wire wheeled the trans tunnel as well.

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was worth the extra work

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and i was able to fix many many more issues that i found.

more advice don't go lazy and paint around things. Better to take parts off replace hardware inspect for damage and then rebuild or refresh other engine bay items.

now is the time, inspect replace brake lines, vapor lines. body seals, etc... you can inspect suspension parts easily too.

 
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