Paint or powdercoat the valve covers?

[Jimbo]

I was thinking of freshening up the covers when I finally do the VC gaskets....which are originals !

Plenty of places around here to powdercoat but I worry about excess build-up. And not sure which kind of paint to use and the durability of a home-made job of it with respect to the heat the motor generates. I only want to do this once ! Thinking either black or silver... yeah, pretty boring I know.

Appreciate your feedback on this. Thanks.

 

[gerryvz]

Hey Jimbo,

I powder-coated the valve cover of my E320 wagon to be red. Looked great and was worth doing. At the same time I had my battery tray (not an issue for the 036, I know) powder-coated black. I think both parts were around $200. I had a local powder-coating shop with plenty of automotive experience do the work, and I was happy with it.

The thing for both the M104 and the M119 is that the covers are magnesium. There are surface imperfections and characteristics with mag that means the powder coater really has to know what they are doing to do it right, and even then there may be some visible waves/imperfections that can be seen. Consult your local powder coat shop for more info on this.

It's also highly advisable to clean the cover as good as possible before bringing it in. In my case, I removed the baffles that screwed to the inside of the M104 cover and removed traces of RTV sealant from the baffle grooves.

That said, if I had to do it all over again, I'd powder coat in a heartbeat. I'm actually sort of thinking of doing my M119 because I really like the way it looks. I think PC is more resistant to heat than straight paint, as well. Black could be pretty bad-boy looking. That's another nice thing with PC -- you get to choose your color. You can do this with paint too, but PC colors really "pop".

Check out this post for the deets when I got my M104 cover back from the coater's: http://www.500eboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5082&p=58762&viewfull=1#post58762

Good luck man ! Final look is below.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[samiam44]

I was thinking about the same thing. My paint started flacking in places.

M

 

[Hollybrook]

Powder coating can be VERY heat resistant, as that is how ceramic coated headers are done...

Intakes can be ceramic coated to keep heat out of the intake, which is quite helpful on cars where the intake and exhaust are near each other.

 

[gerryvz]

Yes, I had the exhaust manifolds of my 560SEC coated, and I had ceramic coating done on the intake manifold of that engine. You can see the work in my 560SEC Top-End Rebuild HOW-TO article.

With 38,000 miles on the manifolds since coating them, they look identical to the day I brought them home from Poly-Dyn.

http://www.polydyn.com/performance_coatings.htm

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[jhodg5ck]

I do most of my valve covers in a black or red crinkle coat depending on what the client is looking for.
It's Tough and looks sharp..

jono

 

[Jimbo]

Thanx men...looks like PC is the way to go. I'll give it a shot.