Guides
Engine paint fails at preparation far more often than at application, and at curing more often than either. These guides cover what to strip and what to leave, how to degrease so the paint will stick, how to put enamel and manifold coatings on, and how long to wait before the engine runs. Where two makers give opposite instructions, the guides say so and tell you whose to follow.
Three of the guides are about equipment: choosing a spray gun and the air to run it, what a spray booth does and what a tent does not, and which mask suits which paint.
Read the safety page first. It is short, and one part of it applies even if you never touch a two-pack paint.
- Isocyanates and engine paint: the safety page
What isocyanates are, which paints contain them, what HSE says a workshop needs before spraying 2K, and why one-pack aerosols still need respect.
- Preparing an engine for paint
Decide, record, strip, degrease, mask: the preparation that decides whether engine paint lasts one season or ten years.
- Applying engine enamel
Conditions, coats, recoat windows and curing for one-pack engine enamel, from an aerosol, a brush or a gun, with each maker's figures side by side.
- Painting manifolds and exhausts
How very high temperature coatings go on, and why the first heat cycle decides whether they harden or peel.
- Choosing a spray gun for engine paint
Which engine paints go through a gun, what size gun and tip to buy, how much compressor it needs, and how to keep water out of the finish.
- Spray booths, tents and extraction
What a professional spray booth does, what a pop-up tent does instead, and how to spray one-pack engine paint at home without filling the garage with mist.
- Masks and breathing apparatus for spraying
Which filter mask suits one-pack engine paint, what the letters on the filters mean, and why two-pack paint needs air-fed breathing apparatus and nothing less.