2014 3.6 Vert engine bay clean up

[Jayjellyfish212]

Grind time!

[Jayjellyfish212]

[Jayjellyfish212]

After toying around with these, here's my take on the LFX valve covers regarding finishing:

The valve covers can be polished by will not achieve a high clear chrome like shine due to them being made of pot metal mixture aluminum. Will have a slight white cloud look. Some may like that look.

You can get a decent finish on them but its really hard to achieve a high end professional result. You can send them out to be chrome plated and would require copper plating- nickel plating then chrome plate. Would not be cheap, but would give best finish.

Our idea was to give a brushed aluminum finish that looks good, but due to filling the unnecessary holes you end up with 2 fill spots right in the best line of sight. My OCD would drive me crazy every time I seen the 2 spots as they would have a natural different shine and color from the pot metal.

The valve covers have way to much extra drilled holes ( requires filling) and a lot of excessive metal based on the form of the design.

I will add some pictures shortly including the areas I'm referring to regarding filling the holes and removing the excessive metal.

So after toying with these valve covers, I decided and convinced the car owner (aka boss lady or my wife) that it is best to shape, grind , sand and paint these. So painting these red is now the game plan.

[Jayjellyfish212]

Here you can see the valve covers after de-tab, de-burr, grinding and shaping. Holes filled, cone tabs removed and excess material removed.





Holes filled and excess material removed.







Holes filled and excess material removed.




This is what you would end up with seeing once they are filled and polished. The fill material would never blend right. Only option would be to send these out for 3 stage chrome plating.



This is kind of the same if you were to do a brushed finish. You see the darn fill. Those fill spots would always show.



You can see these 2 spots would stand out right in the line of sight
Well plan B in progress( time to paint these).



Just thought I share this info as I know a lot of people have discussed polishing these LFX covers. based on what your willing to accept it may be ok for some with the spots visible. I personally could not rest with flaws like these in a final finish
.

Well I still have some grinding, de-burring and shaping to finish before they are ready for paint work. Almost there

[Jayjellyfish212]

I was able to get all the coats on including the final clear coat. Hopefully it sets up good. Crap that was the most prep work I have ever done on a set of valve covers. Geez these just have so many nooks and crannies. Hopefully they set up nicely because I don't want to ever do another set of valve covers like these again. Ugh.. lol.

The final finish reminds me of Brembo red brakes. I like em!

[RubyCamaro]

Very nice work!

[Jayjellyfish212]

Originally Posted by RubyCamaro

Very nice work!

Thank you

I am in hopes to get things back together before the warm weather arrives.

[Jayjellyfish212]

[Jayjellyfish212]

Just waiting on a few fittings to get this project wrapped up and finalizing the last of the paint work.

[Jayjellyfish212]

Gonna do something with the fuse box for a finished look...

[sbubbaklein]

wow, nice job

[mr_honez]

That is freaking awesome, fantastic work

[Jayjellyfish212]

Thanks everyone ! Finally got some more work done on the car since being swamped with my day job. Still a few things to finish but here’s the most recent . At some point I’ll have to get pictures of the car outside . That’s tough to do since the boss lady likes to jump in and take off before I can get pictures lol. Ps I finally was able to work on my own car too

[Jayjellyfish212]