Tell me how to paint my IC pipes!
 

Bah, I have a set of crappy j i m b' intercoooler pipes and they really need to be repainted. I bought a can of glossy black engine enamel spray paint. I figured since its gets holy-hell-balls hot(!) by the turbo I should use this type of paint. I roughed up the old paint on them with some 360 grit sand paper and sprayed on a coat of the paint.

It looks like shit. Uneven coverage, only glossy in some parts. Overall I realized I didn't know what I was fuckin' doing. Now what am I doing wrong? The pipes look shitty enough, so bad paint makes them look even worse. Please tell me how to make them not look like shit.

Also I wont get them powder coated or anything else that costs a few hundred, these shitty IC pipes don't deserve it. :gay:

Ok med chill out a sec did you take the pipes of and hang them by a peice of wire this will help with an even spray also dont spray to close or to far away from the pipes rattle can is not hard but it does take abit of patience. you want to be about 8-12 inches away from the pipes and spray nice light and even caots that overlap so they dont run. The bigest mistakes on painting people make are spraying to heavy, not letting stuff dry, and spraying from the wrong distance. GL man lemme know if this helps BTW how is MS going did you put in your WI yet and turn up the boost?

Haha you are fast. I have been broke lately so no MS! I have updated my sig to show how lazy I am. The wire idea is good, it was annoying to balance them to dry. Yes I am stupid.

The WI is going to go in soon, I just got this shit smogged so I have another 2 years to tinker with the car. Everyone is on my ass to install it, from Wideopentuning to my local friends. They are tired of my lazy ass.

Jesus, magnamx-5! You have a lot of posts! I have been here a good 1.5 years longer than you, but you have 5.6 as many posts. :)

I cant help it you are to quite we need more of your journalistic style here man keep posting yaeh hang the wire from some rafters or something and you will have a place to dry as well :p dont make me fly to cali to do your install it is to tempting. Just imagine you walk out of class go to your car and find a switch and a note telling you to buy some water :rofl:

I know I need motivation! I wanted to get the pipes painted so I can stick them back into the car (I took them off so the visual test for smog would be less of a hassle.) with the nozzle installed. I have already bought some brackets and shit I think will do the job. I just need to clean out the damn trunk :gay:

First of all if its running then you have one of three situations:

1> You did not sand it well enough to start
2> You are applying too much paint at once
3> You are doing it in high humidity

From your post it sounds like you are guilty of number 2. I would recommend using "Duplicolor wheel paint" in either silver/gunmetal or bronze (whatever your flavor). I would choose this paint over the regular crap because it contains metal flakes (ooo, sparkles) and it is high heat rated. See my "Painting my wheels thread". For a good finish, Sand, 2 light coats, one wet coat, 2 light of clear, 1 wet.

buy a metal brush wheel for a drill, go to town on it and take all the paint off. ( or use airplane stripper, then sand or steel wool.)

shoot it in nice even coats, build slow layers up. use a paint designed for metal.

they sell this attachment for the rattle cans. It sticks on the top and gives you a trigger vs pushing down on the top of the can. Really helps you with pressure control and makes it easier to sweep over the piece you are painting.


Lay down a coat of primer also.

here i found a picture

http://www.rigshowcase.com/img/45WQVwf/1339

$2 at lowes.

Are you sure you can't get the power coated cheaply? The local coating place will do a lower end coating if you say you want it cheap. The difference is wether or not they acid dip the parts or not. They will sandblast, clean, and coat a set of pipes for $20 in cookeville. A big truck box was only $40 in silver.

Everyone here has given great info on using rattle cans to spray pipes. You initial preperation is going to matter the most. Followed by smooth paint application.

2nd to pitlabs advise.

Primer.

Sand more and use high temp primer. Primer probably runs ahead of beer in priority on this job. That doesn't happen very often.

I made the mistake of not putting primer down when I painted my old valve cover :( had to redo it.

Now when I did the old wheels. Cleaned them, layed down a coat of primer, 1 or 2 of flat black, then 2 of gloss enamel. With ample dry time (aka my friends wife wanted to know whey were were still in the garage at 5 am lol before making a waffle house run) and they never even chipped. Should work the same for the i/c piping.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOMmWRKxQQw

Skip forward to about 2:00. Just add firewords, viola!

Bean is the fucking man a comic genius i love his work.

you could also try using a flat black. I've found it easier to use since it is more user friendly since mistakes don't show up too well.

discovery's mythbusters tried that mr. bean stunt, they said it was BUSTED, a shame really...

You probably don't want to use primer on IC pipes, unless you can find some that is temp rated.

what grit sand paper do you think would work best?

some 300-400 grit at least shouldn't take alot to get it right though