Wondering if any of your guys painted your engine cover, if so what color, and why. PIC would be help full, im just curuious becuase many people do this to make there cars look a bit bettr internally.

 

Disco, I have painted mine. I painted it British Racing green and then on the indented ribs, I painted those a goldish color. I wanted a little something to make it stand out. I also did the top of the battery box. I still need to pull off the intake and paint that. It was a pretty easy job to do. Besides, if you mess it up, you will be one of the few people to see it unless you show off your car a lot.

A side note, the insulating blanket that is on the under side of the hood tends to rub on the engine cover and can cause spots of the cover to dull, possibly even turn back to black (wore through the paint). If you look on the hood blanket, you can see the dents where the blanket comes in contact with anything in the engine compartment.

 

alright thanx thermo, im guessing the needed supplies are, a screw driver and a engine enamel, or heat resistant paint???

 

Disco, for the engine cover, you need a large phillips screw driver to remove the cover (don't forget to remove the oil cap before removing the cover). As far as paint, I used a standard paint. These parts are not subjected to extreme heat. So, use whatever you can find and fits what you are desiring.

 

Yeah, i knew about he engine oil cap, interesting how thev'e incorperated that into the cover as a last effort to keep it on, in the event of what? and thanks for the heat, i knew it generated heat but i guess not as much as other cars? but im still going wit th heat resistent paint. What would you recomend, a red, blue, black, any other colors

 

Disco, because you car is a dark color (not sure if it is straight black or if it is the dark metallic grey), red, blue, and other colors like that are out in my opinion. I have never been a fan of making the underhood a contrasting color to the body of the car unless that color is somehow tied to the outside of the car (ie, silver from the rims, chrome corner pieces, etc). So, in your case, what I would say to do is to paint the pieces in the body color and then like I did, with the stripes and lettering, do that in say silver. That puts a little flare to the pieces, yet doesn't scream "look at this ricer". Call me a traditionalist, but stuff like this can easily get taken way too far.

 

yeah, mines black, should i paint it a jet black, with red lettering, or red or blue with black

 

Disco, I ask you this question, how much do you want the lettering to jump out at you? If you want something that screams "Jaguar", then fire engine red on the black plastic. If you are looking for something to simply accent, then I would recommend a darker blue, possibly even a dark gray. The color of the lettering I would tie in to some other component of the car. You can look at the seat color, any sort of pin stripe on the car, etc. That will help tie the whole look of the car together.

 

well, my whole cars black, blacked out sie markers, window tinting when ever the shop decides to die down a bit, i think i might go with the balck, or red, or black and silver, like your idea, but that won't be till later on, i was just curious, how did you cover up the lettering, just taped it right??

 

Disco, you are going to laugh at how I do the lettering. Elmer's Glue!!!!! In your case, what you would do is paint the parts that you want in red/silver. After the paint dries, you put the lettering part on a flat surface and you start mounding up glue on the areas that you don't want painted black. You then let the glue dry and shoot the whole piece in black. After the black as started to dry, you can use a knife to peel up an edge of the glue and then lift it all off. The Elmer's glue will not stick to the paint hard enough to peel up paint, but does stick enough to prevent the black from getting under the glue.

The big trick is getting the part on a level surface as the glue will seek a level and can result in a lot of the glue running to the low point and spilling over to areas you don't want. So, doing it in sections may be advisable. But, after about 30 minutes the glue will be set up enough that you can move on to the next section. If you look at the back of my car, the chrome piece that goes above the license plate I used that technique to leave the "Jaguar" in chrome while color matching the rest of the piece.

 

hmm smart, laughed abit lol, did u sand anything down at all

 

Disco, I never said it was high tech. But, I got the idea from my model trains as they have a few products that form a mask similiar to what the elmer's glue does.

As for sanding, I only used a scrub pad (I call them greenies) to give the pieces a good scrub. I wanted the texture of the plastic to show through to give the piece a little bit more character. Where sanding would have gotten rid of most of the texture.

 

im just wondering, incase the paint dosen't want to stick, i had a problem like this, its actaully pretty odd, a couple months back, i was talking about tiniting the side markers, and i used paint ( DUMB IDEA) i had to sand it off, so when i got the proper sray for it, it wouln't adhere properly to the sanded one ( smart to only see waht it looked liek on one side) but really good on the non sanded side. it baffled me, so i wiped the spray off, and started again, cleaning it really good, dosen't look the same, but you now ned a microscope to see the difference.