Powder coated my plastic valve cover

[iTurbo]

I bought a new valve cover for my CSRT a few weeks ago since they are pretty cheap at wholesalemopar.com Decided to try to powder coat it just to see if it would work (it's plastic). I kinda rushed the prep since I was 1/2 certain the thing would melt anyway, but I did plug and cap everything, and taped off the inside of the oil cap area. I ended up with some pinholes in the clear because I applied the clear too soon. Also it's very difficult to get powder to adhere since it's plastic. Unfortunately the faraday cage effect was still in effect, so getting powder to stick in tight corners or along the bottom edge where it contacted the metal oven rack was difficult. First I coated with Blasted Aluminum (base), then Bronze Metallic, then a gloss clear. All powders from Eastwood and I used their gun too.

I got the valve cover installed now, but I gotta wait to get a pic of that. I had to use a very small amount of Mopar RTV where the timing cover meets the cylinder head so I'm going to wait till tomorrow for it to dry and the go wash my engine bay for the first time ever.

[stargazer7467]

awesome, how high was the temp to cure the powder?

[iTurbo]

I got it up to 375'F according to the thermometer I put in there. I was afraid to go any higher so I extended the cure time about 5 minutes or so. No ill effects that I can tell at all...

[contraption22]

Wow... pretty damned cool!

[bfarroo]

They make a metalic paint that you can spray the plastic with first to get the powder coat to stick. I remember seeing it somewhere. I Think it may have been used for chroming also.

[iTurbo]

Cool I will have to look into that. It was really difficult to get electrostatic adhesion so I resorted to preheating and that ended up working pretty good.





---------- Post added at 12:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:45 PM ----------

About the color....I know it's not really a good match for an orange car, but out of all the powders I had on hand I this was the only one that wouldn't have looked totally ugly and it is really just an experiment to see how it holds up anyway. I also wanted to try metallic bronze that I'm using for another project so I could see how it turned out. I want to use this color for my TIII Omni GLH project which is a factory black/tan car.

[plymouth]

Looks Really good!

[DodgeZdad]

Cool I will have to look into that. It was really difficult to get electrostatic adhesion so I resorted to preheating and that ended up working pretty good.





---------- Post added at 12:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:45 PM ----------

About the color....I know it's not really a good match for an orange car, but out of all the powders I had on hand I this was the only one that wouldn't have looked totally ugly and it is really just an experiment to see how it holds up anyway. I also wanted to try metallic bronze that I'm using for another project so I could see how it turned out. I want to use this color for my TIII Omni GLH project which is a factory black/tan car.

I like the color; it reminds me of my Gold 67 Plymouth VIP with the Golden Commando 383.

[black86glhs]

You called it pretty good on the temps. Any higher and it might have started to distort from the heat. Might even drop it to 350* and extend it another 5 min if the finish starts to have problems.

[iTurbo]

Thanks for the comments guys. I think if I tried it again I would just go up to 350'F like Bryan mentioned. Even though it isn't the listed cure temp, I didn't have any problem getting the powder to flow out even at 350'F. So far I have only put maybe 100 miles on the car since but it hasn't leaked an iota of oil and the finish still looks great. You should see the gasket they make for these though....you would have to REALLY screw it up for it to leak. Makes for really easy valve cover changes at least.

If I get another cover to PC, I was thinking of trying candy orange but what do you guys think would look good/better than the bronze one I did?

[FWDHotodder]

You might try Eastwood's Chrysler Orange/Hemi-Orange. I've used it on a few different projects, and it comes out pretty well.

[JohnnyIroc]

looks good, when you do another you should make the intake match