so i am doing a color change on my shadow- going from dark metalic green to black. obviously it would look stupid if i popped the hood on a black car and the engine bay was still green.
normaly sanding down every nook and cranny in the engine bay would take 2-3 days of tedious hand sanding. but a trick my collision repair instructor taught me a long time ago works extremely well for prepping the engine bay for paint.
what he showed me was a quick easy way to prep small parts that arent easily sanded with paper for paint- things like door, hood and trunk hinges.
if you use a sand blaster but instead of getting up close and removing all the paint, you just go over it lightly from a farther distance, and the blaster will roughen the paint perfectly so fresh paint will stick. you basically just wave the nozzle over the area from a couple feet back, and move fairly fast over the surface- kinda like you are washing it off with a hose.
only catch is you need to remove everything from the engine compartment- and i do mean everything, all wiring, brake lines, fuel lines, - everything you dont want painted. my car is stripped down to a bare shell so this was just a day of removing the booster/master cylinder, lines, evap can, all push clips, exhaust heat shield wiring harness- everything.
once you get it stripped of all parts wash all the oil and dirt off of all surfaces.
after that load your sand blaster with fine silica sand- the white stuff. dont bother with the expensive blasting media, i just used white playground sand from lowe's, was $2.70 a bag, 2 bags needed.
go over the entire engine compartment, move fairly fast over the surface, dont get closer than a foot away. you will see the paint being dulled as you go over the panels. the bonus here is if you have any rusty areas you can blast them clean with the sand blaster. you can easily get into all the nooks and crannies- like up inside the cowl, and behind the strut towers this way.
once you have roughed up all the surfaces and blasted away any rust- about 2 hours- i used some rattle can sandable primer on bare metal areas and allowed it do dry for a couple hours. once the primer has dried take a red scotch brite pad and lightly go over the areas you primed and also go over the engine compartment with the pad too. it doesnt take much with the pad- i went over the whole thing in about 30-40 minutes- so it doesnt take long, the sand blaster did most of the work here.
at this point you are ready for paint. if you're gonna rattle can or pray proper automotive grade paint, wipe the engine compartment down with wax and grease remover and you're ready to spray either.
the finished result looked better than i expected, it does not look like it has been sand blasted at all.
the best part is i only spent about 4 hours total with sanding and prep and after i sprayed the engine compartment looks like new
i used DuPont Nasson Ful-base medium temp reducer and nasson spot panel clear with hot weather activator. flowed out really well and looks great. the color is PX8 in case anyone was wondering
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