Can I paint the engine compartment myself?

[frankc]

Here's the situation - I have the motor out of my 77 for some other work, and since the car is sitting in my garage I thought it would be nice if I take advantage of this opportunity and repair the paint in a couple of areas in the engine compartment. However, given the the amount of fading and staining the paint has endured over the past 30+ years, not to mention the fact that the car is silver metallic so some parts of the engine compartment actually look silver, while others look like the color of the bottom of the car (light gray, which I assume is just a base coat), it seems matching the paint would be a nightmare. So, the next logical decision is to re-spray the whole compartment, and that's where my questions really begin.

1) Do I need to strip the surface down to bare metal? I was hoping to avoid this and simply remove only the paint - leaving the original stone guard - then re-spray. However, with the stone guard material under the paint making the surface irregular, I see no way of removing only the paint other than something like soda blasting. I see this worked well for this project:

Advice needed on undercoating

However my car is currently not even a roller to get it to a blaster. I suppose I could wait until the suspension is back on the car, but if there is a way I could do this now, that would be preferable.

2) If I can manage to get only the paint off, and given that this paint job doesn't have to be perfect (but I still want it to look decent), is this something I should try to tackle myself? My only experience painting in the past was helping my father paint a car many years ago which actually came out pretty good. I do have a compressor and read in threads here that a touch-up gun is easier to use for small jobs like this (and beginners).

3) If I do have to take it down to metal, I've read of various methods being used to remove the stone guard material. I would prefer not to use an abrasive method to avoid removing the zinc, but I suppose there are concerns with a chemical stripper dripping down to places I don't necessarily want to strip at the moment either. And then would the skill required to re-apply the various layers from the metal up quickly exceed my amateur status?

4) Am I better off simply stripping & prepping the area myself, and then flat-bed the car to a shop to be painted (once it is a roller again)?

I'll take some pictures and post so you can see what I'm working with.

Thanks in advance for any words of advice,
Frank

[ischmitz]

I think you are taking this way too far. I would not strip or do anything else crazy. After all we are talking the inside of the engine compartment here and it will get dirty over time again. Here is what I would do:

With the engine out use a good degreaser and clean the suirfaces real good. If you want you might use a wire brush or steel wool to roughen the surface for better adhesion. Don't remove the wrinke coating to retain a stock look. And then paint it. Rattle cans should be fine. Some use POR15. Even a brush would do IMHO. It will look very close to stock.

Cheers,
Ingo

[Rusty Heap]

No, absolutley not, you "cannot" paint the car yourself........only certified $400 an hour porsche mechanics can paint your engine compartment; or otherwise the Men in the black coats and hats pulled down over their eyes while wearing dark sunglasses even at night will come and take you away........


Shoot it any color/texture you want dude, heck even wrinkle black VHT will do the job, look nice, and hide any errors.............say you won't drip or run it while spraying it, NO RUNS NO DRIPS NO ERRORS!!!!!!!!!! BWaaaHH hah hah hhah.....hell it's a 77 targa, not a virgin show queen.

[SteveinTO]

Frank, remove as much of the engine accessories as possible, mask the rest, scrub it as clean as you can, and shoot the factory color with a touch up gun. Clean the accessories when you replace, to the extent you can, and it'll look like a million bucks.

[ischmitz]

Originally Posted by frankc

Here's the situation - I have the motor out of my 77 for some other work....

sound like the engine is already out of the way. That makes it even easier.

[frankc]

Steve,

Thanks - Your comment is what I was hoping to hear. But will I need to somehow etch or prime the original paint (as Ingo said) to provide better adhesion for the new paint and avoid having it peel off in a few years?

Frank

[ischmitz]

Use an industrial degreaser. I had great success with agent purple.... It is called Castrol Superclean and literally etches aluminum. Great to clean greasy engine parts. Unfortunately, here in California it is not sold any longer from what I understand.

That will get the surface free of any oily residues. Then buff it up with steel wool or a wire brush. That will last for the next 10 years.

[Axeman]

I did it myself a few years ago and followed what everyone else already recommended (cleaning, wire brush, etc) and used spray paint.

[rnln]

who is looking into your engine compartment? I pulled the foam on the firewall and spray several black coats. Looks clean now.

[gsmith660]

Eastwood trunk paint, do whatever flips your bird its your car.

