How To: Painting Valve Cover

I think it looks more yellow. Gold has a bit of orange to it. That's more like the color of piss.. if it were solidified and turned into a hubcap. :D
 
Here is my old one. I am doing my new one red:

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YelPro03 said:
So what's with the Spam on the stut tower brace? Heating up lunch?


hahahaha.. it makes the car go faster!
 
Did my valve cover (black) and heat shield (chrome) tonight at work. Took my good ole time prepping, primering, and painting (even baked them between coats) and then finished them with high-temp clear. This is where the problem is.......the clear actually dulled the gloss and made the heat shield almost look sunlight silver! That, plus baking the parts made it damn near impossible to sand the paint off of the "16 VALVE DOHC" and "MAZDA" on the valve cover, so I had to paint over it again! Has anyone else had problems applying clear coat?
 
Upon further review, the valve cover doesn't look too bad, but the heat shield is dicolored at the bottom.
Sorry about the pic quality......
 

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holy crap, im gonna try this in white. Ill be sure to use a clear coat though so it looks like it came like that from the factory.
 
white will get dirty before the day is over...

good luck with that.
 
This looks like such a nice mod. I would love to find a color close to the laser blue, or just go red to match the strut tower brace. I would like to do this, but removing the valve cover makes me nervous. I guess as long as you don't drop anything in there you'd be fine.
 
Tasty said:
This looks like such a nice mod. I would love to find a color close to the laser blue, or just go red to match the strut tower brace. I would like to do this, but removing the valve cover makes me nervous. I guess as long as you don't drop anything in there you'd be fine.

Valve cover comes very easily and quickly. Duplicolor metal cast in the blue anodized is real close to laser blue and it with stands the heat. Mines painted black with a blue Mica.
 

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I ordered some black wrinkle coat from summitracing a couple weeks ago but it was out of stock so I have no idea when I'll get it. I can't wait to do it though. I have the new gasket ready and everything.

Does anyone know what I could do about a broken valve cover bolt though? I stupidly overtorqued the bottom right (near oil filler) bolt after installing my FS-ZE cam so there's some bolt stuck in the head. I wanted to try and get it fixed before I make the valve cover look all nice.

Along those same lines anyone know what the size and thread pitch is on the valve cover bolts? I don't really wanna go to Lowes and pop the hood and take a bolt out in the parking lot lol.
 
Tasty said:
As in the flake is a bluish tint? That might be cool.

Yes, its black with a blue metal flake. Its the same paint that I did my hood, roof & wing with. I also painted my rims and a stripe on the bottom of my car with this same black paint. It kind of all ties it all together.
 
KanseiZM said:
I ordered some black wrinkle coat from summitracing a couple weeks ago but it was out of stock so I have no idea when I'll get it. I can't wait to do it though. I have the new gasket ready and everything.

Does anyone know what I could do about a broken valve cover bolt though? I stupidly overtorqued the bottom right (near oil filler) bolt after installing my FS-ZE cam so there's some bolt stuck in the head. I wanted to try and get it fixed before I make the valve cover look all nice.

Along those same lines anyone know what the size and thread pitch is on the valve cover bolts? I don't really wanna go to Lowes and pop the hood and take a bolt out in the parking lot lol.

You need an EZ out set. Go to a good hardware/tool store.
http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/item...&group_ID=1254&store=snapon-store&dir=catalog
 
im goin to do mine now! this was a great thread.. just gotta be careful to make sure i put it back together right! lol! i was goin to pay someone to do this if i could find a custom paint shop around or somethin but... this is pretty simple... you just used regular spray paint right?
 
Yeah it's really not hard, just be very careful when you are putting the bolts that hold the valve cover back on. They break without too much force (I was using a tiny 1/4" drive ratchet.

After finals I'm definitely doing this, assuming my VHT black wrinkle coat high heat paint is here by then.

Oh and Tasty, thanks for the tip. I hadn't seen your post for some reason.
 
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