I decided that I would only do a bit of color to the top of the engine, and those tins below that often get extremely hot would remain black.
I’m following the same process for these, with the exception that the top coat is just a oil and chemical resistant high-temp gloss black.
I suspect that the tins that get the hottest would benefit the most in terms of durability from powder coating, but as I previously mentioned that is out of the budget for this initial rebuild.
The fan shroud actually looked really good in the flat black rust reformer. I ended up choosing to use the AR engine’s shroud since it is a 1:1 match type to the AH original. There’s some really cool factory original marks on the AH shroud that I didn’t want to lose just yet. The AR engine had a few too but I had to sacrifice one of them.
Many other pieces of tine were brand new so I did not have to go to the lengths of prep that I did on the reused parts. The new alternator came as a kit with new tins, and I had to purchase new cylinder top tins since I had damaged the screw holes during the removal of the originals. I just roughened up the surfaces a bit before priming and painting them all.
Unfortunately, and I have no idea how this escaped me, the fan shroud painting did not go as well as I had hoped. I seemed to have coated the vacuum canister side too much and it started to drip. This is made even worse by the metallic element of the top coat color I’ve chose to do the visible tins. Come spring I’ll have to sand down and redo this area again.
I also nicked up the rear tin and will have to redo this again. This tin did not have the 3 coats of gloss top coat on it. I’m curious as to how that might have protected this if I had finished them and those coats had time to cure.
Now the reason I started all of these tins now instead of focusing on the engine was purely due to seasonal changes. We had a few unseasonably warm and sunny autumn days so I took advantage of them to see how well I could sand and prep the metals and also if my process seemed sound.
Obviously, I’ll have some repair work to do come springtime when the temps are consistently high enough to paint again, and who knows how my plans will change. I may or may not keep the heat exchangers for this first engine. I know I definitely will not put them on the AR engine going into the 74 for resale. But I’ve already decided to go with bolt-on valve covers on the rebuild so things will change as the months go on.