Painting a cam cover

[Black_Potato]

Hi Guys,

I want to repaint the cam cover on my car and I'm wondering how successful DIY is likely to be and any tips...

Guess I need paint stripper or get it blasted, then some form of under coat and crackle coat ? Are the letters exposed just by sanding back the paint or does it need to be machined back ?

Cheers,

Richard

[kam-325i]

depends on the fininsh you want for the letters.

I would machine because i have free access to a Bridgeport.

[Jim320i]

Get it cleaned up first, a fine wire brush to remove the old paint or anything thats flaking, if anything remains, either sand it away with a fine paper or have it properly blasted and cleaned.

Once your nice and clean, you want to get your sand paper out and start sanding the raised lip. Start off with a 120 grit until all the unlevel surfaces are gone. Then move onto 240 grit paper until all of the 120 grit marks are gone. Keeping your sanding in one direction too!

Move up to a 400 grit or something high like that and repeat until all marks are gone, then your 600...

Then painting... But depends on what finish you want! VHT paint is always a safe bet and you dont need to primer it up.

Give it a good clean and make sure its dry, then get your paint on which ever way you choice to paint it. Once its dry, get your 600 grit paper out and go over the raised section until you unearth your previous work, keep care not to hit the other surfaces other than the raised else you'll have to paint it again.

If you want a more mirror finish finish, work your way up through the grades of paper until your happy with the finish. But I think 600 grit gives a nice polished look too it without being bling.

[Sanchez]

I washed mine with 'Gunk', rubbed it down with wet n dry, used a sanding disc to polish the raised letters and lines.

Wiped it down, primer, colour, then rubbed down the raised bits again and laquered.

[xavier]

Yep I used wet and dry paper, it did the trick. I used degreaser at the very start to get rid oily gunk.

[capri_rob]

Soda blasting FTW

[Black_Potato]

Cheers guys

[mcbonio]

I just used a bog standard engine degreaser, 9 quid a litre I think. After that the cover looked like freshly cast aluminium. I then gave it a rub down with 800 wet and dry so the paint could have a decent purchase on the metal. A quick rinse and dry. Then 3 coats of high temperature black paint from a rattle can.

When it came to the raised logo, I didn't have any sand paper with enough grit to take the paint back, so I used a Stanley blade to scrape it back. Gave a very accurate and clean look to it, the logo is shiny-mirror like.

In all took about 2 hours. I used a fresh rocker cover gasket too.! Easy job and effective.

I then went the whole hog and used the rest of the engine degreaser to do the engine bay and engine block, its as clean as a whistle in there...

[aimlessrock]

The last owner of my 320i decided to coat pretty much the whole engine in several coats of Waxoil some years ago...the engine was nearly yellow when i purchased it for resto.

If any other zonner is stuck in this position i can recommend using Nitromores paint stripper. Its very aggresive, but used carefully in well ventilated areas its very effective and only about £6.00 per tub.