Painting my valve covers

[infinity5]

I got sick of looking at the disgusting patchy silver things on my m60 and took them off to paint.

The drivers side i just pressure washed to get the loose paint off and cleaned it up, and then i covered it in several layers of hi-temp (1200degree) spray paint from lowes.

Big mistake. it looks better, but the spray paint shows every single imperfection in the paint/metal below it. I'm going to have to redo it and strip every single tiny little piece of paint off, and make sure the surface is silky smooth.

But I had learned my lesson, so for the passanger side i sat there with a power sander and the coarsest paper i could find and after about an hour solid i had gotten the majoirty of the paint/primer off the flat surfances. Its hard work though., and theres no way to sand a lot of the little dips and s are depresed places. The top layer of paint is extremely thick and then there's an even thicker layer of gray primer under it before you get to the silver of the actauly valve cover.

Are these things aluminum? I read somewhere a long time ago they were magnesem or something exotic, but somehow i doubt that, now that i've sanded all the coating off.

i'm going to paint the sanded one tomorrow and see how it turns out, but it looks like i'm going to have to give up and let a professional powder coat it. I know several people have done this, does anyone have figures for cost? I know it was probably valve covers from an I-6, but i can just multiply by 2 and have a rough guess for mine.

tomorrow i'll post some picks of the sanded and non sanded sides and maybe some of my camshafts if anyone wants to see how clean and nice they are

i just did my first oil change after switching to m1 0-40 (after 1000miles) a few days back and the oil was pretty nasty, which was encouraging. i've been checking since then with the dipstick and its staying clean and clear so far!

[632 Regal]

use a flat finish or hi temp krinkle paint for BBQ's

[infinity5]

I got the high temp paint for BBQ, Stoves, etc and its not particularly glossy, i just did a really bad job cleaning the covers up. I'll go back to lowes tomorrow and check out what else they have. I didn't see any krinkly type high-temp paint, but i think iknow what you're talking about.

I think i wire brush mounted to a drill will do the rest of the stripping job.

[Bob in San Jose]

I had mine bead blasted and powder coated about 2 years ago. They still look great.
Here's some pics from when I had them done (while I was doing the valve cover gaskets). Think I paid 100 or 125 for the pair.


More pics here.
M60 valve covers

[ryan roopnarine]

the sooner your oil becomes dirty, the better, if your intent is cleaning. it means the detergent action is significant to put the stuff into suspension. there's some talk now about whether or not mobil 1 has any significant cleaning ability over aggressive dino oils, because of its construction (i think it was that PAO synthetic oils didn't clean that well...but i don't remember). i think it boiled down to (if one were to pick representative products) m1's construction versus royal purple syn construction, with the royal purple construction being the one that's actually worth something as a cleaner. i've only heard about it briefly, so i can't explain too well. im using diesel oil right now, 15w40. im trying to have all of my car's repairs done by july, so by that time, i estimate that ill be down to 1000 mile oil changes on the cheapest possible oil i can find. when im sure that all the grunge is gone, ill switch back to a good syn and let it remove the "honey colored" normal residue that comes with a prior owner's use of conventional oil.

[niall]

why not use paint stripper?