Painting the F7P Cam Cover

One of the easiest aesthetic mods you can do to your car is to paint the
rocker/cam cover on the top of the engine. It adds a bit of individuality as well as tidying up what often has become a bit corroded and unsightly. Once it is painted up, it draws the eye away from all the other bits that are corroded and unsightly!

Right then, before you start I would suggest that if your cam cover gasket has never been changed before, you purchase a new one in advance. They are not very expensive, and this is a favourite place for these engines to spring a sneaky oil leak.

To take the cam cover off, there are a number of bolts (cant remember how many) around the outside edge, and some more underneath the plastic plug lead guide/holder thing when you take that off. The cover should just easily lift off when theyre all out. If its stuck by the gasket, a little tap will release it. Once its off, cover the engine internals with a plastic bag or some such, you dont want any crap falling in there.

Yours, like mine, will likely have the remnants of the original paint/powdercoat (whatever it was) left on it, and in a sorry state. You need to remove all of this, as well as any oil or contamination on the surfaces you want to paint. So, just use some paint stripper, solvents, a wire brush etc, to remove everything down to the bare metal. If youre anything like me, you wont be able to make the surface look totally shiny or anything, but as long as it is totally chemically clean, thats fine



thats my one just before i began painting. looks a bit manky, bit the surface was totally 'clean'

Because the cam cover is aluminium, if you paint it straight away, the paint will not adhere properly and will just flake off quickly due to the oxide layer that aluminium forms. What is needed is a coat of 'etch primer', which eats away at the oxide and bonds with it, and then your primer and coloured paint sticks to that.



The etch primer i used was Hammerite 'special metals primer'. It comes in a small tin from halfords (or homebase/focus etc). Brush it on carefully, trying to get as few brush strokes in it as you can. The only colour i could find was 'brick red', doesnt seem ideal if youre trying to end up with a blue cam cover like me, but it doesnt really matter.

When thats all dry, you can give it a quick rub down with wet n dry to get it really nice and flat. Next, just use your normal spray primer, give it a couple of coats and let it dry properly.



like so. Leave it to dry on the boiler overnight. Then again use some wet and dry to flatten it all off nice and smooth.

Next you need your chosen colour paint. My car is 449 sports blue, a colour not readily available, and expensive to get mixed up so I just picked a standard available colour that was close enough. That happened to be Renault 'electric blue'. When the cam cover is in the car, and not right next to a body panel, youre hard pressed to tell the difference really. I didnt bother with high temperature paint because the choice of colours is so small, and none of them are very pleasing but so far mine has not bubbled up at all.



close up



Looks pretty good. But if you want the finish to last and not be destroyed by water and oil stains, you need to use some clear laquer on it too. Its a pain, but worth the effort in the end. Again, leave the thing on the boiler overnight for the paint to harden and then get your wet and dry out and give the whole thing a going over with very fine grade (1000-1200). Youre just trying to remove the gloss from the paint surface so the laquer has something to key to. Give it a couple of coats of laquer and then...yes youve guessed it... on the boiler again.

while i was doing all this... i found an tin of yellow, and following the exact same procedure (bar the etch primer, since its made of steel), i did this:



its the strut brace, in case you hadnt realised, and the finish is very, very glossy

Fit them back on the car, being careful not to bash them with your socket and it looks pretty pleasing indeed! If you want to polish them up, best wait a week or two for the paint and laquer to totally harden.



Job, as they say, is a good 'un