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Being at a loose end today, I figured it must be time to play with the Alfa a little. One of the jobs I’ve always wanted to do was to paint the airbox. So, with no idea of what I was doing and a couple of cans of paint – off I went.
I didn’t take a photo before I started, but here’s a photo of an engine in a similar car, albeit much cleaner than mine. The bit I’m painting is the rectangular metal box in the middle there, with the four pipes (two either side) coming out of it and the main inlet pipe feeting in on the right.
Getting the box off was pretty easy once I went and bought myself a 10mm spanner. It was the only one missing from my toolbox and I ended up replacing the missing item with a Kingchrome ratchet action spanner, which was the best $10 I’ve spent this year.
Here’s what an Alfa boxer looks like with the lid off:
The paint was your basic off-the-shelf heat resistant paint and whilst the top was a very similar red to my Alfa, it turned out to be a completely different story after a couple of coats.
EEEEEEK! That’s bright.
Lesson 1: if I can’t get a custom color made up somehow, at least do a dark basecoat to tone it down a little bit.
Concerns about the color aside, the next job was to fit it back into the car. Despite my track record, I managed to not lose any of the bolts and the box fitted right back in and was secure again in no time.
Cover your eyes, here comes that bright blood-orange again:
OK. It doesn’t match, and the engine is dire need of a good session with a can of degreaser and a pressure wash with a Karcher, but in terms of experience and knowing it can be done (by me), I’m pretty happy. Doing fun jobs like this is one of the reasons I bought this simple little car to start with.
I’ll give it another crack with a proper matching color in a few weeks. In the meantime, have some fun and try not to break anything, OK?
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13 responses so far ↓
1 Drew B
// Nov 2, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Is that an inlet manifold or a GIGANTIC RED CRAB?
Drew B
PS. I don’t do colour matching, either.
2 eggsngrits
// Nov 2, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Drew’s right. There’s something animal about that thing now that you’ve painted it.
3 Ken H
// Nov 2, 2008 at 10:44 pm
The car’s got a heart. Hope it’s pumping well.
4 Bernard
// Nov 2, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Swade,
That looks kind of cool. How did you prep it? I hope it was fully degreased and primed.
I personally would have tried powder coating.
5 Drew B
// Nov 2, 2008 at 11:56 pm
http://www.divingchristmas.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/crab-on-beach.jpg
I rest my case!
DB
6 swade
// Nov 3, 2008 at 6:07 am
What would be so shocking about an Italian car with crabs??
Bernard, I’d love to powdercoat and I might look into it in terms of cost, etc, but this car is low budget, so $30 on cans of paint (2) seemed expensive enough. It was degreased, though not primed.
DB, doesn’t that paint shop down the road from you custom aerosols? I might give them a call next week.
7 Jeff
// Nov 3, 2008 at 7:57 am
This same thing happened to me when I repainted the bumper on my Thunderbird…but I knew it was going to happen. It was either $30/pint Omni paint, or $170/pint color-matched, and I am very poor.
So, now my car is a light pinkish-red, and my front bumper is blazing, fires-of-hell red. Actually, the bumper is a much cooler color than the rest of the car…
I really wish I didn’t have a red car.
8 Alex
// Nov 3, 2008 at 8:45 am
Ever think of sanding off the paint raised lettering and designs on the plenum? That should be cheap and it would do a great job of breaking up the red-ness of the intake while making it look totally OEM at the same time.
9 swade
// Nov 3, 2008 at 9:00 am
I’m planning on it, Alex, once I get a finish I’m happy with. Am tossing up between sanding it back and leaving it, or painting it white.
And thanks for the use of “plenum”. I hate it when the correct terms escape me.
And as an indicator to how bad this engine needs a wash…..that fat intake pipe going into the plenum from the air mass meter is currently a very light grey in color. That’s dust. It should be black. It’ll all look a whole lot different when it’s done properly.
10 Dan S.
// Nov 3, 2008 at 9:48 am
That was the comic relief I needed this afternoon! Great LOLs from me here in S.A. ! ! !
I needed that relief as I spent more than an hour replacing the little fog light bulbs in my Maxima. The how-to I researched & finally found on the Internet, was not the same as in real life. I finally figured it out, but not without some frustration. End result though is that I’ve got my fog lights working fine.
And I thought doing some work on my car would have been a good relief from my blog theme maintenance…oh well!
11 Drew B
// Nov 3, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Looks fantastic!
Did I mention I have a sandblaster?
DB
12 James
// Nov 4, 2008 at 2:49 am
you really should do a crackle-finish like Subaru does on their STI models – that would look amazing, Swade
13 PT
// Nov 4, 2008 at 8:42 am
How about hand colouring the Alfa Romeo Logo in black once you’re done? Or the reverse with logo in red? Of just sand the paint off the letters to reveal the bare metal and then give it a poly coat of some kind?
It works for Lamborghini & Ferrari.