Painted under the hood last weekend.

I have a red earth grounding kit coming. It should add just enough red to set it off nicely.

I used the same hi-temp paint as for the calipers, but I'm planning on clearcoating it under the hood.

 

I removed it. There is only two 10mm nuts on each side holding it down. Just make sure you sand it good. I had to sand it twice, because the primer didn't want to stick.

 

Very nice, XcelR8. :D Be sure to post up pics when you do your clear coating...

 

Yes, just us a high grit sand paper to allow the paint to stick. You don't need to sand it to bare metal. When you are done sanding it wipe if with a clean cloth. Hang it from one of the holes so you can walk around the whole part. After it is hangin wipe off were you touched it. The oils in your hands can cause the paint to not stick. Then prime and paint it in light even coats.

As far as the engine cover....don't sand it. You will only mess up the textured finish. Wipe off the area you are going paint with thinner. This will allow the paint to stick to the plastic. Especially if you cleaned it or used any conditioner on it such as "Back to Black". Just make sure to don't get any paint thinner on areas you are not going to paint. It may discolor it. I would suggest wiping the areas off after you mask them. Then just paint the area the color of your choice.

It is not real difficult, but if you are not comfortable. Paint a scrap piece of metal or wood first until you get the hang of it. Paint is cheap...replacing the parts on your car is not.

 

What car seat do you have strapped in there? I'm looking for one similar, as well as a "booster" (bottom only).

AT

 

It is the Graco Turbo booster

Graco has just boosters too. Babies R Us has both of them.

Enjoy!

 

Here's mine...

 

oops...how bout now...

 

one more of the engine bay...

 

and my calipers just for fun...

 

Scudrunner....I was thinking about doing the samething with the groves on the battery cover and air box cover. I like the look of the engine cover, too. Good job.

 

I can't take all the credit. After doing the air box myself, I got a little scared of tackling the engine cover. So, I had it done for me, and the guy said he'd do the battery cover for no extra cost, since what he was really charging me for was the amount of paint he'd have to mix, which would be enough to do both.

 

Has anyone besides me thought about air brushing some flames on all the covers? I mean one large design that would cover them all.

 

"Has anyone besides me thought about air brushing some flames on all the covers? I mean one large design that would cover them all.
"

now THAT is badass- if it was pulled off right- it might be tricky laying them all out evenly as they would be spaced in the car for the actual painting?? I don'y know though- I am not an airbrush artist

 

Just wanted to show off my first real home brew mod. (i.e. not buying a part and installing it)
**not that there is anything wrong with that**
But I took the idea from Blue Grim and a several others on the MessageBoards. Blue Grim's is the one I've seen in person.

Anyway what do you think?

 

more pics...but looks clean anyway

 

looks nice ::thumbs up:: very clean and not tacky at all... one of those small but very noticeable things

 

Thanks for the opinions. I plan on doing the rest of the covers in the near future, including the strut bar.
As soon as I finish those I'll post more pictures.
The grey/silver seemed to blend well with the other engine components, once I finsih the rest it should look really nice.

Thanks again,
Gary

 

haha i went ahead and tried this a few weeks back...and messsssseddddd up.... id rather not get into though. quite embarrassing. im still figuring out how im gonna fix it... acetone tried, would take weeks of scrubbing... anyways YOU did a really good job. looks really clean

 

What I would like to know is what did you use to mask off the area you dodn't want paint on. I have tried every tape that I have (high quality auto masking tape, paint masking tape, packing tape, scotch tape and gaffers tape) and nothing sticks to the engine covers. I finally used a liquid masking and that stuff is going to take forever to get scraped off. But, I am making progress with it, slow but sure. My thumb nails are killing me!

The Mazda sign will not hold paint in the black area. It wrinkled up and I scraped it off with ease. What the hell did they make this stuff out of?

 

I used blue masking tape. Prior to the tape, I cleaned the cover real good with 409 and let it dry about an hour or more.
I used short peices of tape and place them tangent to the inside edge of that center parabola., and kept doing that all around that outer edge until I felt the curve was good enough.
The inside edge, I did the same thing but placed the small strips of tape vertically into the groove and presssed against in inside wall of the parabola.
I also did the vertical tape around the edge of the center mazda logo, then flattened the tape down onto the logo, until it was all covered.
For the Renisis lettering I put a solid strip of tape over it and used an exacto knife to cut arround the letters. The hard part of this is to peel the tape off after the paint dries. Again the exacto knife came in handy for that while being carefuly not to scratch the letters.
Granted doing this took a lot of time and patience., but it works out for the best in the end.
Unfortunatly it's rainging this weekend, so I can finish the touch ups and the other covers that I had intended.

 

Nice job Gary, looks EXcellent! How about a couple more pics, from different angles?

 

Thanks, I found this out. I didn't do the one thing that I should have remembered, clean it before doing anything to it. Afterwards, I cleaned it with a pressure hose and the tape stuck like a charm. The middle black part of the mazda flying M logo came off with a spot sanding pen made by pme pf te major paint manufacturers. I need to go to step two for the second paint color tomorrow as this first color has dried. I also did the strut bar today, too.

I liked your engine cover and it's color scheme very well and would also like to see a few more pics from different angles. :D