Engine Bay Painting Blues

You know...Dayle would call me a perfectionist....I like to think of it as doing things right the first time..... regardless of what the manual says.....

The 1975 Corvette Assembly Manual describes in detail how much Sealer should be put in each relevant place in the engine bay.

I reckon that the guys who assembled this Corvette must have used about four times the prescribed amount, and very little of it ended up in the right place. There were dribbles of hardened, dry, cracking sealer everywhere.

Now the true restorer would leave these in place, claiming, “that’s how they made ‘em”, but not me. I went about scraping, rubbing, cleaning all that stuff off until I had what looked like a reasonable surface on the firewall & inner fenders, front cross member etc.

But wait, what’s that? a cracked weld. Yep, sure enough, once all the crap was cleaned off the front cross member, some cracked welds were exposed. Not an uncommon problem I’m told. Call in Al Rawson, welder extraordinaire. Al soon had them welded up so well, I reckon the cross member will break before the welds come apart again. Thanks Al!!!

The Corvette's brake lines were grotty (covered with surface rust), so they were removed & cleaned up on a wire wheel, as were some of the other fittings. One trick I learnt was to paint these steel fittings with Clear Engine Enamel after polishing them up. The engine enamel sticks like the proverbial, and prevents the polished steel bits from going rusty again.

Now, I don’t have a spray booth and associated equipment, so I have become “the Pressure Pack Kid”. Yep! lots of bits & pieces have been painted with Pressure Pack can of paint. Funny thing, normally when you go to buy paint in a pressure pack you have to provide Proof of Age. Not me............ Can’t work out why???!!!