Decided to share the process and the results of the partial respray of the intake plenum I did a few weeks ago on my 360. The problem is fairly common: the paint started flaking off near the letters, making it look like crap. I decided to respray the letters and the area near them without taking the plenum off the car - figured the results would be OK for the time being, and I would do the full respray of the plenum next time the car is up for belts replacement. I bought a can of VHT wrinkle finish red paint, removed all the loose paint, covered off the engine bay and appled 3 coats of paint as per the instructions on the can. Then let it dry off, and voila - the wrinkles appeared all on their own! After letting the paint dry thoroughly (left the car alone for a week), I simply sanded off the paint from the top of the letters. The colour of the paint and the wrinkle pattern are slightly different from the old paint, but not really noticeable unless you look at the plenum long and hard. Will definitely redo the whole plenum the next time it comes off for a service. Below are some pictures showing the process. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
This give me an idea of how to paint the air box on my Mondial. Did you sand off the paint on the lettering by hand or did you use something like a Dremel tool with some type of attachement? Thanks ceb39
You can take the parts to a powder coater and they can strip and re-coat in crackle finish. My indie mechanic was restoring a 308 and did just that -- looks like factory after sanding off the lettering highlights. Alan
Nicely done! When I did mine I had a spare can of "Ferrari Red" paint that I bought for touchup. I redid the intake seals last summer and when I had the intake off I put a light coat over the entire surface. That's actually what I would to IMHO, remove the silver bypass cover (ferrari horse), remove the upward facing hex bolts, mask tape everything very carefull and spray the entire red area of the intake. That way you'll avoid the taping lines. Then of course, sand the top of the Ferrari lettering to get a nice aluminum silver.
Good job! maybe add a little smear of oil and dust into the new area to mask it a little but really not that big of a deal.
Yup! A friend of mine was getting a quote for some minor repairs and when given the price he expressed astonishment and hurt (as is his way to negotiate) and the painter simply asked "You want same colour?" He paid the asking!
Been planning to do mine all week. Have some red metal paint are going to mix in a little black so that its as close as possible in colour but then just touch up the lettering with a small hobby brush rather than spray the area completely. Then finish with some metal polish to make the logo shine.
I have to ask.... how old are these cars that the paint is flaking off? What environment to cause this? I am shocked, especially that of the OP covers. The level of corrosion is astounding!!! Was this a Sandy Storm under sea water car? My 2001 360 covers were getting a little dull. There was a F-Chat post that suggested using pumice hand cleaner and some elbow grease. Mine came back to life!!!! No flaking or corrosion here. The respray does not seem to match the surrounding red wrinkle paint. It would have been better to remove the covers and have them wrinkle powder coated IMHO. My oil separator tank was flaking the black paint off and looked really bad. I removed the tank and disassembled the internals so it could be powder coated. They masked all of the areas as required. I bought at Lowe's the hose clamps and special tool to pull them up tight. All is good, looking like original.
I ended up doing some painting today but just the grills around the tailpipes. Looks so much better now. Will leave my plenum for later this week. My oil separator was also flaking with paint so I pulled it all off last week. Its bare aluminium at the moment and looks pretty good. Does anyone think I'll be ok leaving it like this? Does the paint serve any purpose other than to dress it?
You can leave it bare metal if you want. I used the black vhc crinkle paint and it worked perfect, looks perfect!
Thanks mate, will leave if for the time being then but I guess it'll get done at some point if I have an afternoon free. Maybe red wrinkle if I can find some to match the plenum!
Piece of cake. 1) undo the hoses/lines 2) unbolt three nuts on bottom 3) pull it out be careful of oring on bottom, just pull /wiggle out carefully. note oil will come out of oil cooler line! (ask me how I learned)
Sorry but kill me for my honesty.. That looks like sh*t.. Come on.. Take the plenums off scoff the exisiting material and spray the entire thing.. Everyone is trying to be polite or they are blind.. Dont take offense.. just being honest and I would expect the same honesty if I was asking opinions on something.. Take them off and re-do them.. Everybody loves to peak over the engine lid to see the engine - do it right.. R
Apparently Ferrari doesn't use a primer when wrinkle painting the intakes. Eventually the paint will flake off with time. I have a 430 where a small amount of paint has chipped off in one of the corners. I used VHT wrinkle red with a Q-tip and hit it with a heat gun. Doesn't match great but better than bare metal. Correct way of doing it is to take the intake off and strip the old paint, prime and repaint with VHT. You can see this process on one of the sponsors threads there on Fchat. BRADAN http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/bradan/440643-bradan-f355-valve-cover-repaint.html Dan gave me some advise on how to do it.
Loving the polarity of opinions - people either love it or hate it! To the haters - honestly, you cannot see the difference from under the glass - silver letters capture your attention and you don't notice the slight colour mismatch. The only reason why it is so obvious to you now is because I walked you through the process with all the photos. As Labman said in his post above - better than bare metal. I will take the plenum off and respray it the next time I'm doing the major service, but for now its good enough. and on the weekend I resprayed the air boxes, they were really dull and yellow. Now - sparkling Grigio Titanio (the colour of my car)!
