painting F7P cam cover

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

One of the easiest aesthetic mods you can do to your car is to paint the rocker/cam cover on the top of the engine. It adds a bit of individuality as well as tidying up what often has become a bit corroded and unsightly. Once it is painted up, it draws the eye away from all the other bits that are corroded and unsightly! Wink

Right then, before you start I would suggest that if your cam cover gasket has never been changed before, you purchase a new one in advance. They are not very expensive, and this is a favourite place for these engines to spring a sneaky oil leak.

To take the cam cover off, there are a number of bolts (cant remember how many) around the outside edge, and some more underneath the plastic plug lead guide/holder thing when you take that off. The cover should just easily lift off when theyre all out. If its stuck by the gasket, a little tap will release it. Once its off, cover the engine internals with a plastic bag or some such, you dont want any crap falling in there.

Yours, like mine, will likely have the remnants of the original paint/powdercoat (whatever it was) left on it, and in a sorry state. You need to remove all of this, as well as any oil or contamination on the surfaces you want to paint. So, just use some paint stripper, solvents, a wire brush etc, to remove everything down to the bare metal. If youre anything like me, you wont be able to make the surface look totally shiny or anything, but as long as it is totally chemically clean, thats fine

thats my one just before i began painting. looks a bit manky, bit the surface was totally 'clean'

Because the cam cover is aluminium, if you paint it straight away, the paint will not adhere properly and will just flake off quickly due to the oxide layer that aluminium forms. What is needed is a coat of 'etch primer', which eats away at the oxide and bonds with it, and then your primer and coloured paint sticks to that.

The etch primer i used was Hammerite 'special metals primer'. It comes in a small tin from halfords (or homebase/focus etc). Brush it on carefully, trying to get as few brush strokes in it as you can. The only colour i could find was 'brick red', doesnt seem ideal if youre trying to end up with a blue cam cover like me, but it doesnt really matter.

When thats all dry, you can give it a quick rub down with wet n dry to get it really nice and flat. Next, just use your normal spray primer, give it a couple of coats and let it dry properly.

like so. Leave it to dry on the boiler overnight. Then again use some wet and dry to flatten it all off nice and smooth.

Next you need your chosen colour paint. My car is 449 sports blue, a colour not readily available, and expensive to get mixed up so I just picked a standard available colour that was close enough. That happened to be Renault 'electric blue'. When the cam cover is in the car, and not right next to a body panel, youre hard pressed to tell the difference really. I didnt bother with high temperature paint because the choice of colours is so small, and none of them are very pleasing but so far mine has not bubbled up at all.

close up

Looks pretty good. But if you want the finish to last and not be destroyed by water and oil stains, you need to use some clear laquer on it too. Its a pain, but worth the effort in the end. Again, leave the thing on the boiler overnight for the paint to harden and then get your wet and dry out and give the whole thing a going over with very fine grade (1000-1200). Youre just trying to remove the gloss from the paint surface so the laquer has something to key to. Give it a couple of coats of laquer and then...yes youve guessed it... on the boiler again.

while i was doing all this... i found an tin of yellow, and following the exact same procedure (bar the etch primer, since its made of steel), i did this:

its the strut brace, in case you hadnt realised, and the finish is very, very glossy Smile

Fit them back on the car, being careful not to bash them with your socket and it looks pretty pleasing indeed! If you want to polish them up, best wait a week or two for the paint and laquer to totally harden.

Job, as they say, is a good 'un

Mr Quoter-vator Joined: 16 Feb 2004 Posts: 7405

cool..i remember that from rsc...so how is it lookin today? i used same sort of paint as you i.e. not high temp stuff...mine isnt lookin so hot anymore..when water got to it it stained it, esp when hot. i did put some laquer on as an after thought but i think i was too late...did u laquer urs?

but urs is a testimony to not havin to waste money on expensive matching paint...looks mint just as it is

Level 5 User Joined: 04 May 2004 Posts: 107

The previous owner of my car colour coded the rocker cover.

It's a right mess now with paint all bubbled and rough.

Where can you buy heat resistant stuff in the right colour?

Forum Moderator Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 19978

looks good.

yellow strut brace? This must be an English thing, my chamade has a yellow strut brace with sparco stickers and slick 50 or some crap on it. When I was mot'ing the tester took the piss with comments like "so your the bastard who stole my brush handle" etc

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

i didnt use high temp paint, but i did use laquer. Hasnt bubbled at all...yet. its gets a few water marks and so on, but they can just be polished off quite easily.

I like my strut brace yellow... most aftermarket ones i have seen on other cars are yellow. Its a lot better than black/rusty like it was before.

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

are you thinking of putting the pictures back on at some point neal ?
cause it looks like shit like this

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

No im not, because it was put into the knowledge base ages ago and all the pics work, muppet Razz

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

yes i saw them and i am kindly asking you to remove those poxy ntl links

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

there are none.