Necessary steps (hidden tips/precautions) for stripping and painting an engine bay?

[Oakville]

Title says it all, motors out and I may as well get some work done before the motor goes in. I want to paint the entire bay gloss black, Nissan code KH3

Thanks guys.

[caliber676]

Usually the factory sealant you can trust to be well done so reselling isn't entirely necessary. Depends how much you want to spend, but a lot of places I've seen have just done a Pre clean with soap and degreaser, a good sanding of the paint surface followed by another soap and degrease then paint. You could also do a layer of primer if you felt you wanted to. If you wanted to go all out you could strip the car to bare metal and then reseal and prime and paint but that is overkill

[Skym]

The factory seal along seams between firewall, front fenders can be sometimes not done properly and water gets behind it, rust's.

Also it rust's on support bar for bumper and on lower radiator support (exposed to rocks, etc).

[Oakville]

I'll take a look at those areas. thanks gents.

[nimblestix]

I just did this job during my build. I pressure washed really well, and then used lacquer thinner to remove all the old grease and grime, the lacquer even started to remove some of the paint slightly. Then I used a red scotch brite on every inch of the bay. After that I pressure washed it again really well and let it dry for a little over 24 hours. Blew it down with high pressure air then primed it. Then painted over primer and cleared over paint. It turned out pretty nice.

I bought a decent but cheap gravity feed air powered paint gun kit and used that.

Good luck!

PS. I used Sherwin Williams auto paint (ah3), and duplicolor paint shop primer and clear.

All in all start to finish cost around $500

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Oakville]

youre a legend nimblestix!

I guess using heat paint/clear isnt needed...? These arent the coolest bays... lol

Im just worried about any hardware/bolts breaking when stripping the rest of the stuff down. Are there any specific areas where people have had issues and would advise caution?

[caliber676]

im not sure if its just bc or all of canada, but make sure you have a decently heated and extremely clean garage for doing this if you can only use waterborne paint. I went to the states to grab some solvent based paint as it is much easier and forgiving than the waterborne counterpart.

[326_godzilla]

POR15 is another option as well, if you really want to protect against rusting after all the prep n clean-up.

[caliber676]

Find out what your options are for primers, some will allow you to use a product like por15 under it for that extra protection