My GXP has had an issue with the silver lettering flaking off the engine cover ever since I got it. I think my habit of using tire shine on it to make it look nice and black has caused the lettering to flake. Anyway, I tried using a silver sharpie to just touch up the flakes but got tired of how it looked last week and decided to redo it.
First thing's first, just pull up on the cover and it comes right off. There are two sharp little discs holding a pad onto the plastic cover. You can easily remove these without damaging them by using a flat head screw driver and wiggling the teeth out one at a time and just wiggling the disc off the plastic post. Very easy. Slip the pad off.
To chip the old paint off, I just used my fingernails and when that stopped working, started using a... I forgot the name of these things... abrasive dark-gray scotch brite type of pads. It took the rest of the paint right off without scratching the plastic at all. Then, to clean the cover, I filled up my bathtub with water and a generous amount of Palmolive soap. Scrubbed on the cover front and back with a tooth brush and regular sponge. Using the Palmolive soap removed any remaining tire shine stuff and various underhood dirts.
This is how it looked. Pretty cool actually. I considered not painting it at all.
Next, put some rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and clean the letters and area around them to remove any remaining grease. While this evaporates over the next 5 to 10 minutes, you might want to go clean your bathtub, especially if you live with someone else, or you're going to get your butt kicked before you have time to paint! There's likely going to be a black ring around the tub after you drain the water.
Anyway, I am used to using acrylic paint and it's just about the only paint I have. I used black acrylic paint to touch up a scratch on my sister's Z28 about 5 years ago and the paint is still on there (even though it is matte and doesn't match at all) after dozens of washes, so I figured acrylic would work just fine on my engine cover. You can choose whatever type of paint you like, but I used Delta Ceramcoat acrylic that is sold at Walmart in the craft section and at Michaels and Hobby Lobby. The metallic silver isn't very opaque, so I had to use white first. I did several coats of white, and then several coats of silver over a period of days using a very small brush. Probably 10 coats in all, or about 6 hours of painting time. It's time consuming, which really made me wonder why I didn't just leave it unpainted.
Here it is with a few coats of white. I recommend dipping your brush in water before dipping in paint so it's watered down a bit. To remove mistakes, I used a toothpick and just scratched them off before the paint dried.
Then came the really lame part. Using silver. The silver metallic paint isn't very opaque at all and dries about like candy paint on a car does. You can see through it and it isn't very even coverage. About 6 coats got the job done, and I'll have to let you know if it lasts. I expect it to. I was tempted to put some acrylic gloss on top of the paint, but didn't know if it would yellow because of the engine heat. If I glossed it, the likelihood of me being to scrub it off and do the unpainted look again would be lowered, so I didn't want to chance it. Looks pretty decent as is.
Pictures like these really tempt me to want to paint the exhaust manifold flanges. That rusty iron look is so gross on these cars.
