Engine Bay, clear, or no clear?

[Shawn]

Been a while since I've been on here...but I got a ?, where else could I have turned?

I am about to paint the engine bay on my mustang, and I am trying to decide whether or not I should clear the basecoat.
I want the paint to be durable, but I would like it to be flat as well.

Would I be O.K. just spraying a basecoat, with no clear? Or is the basecoat not very durable?

I will spray clear if I have to, no big deal...plus, that would give me an excuse to put some ghost flames into it...hehe.

What do you recommend, clear, or no clear? Any other options?

Thanks!
Shawn

 

[Zeepaintr]

I would reccomend a flattened clear if you could get one. Maybe like an eggshell level of gloss. I spray SW and they have a flattened clearcoat that you can use, but I don't know about other product lines.
Basecoat alone does not have much durability, the power steering and tranny fluids if spilled would eat the paint away. You COULD use a regular gloss clear coat but it's just too shiny in my opinion. Underhood areas arent real smooth, and gloss black shows so much as far as imperfections.
I've gone with the black basecoat / eggshell gloss clear on lots of 70s GMs and what not that had the black engine bays and they look AWESOME. I also use that combination on like, Dodge Dakota front bumpers that are a low gloss black.
Hope this helps!!

Scott

 

[onelowzuki]

I used bedliner in my engine compartment and it looks great, its a great alternative to paint

 

[Shawn]

Scott,

I think I will look into the eggshell clear. However, The engine bay is not stock at all. I did a lot of 'shaving' on it, and it is very smooth now. I welded up all the holes, and smoothed it all out. Here's a few pics. You can see that the upper half of the firewall (green) and the engine bay sides are smoothed and most of the holes are gone. I couldn't find the 'before' picture, I've got it on a CD somewhere..

Here is the passenger side frame rail, smoothed out and filled with a thin coat of 'variprime'.
http://www.mustangmods.com/data/1226/firstcoatprimerSM.jpg

And here is the firewall. The bottom is a high temp paint, rattle bomb, but it looks good. Everything else will be a high metallic blue, called 'imperial blue'.

http://www.mustangmods.com/data/1226/firewalldone1.jpg

I am thinking about just going with a regular high gloss clear. The complete engine is going to be polished up, and it is going to be a show car more then anything. I figure with the high gloss clear, and the shiny engine, it should work out well.

BTW, it's a 1985 mustang notchback, with the 1993 front end, interior, and 1/4 windows. So, it's basically a 93 with an 85 shell. It is just going to be a mostly stock 5.0E.F.I. that looks pretty

Thanks!
Shawn

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by onelowzuki:
I used bedliner in my engine compartment and it looks great, its a great alternative to paint

<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Bedliner would be a good idea...but it would defeat the purpose of me shaving and smoothing the whole thing out...I May have to use that on my other stang project though!

Shawn

 

[onelowzuki]

Yeah i like it cause whenever you pull out the engine for some reason it does not get get scratched up like paint, and has a semi gloss to it, if you went through the work of shaving definatly paint it