Update: recent engine bay picture added below.
My old engine bay was looking pretty pathetic, so I decided to spend some time to cleanup this weekend.
I finished painting the valve cover, and it came out just great! Here’s a before/after comparison so you can see what a difference $5 in paint made.
In fact, I was so happy with the results that I decided to tear off the intake manifold and carbs to paint them. That turned out to be a lot more work than was expected, and I ended up with a lot more sheared bolts than was expected. Along the way I removed the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) and Air Pump from the setup. This is a controvertial move, but I feel that the benefits of simplicity and a slight performance increase outweigh the negligible cleanup of air (just having a well-tuned carburettor does more for emissions than EGR.
The parts are still drying, since high-temp paint either requires baking or a long chemical dry period, so I’ll post updates next weekend. In case there’s any confusion, everything I paint ends up matte black. Here’s the current state of things, after a couple cans of degreaser and some serious cleaning. I suppose I’ll paint the head+block while I have everything exposed, at the very least it’ll keep it from rusting.
Directly after the engine gets reassembled, I’ll be cleaning up the wiring, possibly tucking it between the engine bay walls and fender (above the fender well). That’ll require removing the fenders, which means more headless bolts. I’m not sure I’m ready to dive into another bolt-shearing project so soon after wrenching studs in half on the engine, though.
