Painting a V12 engine

Steve

As I recall I used a few rattle cans of Harley Silver from the Harley-Davidson dealer.

Bill
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I'm not sure about the outside. It is the inside that must be painted.

 

This is one way of doing it (Scroll all way down for inside paint as welll):

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/206-246/388966-santa-came-early-year-00504-a-4.html

Best regards

Peter

 

I would use a high temp ali. exhaust paint

 

I can't argue with that picture. It's gorgeous. (Although it's not a 209 330.)

Mine was original and bare aluminum. That's officially correct, but what you do is completely up to you.

Matt

 

The early V-12's (the non-modern era) were yes painted a medium lustre silver over zinc-chromate primer, including 330's - block, heads, cast aluminum accessories (but NOT the distributors). If it is a 330 and bare (sorry, generally not correct), the paint has been removed during past work. The major internal non-machined surfaces of the engine exposed to oil were also coated in zinc-chromate primer, which you will find brown from the oil exposure. A few of the very early 1950s engines appear to have been a darker silver gray color. Harley-Davidson high heat silver is one good option for color. Whatever high heat silver you use, test that the silver does not come off on your hand when dry - some rattle-can silvers will do that. Search the forum, previous discussions.

 

To prevent oil leaking through the porous Ferrari aluminum castings, the areas inside the engine that are not
machined should be sprayed with a thin coating of zinc-chromate primer followed by a good coating of Glyptal brushed on.
This is particularly needed for the inside of the cam covers because oil seeping though will remove the black wrinkle.

 

Lowell, that's interesting. I knew it for the blocks but not the covers, I see a potential problem with this for the cam covers, once that process has happened, isn't the oil already inside the metal and will repainting it not really help anymore against that issue? Not that repainting is very difficult or costly.

 

For my 330GT, I removed the tatty Black wrinkle on the outside with paint remover
and then glass bead blasted both the outside and the inside --- and then removed the
remaining beads with compressed air --- and then took lacquer cleaner and wiped and
wiped and wiped --- especially on the inside to be sure that there were no little beads
hiding somewhere. Then I painted the outside of one cover at a time with black wrinkle
paint and heated the cover to make the wrinkle come out. Then I painted the insides
as described in my previous post.

I'm afraid that I don't understand "Not that repainting is very difficult or costly."

If this means that it is easy and cheap, it is not true. In addition to the trouble painting
that I have just described, removing the covers is non-trivial. In particular, you have to
take a thin brass sheet and cut a semi-circle in it, and very, very carefully slide it in
the front of the cam cover as you remove the cover so that the rubber gasket that runs
around the timing chain cover and the cam cover front to seal everything does not break.

 

Glyptal is old school. Use Loctite 990 Resinol. LOCTITE IMP Resinol - Henkel

 

The person that put in new carpets in my 330GT often worked on Pebble Beach
quality cars. He told me a story. Once while a very fancy car was in his shop,
the owner came in. He liked to make small repairs. He had some small wrench
and some small part. He assumed the classic position: head under dash,
body facing up, legs up over the seat. He stayed that way for 90 minutes. Got
up, displayed the old part that he had replaced with a big smile on his face, and then
said: "In this amount of time I have performed two triple bypass heart operations."

 

Here are some of the parts I painted on my GTC engine.

I'm very pleased with the results.

Bob Z.
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The results do look to be very nice.

 

If you are going to the bother of cleaning /blasting etc then paint it properly with an etch primer (light) followed by silver basecoat and two pack clear lacquer -- then it will be easily cleaned when driven and used as it should be