Engine Bay Painting ( Subaru Impreza WRX )

Welcome to another one of my delightfully random projects. This week i am tackling a long overdue project!

The project in question is the engine bay in my 94 Subaru Impreza WRX. As i can be heard saying in the intro of this video i love impreza's and i wanted a rust free one as all the UK ones suffer from lots of rust issues so in 2004 i imported this car from Japan and it was totally rust free when it arrived all those years ago. It has a couple of blisters here and there now but thats to be expected when living in Scotland.

Anyway im getting off track, I was having lots of fun driving the car at full boost everywhere until 2014 when the thought popped into my head " lets go for more power" so i took the engine out and begun the process of having it all upgraded, better gaskets, race bearings, forged pistons, con rods etc etc then life got in the way and the engine was put to the side and the car was stored in a shed for the past 5 years.

The initial condition of the car looks horrifying but its only a thick layer of dust and crud on it and there is a good layer of carnuaba wax separating all the crud from the paint so a quick pressure wash and she'll be looking good again but for now the focus is on the engine bay.

As you can see the engine bay and lots of the bracketry and bolts have gone all rusty and could definitely do with a good restoration so thats what we are going to do in this episode as i couldn't bring myself to drop a beautifully built engine into a cruddy engine bay.

First job on my list was to remove as many items as possible from the engine bay without going nuts as this inst a full car rebuild its only a tidy up so the gearbox, loom steering rack etc etc were all left in place and simply masked up.

After this was done and i was left with a relatively empty engine bay i spent many hours with various cleaning chemicals brushes and the pressure washer the ensure every trace of oil and grease was removed as engine bays are bad enough to paint without the added pain of a silicone reaction happening and ruining all of your good work!

So once clean it was left overnight and given a bake in the oven for an hour to make sure all nooks and cranny's were bone dry. Then i set about treating all areas that had started to get a bit of surface rust. First i buffed off the worst of the rust with the poly mop on an angle grinder ( polymops attack rust and paint but dont damage steel ) Then i used various wire brushes to ensure all rust had been removed. But just in case there was still any small specs still lurking int he steel somewhere i applied a layer of Bilt Hamber Hydrate 80 to kill it and seal it in for good. so after all this work the engine bay is rust free and should remain that way for many years to come hopefully!

Then came the priming stage, firstly i etch prime any spots of bare steel to give the grey primer a base to stick to. While that is drying i head out and mix the primer and get the spray gun ready for action. I apply 3 moderate layers of primer to cover any irregularities and provide a good layer for the paint to adhere to. I let the primer bake for an hour before deciding to go straight into painting without flatting the primer back as at the end of the day im not building a concourse car its going to be used.... HARD! so a mirror finish engine bay is a bit pointless so im quite happy to live with a little bit of orange peel.

After mixing the paint the bay was given a quick once over with a tack rag to remove anything that may have settled on it then i applied 3 good coats of white and left it to cure. Once cured i came back for the final shots and as you can see the bay looks a lot better and hopefully the before long the engine will be in there too ;)
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A new addition to my videos from now on will be a water mark and my channel name popping up in random places throughout the video as im getting rather tired of people re-uploading my content as their own i hope you guys understand.

If you like what you see and have any ideas for the channel or would even like to donate something to restore to the channel please get in touch. :)

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Really Random Channel

Engine Bay Painting ( Subaru Impreza WRX )

Видео Engine Bay Painting ( Subaru Impreza WRX ) канала RRC Restoration