Has anyone ever powder coated a engine case or trans case before?

Thanks

David

Very bad idea I would think. Seems like that would hold lots of heat. Heat is the enemy of an air cooled engine.

How about the trans ?

keep the trans cool = keep it bare.

Paint and PCoat CAN act as insulators...

I painted my trans. black to help keep it cool. Black dissipates heat. Isn't that why radiators are painted black? Many aircooled motorcycle engines are painted or otherwise made black. Why would powder coationg keep the heat in rather than transfer it out to the cooling air?

interesting discussions on the effects of paint, applied thickness, matte vs gloss, surface prep, and color here.

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=40092

Seems like a bare case would transfer heat better, but it also appears paint color is irrelevant, and surface finish make a larger difference.

worth a read. Good points on both sides.

black paint may dissipate heat better then any other color paint. However, I don't think any paint dissipates heat better then air. By painting or powder coating you're adding material to hold heat.

On a radiator the paint is being applied to protect the metal from the elements more then as a heat transfer system.

There is a common misconception that Black dissipates heat better (somewhat due to Jeff Goldblum's character Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic park) than other colors.

That is not always the case. When a color appears "black" to our visual senses that means it is not reflecting light in the visible spectrum.
Doesnt that mean that it is absorbing all of the light?

Black can also absorb more heat than it emits.

Anyway, the two most important characteristics of how well something "gets rid of heat" in atmosphere is emissivity (how well light is emitted from the surface) and how well the material can conduct the heat to the surface so that moving air can take it away (conduction & convection).

I would not paint a case, but would paint a tranny if I wanted to.

Stu

Because of the particulate nature of the pre-blasting and powdercoat itself, I would never powdercoat and engine case. If someone forced me to at gun point I would blast only with soda, I would spend 4-5 hours masking every surface and opening that can't get powder (do you KNOW with 100% certainty what all those areas are?), then finally powdercoat it.

Of course, I think colored engine cases (including black and gray) are so I say DONT DO IT!

No need to powder coat the tranz case. Just rattle can it if you must, but it needs to be clean enough to eat off of first.....so get back to us in a few years

If you are going to put any kinnd of coating on the engine case use DuraCoat. Its used for painting firearms. Dissapates heat well, doesnt chip, crack or stain and is good up till 500 degrees. I just bought a 2.0L ase to build a spare motor and that's what I'll be using. I shoot Cafe racer cases all the time and noody has ever had an overheating issue with the stuff.

There are a bunch of online retailers for the stuff, and 100's of color choices.

I thoroughly cleaned my trans with mild soap and hot water then soda blasted the stubborn areas with the home made HF blaster which worked great then prep it with POR products and coated it with POR15 silver. Looks fantastic.

My shop custom builds Triumph Motorcycle engines. We regularly have the cases powder coated. The shop we use chemically cleans and strips the cases prior to coating. We do not allow them to use any blast media. As someone else stated, the prep before is quite extensive. The internal cleaning afterwards is also a ton of work. A lot of work just for a pretty case.
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There is also a coating from Emco (I think that's the name) that does Piston skirts, crowns, valves, combustion chambers etc. etc. etc.

There are several coating that assist heat removal. Do they work?

In Glamis riding quads, several people had un-coated radiators, the one that was coated was ridden just as hard as the other, similiar setups, and it was the only one after the ride were the fan turn on for 1 minute while the others continued to run for 10 minutes.

That's my story.

Smitty

Those bikes are awesome!

If I was going to coat the transmission or engine I would use teflon coating to make the clean up a breeze....nothing would ever stick to it again....and its black.

rich