Got my engine 100% dissasembled so I figured it was time to break out the purple power and start cleaning and painting things. Not happy with how the VC turned out way to hard to mask off behind the lettering to make it visible. Any tips on how to do a good paint job would be nice.

Paint the entire valve cover the color you want. After the paint cures, use a sanding block to take the paint off the top of the raised letters and use a small brush to paint them.

Put 2" wide painters tape over the letter to mask them. Then mask off the rest with newspaper and tape (or something like that) so you won't paint anything that you don't want painted. Then get an Xacto knife or razor and carefully cut out around the letters to expose what you want to paint. Paint. As long as it's not on too thick you can just peal off the tape while it's still wet being careful not to touch the letters and you're done! let it dry.

Dont know why I didnt think of that thanks. I was just at lowes earlier and dont plan on going back anytime soon so I'll just nail me some sand paper to a 2x4 and see how that goes for me .[DOUBLEPOST=1410977804][/DOUBLEPOST]

MMFB said:

Then get an Xacto knife or razor and carefully cut out around the letters to expose what you want to paint.

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I tried doing that but it looked sloppy I couldnt get the tape to be nice and even. And the spark plug cover has pretty small letters and it took me an hour to fail at covering them.

Don't mask it at all. The letters are raised, it's easy to take the paint off them. I sprayed my valve cover, let the paint set up for about an hour so it's still rubbery, then just slice off the paint with a razor. You can also let it dry completely and sand them off. I didn't sand mine at all.

http://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/1990-gsx-daily-driver-build-and-restore-to-400-whp.472418/page-2











Tom's Turbo Garage also did this with great results. Skip to 4:30

That looks pretty good I think what I might do is sand the top of the letters so it has a blue back ground. They should be visible then being aluminium on top. I'll post a picture up later of the results. I'm wanting to keep the grey paint on the VC so it matches my manifold so scrapping the paint off the top wouldn't realy work for me. It would be grey/aluminium and hard to see.

Put a light coat of vaseline on top of the letters once they are dried and respray your grey over top. You can then clean the tops of the letters after its had a chance to dry a bit. Vaseline/grease wont allow the paint to stick.

Even better ideas! I love it!

lasthope05 said:

Put a light coat of vaseline on top of the letters once they are dried and respray your grey over top. You can then clean the tops of the letters after its had a chance to dry a bit. Vaseline/grease wont allow the paint to stick.

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I'll give this a try sounds interesting I just need to make sure I get the letters covered fully.

IF you go with the vaseline, make sure the paint is totally cured for at least 24 hours. You dont want any of that vaseline getting into the fresh paint and contaminating it.

Don't think the vaseline idea is going to work. The blue is actual paint and the grey is high heat primer and it isn't sticking to the blue. So I go to wipe the vaseline off and it just wiped the grey off as well.[DOUBLEPOST=1411035613][/DOUBLEPOST]Maybe it didn't turn out to bad the spark plug cover is what the grey wiped off of. Few little dots in between the letters maybe I didn't let it dry long enough but it will be easy to repaint that. VC looks better though just need to finish cleaning off the grease.

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Another trick for painting raised lettering like that is to paint the bottom layer (cover) color of choice and then let it fully cure. Once the paint it cured, take painters tape and tape the entire thing. Carefully take some sand paper and sand off the tape on the top layer(letters). Once this is sanded, it will cause the tape to slide down in between the letters down to the first layer. You may have to push the tape down just slightly around the letters. Finally, paint the lettering color of choice, let cure, and carefully remove tape.

Your cover looks good though. I'm about to paint a spare one that I have and swap it out.

Nice! Any ideas for the opposite? Depressed letters?

MMFB said:

Nice! Any ideas for the opposite? Depressed letters?

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Depressed is a little different. It takes a steady hand and either a fine paint brush (like a kids water color brush) or a tooth pick to get the paint down into the fine lettering/numbers. If one takes their time doing it this way, they could have great results. Use high temp paint in stages. What I mean is spray the high temp paint into a container of sorts(cup,can,etc) until a puddle forms and dip the brush or whatever into the paint then apply to the depressed details. Once the paint in the container starts to dry, toss it and start with a new container/paint.

MMFB said:

Nice! Any ideas for the opposite? Depressed letters?

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I'm trying now using the sanding the tape method. So far it looks like it will work out great. I just did it to the eci multi on my intake manifold. I have the first coat on now I will post a picture when finished.

Good luck and I hope that it works for you. I learned this many years ago from an older friend of mine who has done this for years. His 69 Vett looked great and he taught me when I was building my Camaro at the time.

DJ Raydiate said:

Depressed is a little different. It takes a steady hand and either a fine paint brush (like a kids water color brush) or a tooth pick to get the paint down into the fine lettering/numbers. If one takes their time doing it this way, they could have great results. Use high temp paint in stages. What I mean is spray the high temp paint into a container of sorts(cup,can,etc) until a puddle forms and dip the brush or whatever into the paint then apply to the depressed details. Once the paint in the container starts to dry, toss it and start with a new container/paint.

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Cool! Thanks.

Turned out ok used the sand tape method and the vaseline method to paint the blue and the black inside the lettering. Soon as I know the paint is cured fully I'll finish wiping it all down and cleaning the grease off.

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