Who is painting their engine ?

[grewth]

I've just bought a cylinder head online.
I bought it mainly because it came with a good, usable camshaft, cam carriers, set of rockers etc, and it was a very reasonable price.
It said in the item description that the head had recently been painted, but TBH, I wasn't really concerned.
Now that it's here, I can see that it's been blasted with some sort of media, then spray painted with quite a good quality silver-grey paint, of a semi gloss finish.
Looks pretty good in fact, and now I'm just hoping that it's got a good resistance to high temperatures.
On bikes I've rebuilt before now, I've settled for having the engine components bead blasted back to a good clean metal finish, the vapour bead blasting tends to seal the "grain" of the die castings, giving an "as new" appearance to the engine.
But unfortunately it just doesn't last.
A couple of English winters (rock salt used on roads to prevent icing) will reduce the pristine engine to a white powdery mess.
Now I'm wondering if I should be spraying my engines with a VHT silver-grey paint for a longer lasting finish.
Obviously, there will be issues with alloy corrosion breaching the painted finish after a while, but I'm thinking that I might get a good few years of having a really clean, smart looking engine before it needs attention.
Maybe I've been a bit slow on the uptake on picking up this restoration trick ?

 

[Loki]

I've used Halfords engine silver on mine and it seems to resist high temperatures very well, early days yet but up to now it seems quite good, even resisting attack from a MAPP gas blow lamp when I needed to apply some heat!
Prep was blasting with fine crushed glass media in my blasting cabinet, gets rid of all the muck and leaves a good surface to key the paint on.

Loki

 

[UK K6]

I've tried a couple of different brands of engine paint. Neither withstood E5 from carb leaks. Obviously, avoid carb leaks. But a pain to protect 100% whenever carbs are being removed, as I was doing for a while, to fix problems at the time.

Nearly 2 years ago, I was fed up with engine paint coming off on on cleaning cloths. This is what I did, a bit tedious, especially the masking tape stages:
With a dremel and the brass wire brush attachments, I removed all the paint, to get back to bare alloy. Then I went lightly over the cases with med grade (dry) wet and dry sandpaper, cleaned and masked, before a light dusting with etch primer, which seems to get a decent key for the paint. then 2 light coats of engine paint. Once dry, I heated it with an electric heat gun and then ran the engine for a few up to temperature rides, to ensure it cured. Then I cleaned it off, masked again and lightly over-sprayed the engine paint with ethanol-proof clearcoat. Halfords brand.

It doesn't look too shiny. This has withstood engine temps, fuel and oil and I've also found it a little easier to keep the engine clean. I had an oil weep from one of the tappet covers (those O-rings!), which baked on. It came off with Muc Off and a gentle rub, no staining or paint damage.

Bit of a process, but it looks good and looks like it's going to last.

 

[hinksy]

Whatever you use/do , it cops a flogging over time and will eventually need redoing . If you leave it bare corrosion will eventually make it look shit . If you take all of the care in the world , road grime/salt and stone chips will hammer it till it looks crap after lots of miles . I have just made do with whatever I had and touched it up or renewed when I can . But the most important part is to use appropriate stuff . So fuel and heat resistant paints . I have no choice really with an F2 and my paint was flogged . So I stripped as much as I could and it was sprayed with VHT`s engine enamel .

 

[MarcinMMz]

Whatever you use/do , it cops a flogging over time and will eventually need redoing . If you leave it bare corrosion will eventually make it look shit . If you take all of the care in the world , road grime/salt and stone chips will hammer it till it looks crap after lots of miles . I have just made do with whatever I had and touched it up or renewed when I can . But the most important part is to use appropriate stuff . So fuel and heat resistant paints . I have no choice really with an F2 and my paint was flogged . So I stripped as much as I could and it was sprayed with VHT`s engine enamel .

One question: what paint number have you used? SP-139 whether SP-130? I'm going to respray my engine soon and your final result looks nice.

 

[hinksy]

Marcin I used the SP-139 satin black

 

[MarcinMMz]

Thank you! Already ordered

 

[gotorx7]

I'd be sure to use a good primer under any paint.. I'm currently dealing with an absolute mess where the engine was painted black (by a previous owner) and now it's all flaking off.. No primer.. Nightmare city..