Paint engine before or after assembly?

[ray_mcavoy]

Hi Mark,

To copy the way it was done at the factory, you'd want to paint the engine after assembly.

But I agree with the above posts ... you can get better results if you paint the individual parts before assembly and just do some touch-up painting afterward. This method also allows you to get good coverage in areas that weren't always well coated from the factory.

As a general rule of thumb, the bolts used to attach engine color parts (like the oil pan, valve cover, and such) would have been painted engine color from the factory. To duplicate that look, I punch holes in a piece of cardboard, stick the bolts in the holes, and spray paint the bolt heads. The paint sometimes gets chipped off a little when tightening the bolts but that's easy to touch-up.