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Painting rocker cover wording
chris68 - 19/6/16 at 08:29 AM

Hi all,

My rocker cover on the MX-5 engine has the words '16 valve' and 'Mazda' impressed on it and I want to paint the words black. The cover is going to be yellow. I had thought to try and mask the rest of the cover - major faff, once the the cover has been painted. My other thought was to use thinned down engine enamel and use a syringe and needle and flood the areas. I had dismissed the idea of painting the letters with a fine brush as I it will look crap with my unsteady hand.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Smoking Frog - 19/6/16 at 11:09 AM

Spray prime the whole cam cover.
Mask around the lettering.
Spray the lettering.
Use the kids play-do as masking material to pack the lettering.
Spray cover.
Remove play-do.
Obviously missed bits like preping and drying time which would be really important inside the lettering.

Never done it myself as it sounds like to much work. I like the idea of using a syringe.

Slimy38 - 19/6/16 at 02:23 PM

I would prime and spray the whole cover in the letter colour. Then use a hard roller or similar to go over the cover, on the basis that it won't go into the lettering.

That's assuming your cover is still textured rather than polished, and therefore a roller finish will still be fine.

Although yellow paint on top of black might be a challenge...

mini-sprite - 19/6/16 at 06:51 PM

Do the usual prep, it you are spraying with base coat spray this and leave to dry. Get a syringe and some enamel paint and squirt the enamel paint carefully in the letters. Or do this but use 2 pack paint. Leave it again to dry and then laquer the lot.

paul

coyoteboy - 7/8/16 at 01:12 PM

v8 cam cover wrinkle red
v8 cam cover wrinkle red
Masking tape, remove, paint with thick paint?

perksy - 7/8/16 at 08:15 PM

Here's a few we did earlier

Like everything, preparation is the key










nick205 - 8/8/16 at 08:30 AM

Is it worth asking a powder coater how they'd do it and maybe a cost for having it done?

Might be cheaper than you think and have the advantage of a good job.

chris68 - 8/8/16 at 05:47 PM

Had thought of powder coating but it was just something I wanted to try - despite the hassle!

Perksy: Those covers look great can you just run through what you did and your masking technique?

Cracking!!

907 - 8/8/16 at 07:00 PM

It's alright for you lot. I had two to do.


Description
Description

perksy - 8/8/16 at 07:07 PM

quote:
Originally posted by chris68
Had thought of powder coating but it was just something I wanted to try - despite the hassle!

Perksy: Those covers look great can you just run through what you did and your masking technique?

Cracking!!




The cam covers need to be clean enough to eat your dinner off and like i said preparation really is everything

Then I decided what was going to end up polished and what wasn't, these areas were then polished with various grades of wet & dry up to and including 2000 grit
The cover/s were then etch primed using an aerosol, building up slowly with light & even coats

The polished ares were then polished again and as they had already been polished, the etching primer came off easily

This finish gives you an idea of what the effect will look like before the top coat goes on

The larger shiny areas were then masked up with masking tape and trimmed with a fine scalpel blade

The smaller intricate areas were left (Ford logo on cossie covers) as again they were already polished and the top coat would be easy to polish off

Top coats were applied, light coats applied evenly, I used Plasti-kote super enamel

The cover/s are left for a few days so the paint hardens fully and then the masking tape is removed

Finally the shiny areas were polished up again to complete

I've done a few now and found the paint is hard enough and if it does chip you can just touch it in with a artist's paint brush to get a good match (You can't really do this with powdercoat)


Hope that helps, Sorry I'm crap with instructions

[Edited on 8/8/16 by perksy]

chris68 - 8/8/16 at 08:27 PM

Thats really helpful thanks - I just hope I can produce something as good as yours!