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Valve Cover Restore

unistylef

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Jun 25, 2012
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167
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San Diego, CA
Yo, I'm in the process of getting a VC beaded and cleaned up. The tough part is deciding what route to go... Do I powder coat back to factory red to keep the engine bay OEM looking? Maybe go with the polished aluminum look? Its tough to choose. What is your preferred look?
 

JNR

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Apr 23, 2004
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Be careful blasting it, as far as being sure ALL the little bits of whatever you're using stays out of, or cleaned out of, the baffle area. Suppose it could be masked, but a heads up.

As far as color, that is totally a personal preference of course, but IMO I think red looks real good. I'd like to keep it as close to oem color as possible, but have seen some nice looking alternative reds and textured (like hammertone) finished that look really nice. I think I've seen most every color done (by other members) and many of them look good, but I always go back to red as being my favorite.

With regard to polishing, I started going that route, but decided to just paint it; not thta it's hard or anything to do, but I have so much other 'shiny' stainless or aluminum under the hood, it just looked overkill and it sort of got lost. One piece of advice is don't make the mistake of what others do and use a wheel or dremel to do your polishing, as a wavy finish looks like crap and no matter how hard you try, the heat and shape of the small wheel will put indentions or warpage. In addition, the finish is already wavy anyway to a degree, so it'll take a lot of 'block' sanding to make it right IMO (can't stand any sort of waviness and spent a lot of time ridding the VC of that and it still had some left).
 

unistylef

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That's some good advice. Yea if I did polish it, it would be buffed by hand... which seems like it'd be easy 'tv-work'. But yea, its a crucial decision, because I'll want things to match later on. Also, what's a preferred sparkplug cover?
 

toybreaker

iconoclast
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Apr 30, 2006
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JNR is spot on!

DO NOT BEAD BLAST THE VALVECOVER

Period, end of story.

Aircraft stripper will make short work of the paint on the topside, and a trip thru the jet washer will clean the underside.
 
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LIV4PSI

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Nov 24, 2011
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1,774
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O-H-I-O
My valve cover gets alot of compliments. Click on the thread in my sig and check it out. As far as the best looking spark plug cover, the answer is a C.O.P. setup /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif
 

JNR

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Apr 23, 2004
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9,814
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I have a billet aluminum cover (no writing or "advertising") that looks nice and use SS buttonheads for all my hardware, but also made a stainless steel plate for my COP setup I put together...I prefer the look of stainless, but probably go back to my spark plug wires for awhile, so the alum. piece goes back on.

Haven't paid attention to all that are offered (covers), but a nice brushed or polished aluminum contrasts nice to the pain and stainless would be even better IMO (looks 100X better/quality than aluminum). There are a lot of choices on the covers, so look around on the board.

As for polishing, one of the hardest parts and what drove me crazy were the letters and in between. Easy to remove paint, but to do 100% proper job, it is extremely tedious. With regard to polishing letters, what I wanted to do that I have not seen anybody take the time to do is to not only polish the tops, but also the 'sides' (extruded part) of the letters. If you could pull that off, it would look awesome!
 

toybreaker

iconoclast
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Apr 30, 2006
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BoostX makes some really cool sh*t for these cars, might want to try him for a center cover and/or cop plate
 

unistylef

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Jun 25, 2012
Messages
167
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San Diego, CA
Does Boostx have a website?
Well I'm considering bringing my cover to a powder coat shop. Some people are afraid to do PC, cuz it has potential warp hazards. I need to read up on what process they normally go through to clean and restore the cover... I'll make sure to follow your advice about not bead blasting.

I'm kinda geared towards a wrinkle red... kinds like what you see in Hondas.
 

vtecds1

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Joined
Jan 16, 2004
Messages
1,705
Location
Las Begas
Dont bother polishing your cover if you dont have a lot of spare time and patience. I shaved the letters and polished the cover on my 1g and swore never to do it again. I started to do it on my VR4, then gave up and just painted it with high temp paint. I'll take a picture of it in a bit.
 
