You may remember I made a plan to detail the engine compartment of the Sprint as part of the engine rebuild. While waiting for the Piston and liner set to arrive, for the head and water pump to be rebuilt and other things I have no control over to get done I tackled the engine compartment. The firewall and inner fenders etc had silver rattle can spray paint over green car paint over the original red. On top of the paint was a lot of gooey oily debris from the last 20,000 miles of commuting and events this car has done.
The first step was to take a picture to see where everything should go when the paint is dry. Next I used Simple green and scrubbed the engine compartment then followed that up with power washing. Once it was dry I removed all the firewall grommets and associated brackets and wet sanded the old paint to make it smooth. I had delusions about going down to the bare metal but this car is sort of an original scruffy car so I decided a quick go over followed by some matched car paint put in a rattle can would be ‘good enough’.
I got your attention with the nice done detail shot of the drivers corner. The brake fluid can leaks so I had bare metal to work with in this area. The smaller grommet brackets are just polished up with mag polish, the larger steering column bracket was bead blasted and painted ‘dull aluminum’ silver. The new rubber grommet for the steering column was $50 AND it required extensive shaping with a razor blade to get it to fit. The throttle linkage was blasted and painted and installed through a new rubber piece.
This is where I started. Anyhting will be better than this.
Once the sanding was done I masked off the wiring, primed with zinc etch primer in a can, lightly sanded again then painted.
I am happy with the results here. If I ever get the car repainted I can probably work around this, but I doubt I ever will. I still need to get some black paint on the frame rails, install a later 22mm MAster brake cylinder and clean up some of the suspension pieces that become buried when the engine is installed, but I can do that later.
Amazing the change about 5 hours work can make in your engine compartment. I’ll post one more follow up when the depths of the compartment are done, but at this point everything visible when the engine is installed is looking good.