The grey of intake manifolds and plenums

I do not think all Ferrari engines were originally painted. I believe some come with the natural cast finish from the factory.

 

They were painted with wrinkle finish. I think they did that to hide the imperfection of the casting.

I would just use the VHT wrinkle paint and then spray with a flat silver paint. It will come out looking oem.

I would not powder coat. Done that already and regret doing it.

 

Powder coat will eventually dull from heat and also depending on what you are using, it can also crack from heat. I did the powder coat on mine and it worked good, but I think from a Value stand point, you are better keeping it OEM finish. But in the end it's your car and you can do what you please/like. I liked the powder coating, but I think it's better off for custom cars. Nice thing about the paint is that it's cheap and will last a long time. Powder coat will chip and you can't fix that unless you redo everything over. I am kicking myself in the butt for doing it. I spent near $1800.00 for my Lamborghini and Ferrari to only strip it off and redo it in the OEM wrinkle finish.

 

Hello Si. PM sent. To my knowledge, the light-gray crinkle that Ferrari used is NOT available for us DYI'ers to use. Crinkle paint is available in red, black.....and very recently gray. But not the correct shade of "Ferrari" gray for your car. Your options are to use the gray crinkle, and "fog" over a lighter gray coating to get the desired shade your looking for. Be WARNED.....it is VERY difficult to get an even, consistent crinkle finish on the intakes due to all the rounds and shapes. I discussed this with several restoration shops that do Ferraris, and they said it may take 3 or 4 paint/strip/repaints....and these guys are experts.....to finally get a good "crinkle". I also know from personal experience that it's almost impossible for the DYI'er to do it this way.

Your best option is to clean up the intakes really good without damaging the texture, and then fog on the appropriate high temp paint that is the closest match to the factory shade of gray. Bake the parts if possible to get a good curing. I've had excellent results doing it this way.

 

Dear Ferraristi,

Brabus, your intakes don't look so bad. They don't seem to be flaking....just dirty. What I did was to use 3M tar and wax remover with a good tooth brush. The tooth brush really gets into the crinkle and gets all the dirt out. Do a section and wipe with a terry towel then proceed to a new section. Don't just try to do the whole thing in one pass as the cleaner evaporates and leaves the dirt in place.

I had good success with the cleaner. I also finished up with simple green. The 3M cleaner cleans but leaves a "dry" finish. The simple green applied after leaves a more lustrous finish.

BTW, only the intakes are painted while the block is just cast. I used simple green with a tooth brush on the block with great sucess....shiny finish. Just rinse with some water to "neutralize" the simple green.


Shamile


Freeze....Miami Vice !

 

Carguy where did you get the grey wrinkle finish paint?

What was your trick on the raised lettering again?

Thanks!

 

Hello Adam! When I was doing the last engine-out, there was only black or red crinkle paint available from VHT, and I think one other paint brand. But I read a recent thread (don't remember where) about a fellow who bought some gray crinkle paint - don't know the brand. As I recall he said it was darker than the Ferrari light-gray used on the intake plenums. Luckily the texture on my intakes was in very good shape, just very dirty and stained. So I simply cleaned things up with a toothbrush and solvent, then baked the plenums dry. I then used a high temp gray that matched the original Ferrari gray, and "fogged" on a nice even coat, while being very careful not to fill in the crinkle texture. I then baked everything to cure it - the results were very good. As for the letters, with the paint still tacky, I scraped off the letters and fins with a razor blade. Then after things were dry, I wrapped a file with some very fine sand paper and carefully dressed up the raised ridges and letters. All the raised portions and letters turned out with a nearly polished or machined look.

 

Carguy,

One thing about the VHT I noticed is that it doesn't wrinkle as large or has the roughness of the oem wrinkle finish. The wrinkle on the Oem has more texture where the VHT is a tighter smaller wrinkle which looks nice, but you're right about spraying too much over the VHT paint with gray where it can cover up the texture. I wonder if Eastwood would have anything?

 

Here's the valve covers with black wrinkle finish on my Lamborghini Diablo valve covers. As you can see the wrinkle finish has tight wrinkles on it. Doesn't look bad.
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I think it looks very good! Those darn Lambos....the "Italian Musclecar"....!!! The only Italian exotic with serious "grunt" down low. Sadly I'll probably never have the chance to find out for myself how great Lambos are, it was a dream of mine - but life has intruded on my dream. (our company has gone from 205 people to 30 people !!) So I'm sweating each morning I walk into the office! Is this the day I'm ax'd.....? Boys....these are rough times we are living in....

 

Good choice. After I stripped off the powder coat and repainted them, I like the OEM look. I guess I am just getting old and simple.

This is what it "used" to look like with the red powder coating. I had to use a chemical that I bought for about $400 bucks that strips the coating right off with no issues and washes off real easy. So I am in the hole for over $2K. Geesh! Makes me mad when I think about it.

Carguy, I hope things turnaround for you. Too bad you didn't live closer...I would have many cars for us to work on to make $!
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