Painted Valve cover & header shield PIC!

[bcustom152]

i did this last sat... took about 3 hrs, not too bad

[RACER D12]

Blazzen :flamer:

[alive307]

hey man how hard is it to get the vavle off ? any help would be nice as well

[bcustom152]

not hard at all... take the spark plug wires out, then use a socket driver to take off the 8 bolts holding it on.

[alive307]

did u just spry panit it or did u primer it first? and a lil bit of instructions would help .....new to the whole car fixing up thing

[bcustom152]

ok heres what i did.

First off, you need high temperature paint or it will melt off and bubble and look hideous. I used Plastikote 500 degree engine paint and flat primer (note, the primer MUST be high temp too).

After removing the valve cover as explained in my earlier post, you need to clean any grease, oil or dirt off of it THOUROUGHLY... this is important if you want it to look good.

Next apply primer to all the areas you want to color (not the underside, duh). I used 3 coats of primer. The rule of thumb when spray painting anything is to apply thin, even layers then allow them to dry, then apply again and again etc. The plasticote dries in about 10 mins so it wont take too long.

Next after priming apply the color coat in the same way you did the primer. After the last coat, you should give it a good 30-45 mins to dry completely.

When you put the valve cover make on make sure the gasket is still in it or you will be leaking oil... also, take a little oil from inside the engine and rub it along the entire gasket to ensure a good seal before putting it back on. Put everything back together and that should do it!

[alive307]

thanx man the spark pluges are the only thing need to unpluge?

[bcustom152]

well theres a hose coming into the top you can unscrew to get off, then you also need to take off the hose coming from the intake on the right side of the valve cover... that should be everything

[markymarc]

Yo Bcustom, can you feel and difference after installing the dension plugs?

[markymarc]

oh and what about that the RRM test pipe? did that f*ck up your warranty w/ the dealership?

[bcustom152]

Iridium plugs make a little difference... little more low-rpw pickup, but the car also starts quicker from cold and warms up faster... def a good cheap & easy mod. Got mine from www.sparkplugs.com , they are denso brand and for our lancer the model # is IK-16.

I kept my old cat, so if I need to go back to dealership (which I havent had to do yet) I can swap the old cat back on.