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JNR

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Apr 23, 2004
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Here's a couple pics I have on this cpu, in regard to the covers I was referring to, for reference.

this is an older pic with the alum. cover (that is the orig. red color, afaik, on the VC):



this is a newer pic with the SS COP plate I made (the VC color is simply red primer, so not the final red I'll be using); making some SS washers to make up the difference of the coil boots and how thin the plate is; I don't like cutting the boot and in my mind like to have things to where I can just put another one in untouched, say I am on the road or something. I did end up pulling those orig. spacers on the coil and replaced with SS tubes instead, but they are not shown:

 

unistylef

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Jun 25, 2012
Messages
167
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San Diego, CA
Man thats a gorgeous spark plug cover. Do you reccomend I clean and paint it myself? Or do you think itd be safe to bring it to a powdercoat specialist? Im okay with spending money, time is the hard part.
 

JNR

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Thanks, I've since cleaned it up some more (was decent, but not finished enough for my tastes) and going to re-polish it again, although may give it a nice brushed look. I'm into details that people don't necessarily notice what they are, but they know something is different, so hence why I say clean it up some more. Also, there are numerous little things I did to the valve cover that most people will not notice /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I'd clean it yourself and if you want to go thru the extra step, use some aircraft stripper as mentioned for the painted areas; most of it is pretty thick so you can brush it on, wait a few minutes, then a hose to rinse/blast it off...might need a couple coatings and wear a respirator as that stuff is nasty.

A tip I did to clean out the inside of the valve cover between the baffle: use steam. I have a portable steam machine and wow does that work great! Mine wasn't terrible, but between all the dust I kicked up and such, I wanted to get it as clean as possible.

As for painting or powdercoat, I don't know what your skill level is in spray painting/prepping, but you can get it painted to look as nice as powdercoating and one thing to do that works great is do your primer, let it set in the sun; follow up with a couple THIN even coats of base paint, let it sit in the sun for a bit, follow it up with a few more thin coats of paint and let it sit but not fully cure, then go over it with some clear so that the heat will allow it to mix in, while it's baking in the sun...let it bake for bit, add a coupel more clears and wow does it look nice...then when you're all done letting it dry (not quite tacky still, but not fully cured), throw it into an oven, or what I do is fire up the charcoal bbq until it stops "ashing" and flaming and use that heat (gets to ~350 F with charcoal, or ~400 F with mequite) and let it bake. will be ultra-durable.
 

unistylef

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Jun 25, 2012
Messages
167
Location
San Diego, CA
I do have a good skillset for this, but what sucks is I am in the military and I dont have a garage or many tools to do this fun stuff. Doing my best. Ill buy that aircraft paint remover, but painting and steaming might be more tedious for me. Yea, its good to pay attention to all these little details. Appreciate your support.

Hey does the breather tube on the left side pop out?
 

JNR

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Apr 23, 2004
Messages
9,814
Location
ca
I took out the oem elbow/nipple and threaded for 1/8 NPT, then took that brass fitting and put it on the lathe to open the inside to the max. reasonable ID, as that is a small opening otherwise (still a little small, but didn't want to weld anything on it) and was originally going to just put a 1/4" NPT nipple there, but instead (not shown in pic) I bought an 1/8 NPT to 3/8" tube compression fitting and ran it to nylone 12 flex. tubing to the intake tube. Was going to open the inside of that too, but the type of fitting I bought is the type that does not allow the tubing to get 'squished', so was stuck with its ID.

As I did with my vacuum lines recently (not shown in that pic), I like to run hardline wherever possible and there are so many cool fittings out there. If I had the time and extra $$$, it'd all be swagelok/SS lines, but what I have now (nylon with rubber ends or compression fittings) works fine and pressure tested it all to 30 psig, so even without barbs, it holds well...made a little simple tool so that I can get the rubber onto the nylon as much as possible and you can't pull it off now /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Otherwise, if you try doing it by hand, it'll have a tendency to pop out/off too easy. Tip is to use some dielectric grease (do not use vaseline as it attacks rubber)for lube, or silicone spray, but that stuff dries out quick.

Yeah, the painting part is the easy part; prepping is the hassle and I always wipe everything down with isopropyl first, to avoid fisheyes and such. I'm sure you know how to do it, but also when you paint, press the 'button' on/off as you sweep by and either use your thumb or a snap on trigger, otherwise the paint builds up on your finger and will give you crappy splats. Always use a good primer and when I get anal about a finish, I wet sand (800-1500) between coats, but on the valve cover, not going thru the trouble.
 
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