Painting engine bay ahead of exterior repaint Options

[Tdskip]

Good morning, hope it has been a good week so far.

I am going to be dropping the engine on the AZ car (one with the oil blow by) soon and will be finishing repairing all of the prior owner AC line holes with new metal etc. I will also be repairing some minor rust on the batter tray (fortunately then tray “frame” and support are in good shape.

This strikes me as the right time to reapray the engine bay, and was wondering if others have done this and any tips or best practices they have to share.

Obviously same paint color as exterior and same paint family/sourcing as will be used on exterior, but any prep and other tips?

Thanks in advance for the ideas.

[Larmo63]

It's a thankless and tedious job because of the complicated parts/surfaces. You could spend weeks in there to do it right. Lighter colors are worse than colors like black. Black hides some flaws, white or yellow doesn't.

Good luck.

[BeatNavy]

It's a thankless and tedious job because of the complicated parts/surfaces. You could spend weeks in there to do it right. Lighter colors are worse than colors like black. Black hides some flaws, white or yellow doesn't.

Good luck.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif) It's particularly tedious and dirty if you end up taking really old undercoating off and inspecting for rust. It's also hard to determine where the engine bay stops and the rest of the car starts from a cleaning / painting perspective (scope creep).

Remove as much (and bag and label) as much as you can. I didn't want to open the brake lines and rebleed, so I pushed them out of the way along with the proportioning valve. Probably should have though. Same thing with fuel lines and other components. Removing and reinstalling later is better than trying to poorly mask off components that will get hit with overspray. Either way, it's probably going to take you longer than you think.

I did remove my whole rear suspension. Just unbolted the top shocks and trailing arms and dropped out of the way while I suspended the calipers somewhere.