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Engine Bay Painting


john4647

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I need to tidy up my engine bay, which has some rust but no oil contamination. 

It was originally silver and I would like to retain that.

 

Can anyone recommend the best, preferably one coat solution?

 

The Internet has a baffling variety of products, some with quite unbelievable claims.

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14 minutes ago, john4647 said:

I need to tidy up my engine bay, which has some rust but no oil contamination. 

It was originally silver and I would like to retain that.

 

Can anyone recommend the best, preferably one coat solution?

 

The Internet has a baffling variety of products, some with quite unbelievable claims.

 

I think a one-coat solution is quite unlikely, unless you want the rust to be back in a few months.

 

I'd do something like this personally;

 

- scrape off any loose paint / rust

- clean and degrease everything

- treat the rust with some sort of rust converter (Fertan or similar)

- a couple of coats of Owatrol CIP on the rusty bits / any non-painted metal

- a couple of coats of bilge paint, e.g. International Danboline or there's a Hempel one that's similar... both available in Grey (and not many other colours!)... hopefully that's close enough to Silver?

 

Quite a bit of work, but worth doing properly if you don't want to be doing it again in the near future.

 

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When the engine in our boat was removed for a re-build, I took the opportunity to re-paint the engine bay. . Like yours it had some minor rust which I sanded to remove any excess, and then painted it with two coats of Hammerite smooth light grey, ten years later it was still intact with no rust.  It is also available in silver.

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18 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Phantom II here. 1935

My P3 was a very interesting buy. It was purchased from a Farmer who had owned it since the early 1940's.

It ran reasonably well but felt underpowered for a V12. Further examination found that the carb had been blocked of on one side. Then it was discovered that the pistons/rods etc had been removed from one bank. Fuel saving during the war?

This was many years ago.

I think I may have hijacked my own thread.

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16 minutes ago, john4647 said:

My P3 was a very interesting buy. It was purchased from a Farmer who had owned it since the early 1940's.

It ran reasonably well but felt underpowered for a V12. Further examination found that the carb had been blocked of on one side. Then it was discovered that the pistons/rods etc had been removed from one bank. Fuel saving during the war?

This was many years ago.

I think I may have hijacked my own thread.

Can one hijack ones own thread?

 

Odd thing to do to a nice engine but those that know reckon its not RR's best engine. Somewhat akin to Jag's V12, not loved.

I wonder if it was ever used with a wheel jacked up and a belt drive off it?

 

To your painting, I swear by Vactan, there have been unpainted rust spots on my roof for 3 years, all they have had a a coat of Vactan and there is no new rust at all.

Better than Fertan, it does not need washing off before overpainting and works as a primer like Owatrol.

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3 hours ago, David Schweizer said:

When the engine in our boat was removed for a re-build, I took the opportunity to re-paint the engine bay. . Like yours it had some minor rust which I sanded to remove any excess, and then painted it with two coats of Hammerite smooth light grey, ten years later it was still intact with no rust.  It is also available in silver.

Mine is done with White Hammerite. Been several years since last done. Only rust is where weed hatch removal had scraped it.

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Even normally, almost all the work is in the prep, at which point I have never really found 2-3 coats to be an issue.

If you able to get a coating that would suffice in one coat (you can) it will only be as good as the application (likely poor in an confirmed and complex space) and hence 2-3 coats is actually as much about making sure everywhere gets at least one as it is about building up coating thickness.

 

In an engine bay of a boat the main obstacle is always likely to be failing to get all the oil and water off the surface first, so I would be looking for products which are designed for hand preparation and or an amount of surface contamination. 

 

Then as said a rust converter if there is any rust. We use vactan and then an aluminum epoxy, but have never done the engine room as yet.

 

In my experience it is common that with the best will in the world. even if you do your best, sometimes some rust comes back.

However you then have a much smaller area to focus your efforts on, and unless it a specific rust trap by design, second time round you are golden!

 

Enjoy the thrutching around upside down covered in oil and filth and then paint.

 

Daniel

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