[JeremyD]

Go for it - and BTW - paintscratch sells spray paint in factory matching colors

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally Posted by Rusty Heap

No, absolutley not, you "cannot" paint the car yourself........only certified $400 an hour porsche mechanics can paint your engine compartment; or otherwise the Men in the black coats and hats pulled down over their eyes while wearing dark sunglasses even at night will come and take you away........

Nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks this way!

Why is so much of the stuff associated with these cars overly mystified? They're cars. They're built by human beings not all that much different from you or I, not a race of alien/human hybrids. Anything one person is capable of doing, typically another is too (with adequate preparation, planning and a very small amount of training/practice).

Get yer spray gun and have at it dude. That's all a "professional" would do anyway. Besides, you'll undoubtedly care more about the end product and do a better job than some (expensive) guy in a "cram 'em in, cram 'em out" shop environment anyway.

[Tim Hancock]

This thread I posted awhile back shows b4/after pics of my trunk re-paint and after pics of my engine bay repaint using brushed on Centari. Believe it or not, you cannot tell it was brushed on has held up PERFECTLY with no chipping or peeling.

I felt like a douche bag when I started the job as I typically am the type to do things "right" (tear completely apart/strip/metal condition/epoxy prime/high end paint), but the results were very good.

before/after trunk pics

[Zeke]

Good stuff, Tim. I have brushed on many paints, even acrylic enamels formulated for spray, just as you did. As long as the weather is not too hot or cold, it works fine. Cleaning here is the key. There is another thread floating around here started by RWebb that has some good cleaning tips (no pun).

[frankc]

Thanks for all the responses. Perhaps I should have named this thread "Should I..." rather than "Can I...". I certainly have no issue with diving into anything mechanical on the car (the car is basically down to nothing more than a tub with an interior at this point), I just didn't know how much of painting was "practice and art" vs. just getting the gear and spraying.

I also should have provided some background on what I am expecting out of the result. I do show the car occasionally, so having the paint be body color with a good finish is important to me. Also, this is not a Parade concours car, so originality is not paramount (i.e.; no concern about "over-restoration" - it's ok for the finish to be better than the factory used in this area).

The idea of brushing on the paint is intriguing, but would this work for a metallic paint, as Tim points out in his link above? I like the idea of purchasing a couple of custom mixed paint cans - what is the down side of going this route?

And If I'm just painting over the existing paint, are there any incompatibility issues I need to be aware of between paint types?

thanks,
Frank

[Buckterrier]

Originally Posted by milt

Good stuff, Tim. I have brushed on many paints, even acrylic enamels formulated for spray, just as you did. As long as the weather is not too hot or cold, it works fine. Cleaning here is the key. There is another thread floating around here started by RWebb that has some good cleaning tips (no pun).

+1 - When my engine was out this spring I repainted the engine bay. As Milt said you can brush spray paint on. I used those sponge brushes and just tossed them afterwards. I also used a bit of hardner in mine as the ambient temperature was in the 50's. Came out just fine. Clean, clean, clean. Then have fun making it look purdy.

[JeremyD]

I spray painted my H4 headlight rings and rear valance - Diamond Blue is a really funky metallic and it came out out great.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I'm probably going to just brush mine down to metal as best I can and hit it with a hard epoxy type paint like POR15 or POR20 (higher heat resistance). Should look real nice when done and it'll be durable and hard as a rock.

[RWebb]

re "Should I..."

You have to clean it up carefully begfore painting. And you SHOULD clean it up before putting the powertrain back in anyway.

SO, clean it thoroughly then decide if you want to clean it a bit more -- I guess a wipe down with something. You'd need to do masking also. Then you can spray.

So it's an incremental issue. But you'll never have another chance as good (you hope).

[frankc]

Mark,
That looks great - where did you purchase the paint? If I could could get results that good with a brush I would be thrilled - but I see yours is non-metallic. Any opinions on using a brush with metallic paint? Am I much better off spraying? Do I need a clear coat over it (regardless)?

Randy,
I always appreciate your advice. Not to dwell on the could/should thing, but what I was trying to say was "should I attempt this myself" rather than "should I paint it or leave it". I pretty much resolved to doing the paint work at this point given that; the paint is damaged in one area, I can't get all the sound pad glue off the top (and I run without the pad), the engine is out of the way, its already clean and still looks bad, and I have the time.

So what I'm hearing is that all I really need to do is thoroughly clean/degrease the old surface (best product for this?), and then simply paint right over that? There are a couple of areas that will be bare metal (damaged paint area, newly welded on deck lid strut bracket). How should those areas be prepped before painting?

thanks again,
Frank