Painting engine bay?

[Quaraxkad]

I'm in the middle of an L67 swap on my Cutlass (build thread here, if you're interested!). I've got the engine ready to come out, and once it's out I'm going to start cleaning up the engine bay. After the swap is done, eventually the exterior is going to get a fresh two-tone paint job with dark blue on top and graphite/gunmetal on the bottom. While the engine is out, I want to paint the engine bay. But I don't have an exact exterior color picked out yet, so I can't use that color in the engine bay. I'm thinking about doing it in black or a dark gray, but the gray won't match the lower half of the new exterior. I'm worried it might clash with the exterior color. I'm not looking for show-car quality or anything crazy like that, but I want it to look good. What do you guys think about the engine bay being all black or gray (just the engine bay, not the engine, parts, etc) with a different color exterior? Has anybody done that and have pictures of the results?

 

This is it right now, obviously the engine is still in (borrowing a hoist tonight to pull it out), and everything needs a good cleaning regardless of the paint:

Edited September 26, 2012 by Quaraxkad

[GnatGoSplat]

I think it would look fine. Back in the old days of body-on-frame cars, engine bays of ALL cars were painted black because the wheel well pieces were separate. Even on modern cars, there's so much black plastic covering everything, you can't hardly see any body color underhood anyway.

[Twenty]

Battleship gray is a good colour for such a scenario.

[Quaraxkad]

I think it would look fine. Back in the old days of body-on-frame cars, engine bays of ALL cars were painted black because the wheel well pieces were separate. Even on modern cars, there's so much black plastic covering everything, you can't hardly see any body color underhood anyway.

 

That's true, makes sense. I'm removing the fenders and trying to spray down everything to be sure I don't miss anything that'll be visible. Then I'll have the exterior of the fenders painted off the car to avoid half-assed masking lines. I guess I'm just not great at visualizing beforehand what it'll look like in the end.

 

Battleship gray is a good colour for such a scenario.

 

My concern with using gray is that since there's already going to be gray on the lower exterior panels, a different shade of gray under the hood could look odd. Too many colors in a design is always a bad thing in my opinion. If I already had the exact colors I wanted ready to go and mixed, I'd just use them and have a perfect match. But the minor body work it needs and a professional paint job is expensive so that work is too far down the line for that option to be feasible.

 

Here's another concern... The underside of the hood. Do that in black, or have it resprayed along with the exterior? I think it should match the exterior, otherwise, where do you draw the line separating the colors? Just posting some thoughts, sort of "thinking out loud".

[rich17]

After seeing both a freshly painted body color engine bay and just a rattle can black bay, hands down the body color bay was ALOT nicer to look at. If you have the time and the means I would pic up some paint, and a ssspray gun and do it yourself with the blue. The blue wont have to be primered up over the old teal like the siler would. And it just needs to be a single stage paint as well. A good cleaning and tape job is in oreder tho

[Quaraxkad]

After seeing both a freshly painted body color engine bay and just a rattle can black bay, hands down the body color bay was ALOT nicer to look at. If you have the time and the means I would pic up some paint, and a ssspray gun and do it yourself with the blue. The blue wont have to be primered up over the old teal like the siler would. And it just needs to be a single stage paint as well. A good cleaning and tape job is in oreder tho

 

I do have a spray gun already, it's really old but never even been taken out of the box. I also have a body shop and paint supply connection, so maybe I'll ask him to mix up some samples for me and I'll choose my exterior colors now. I just hope I won't change my mind before the exterior is ready to be sprayed!