Do I need high-temp paint for painting the engine tin?
I am using PPG single stage Phoenix red.. Do you think this will discolor from the heat? Primer is PPG DP, same question will these two products be okay with the engine heat baking them?

painting works for a few years...mine stuck it out for 9 years.
Gas gets on it, so does oil...its fine

Mine was in a rattle can..

Rich

Engine tin will get crudded up.
IMHO... rattle can. I lightly glass beaded the areas where the paint was the worst (flaking and peeling) and faded the blast it into the good paint. Cleaned it really well and and used some black semi-gloss ceramic Krylon or something. It's holding up pretty well. And I can touch it up if needed. Easy, cheap, works fine.

I used some high temp engine paint in ford red on the top side and used ceramic header paint on the underside. a little overboard yes, but i figured if the ceramic stuff helps so much with getting rid of heat, that it would possibly save any paint from bubbling up top.

Auto paint will be fine on the tin.

I have all the tins on the motors I build powder coated. Nothing looks better for longer and is impervious to liquids of any kind than powder coat. It costs around $350 from my powder coater to blast and powder coat a set of 914 tins including the HEs. IMHO it doesn't make sense NOT to powder coat tins. Not only do you get a far superior finish that lasts, but you save all the time of prepping and painting (and redoing stuff that fish-eyes or gets dust in it etc). There is a lot of value to buying the best, crying once and being done with it

I couldn't agree more on the powdercoating bit...

I had my engine tin airbox, plenum, and runners powdercoated when I changed from a 1.8 to a 2.0 engine. 3 years later, it still looks just as good as it did when I put it in. Dirt wipes right off of it, and it's hassle free. The 1.8 tin I had in the car and repainted with black high-temp spray can paint started to look ratty after about 2 years.

If you have the money, go for the gold and do it once.

Steve