Tried Something New with my Old Valve Cover

[osirus9]

So I had a couple extra valve covers lying around and with my Z being in the shop for body work since November I was hunting for a project. I decided I was going to shave and paint my valve cover like the japanese rising sun flag.

 

I've never attempted anything like this before, so I'm going to add in my mistakes so hopefully other people can learn from them. Despite that, I think it turned out pretty cool.

 

Old valve cover:

 

 

There was a big hole in it covered up by some JB weld and it was in generally crappy condition.

 

Sanding and cleaning:

 

 

The filth of ages was on there, but nothing some engine degreaser and a lot of elbow grease can't get off. I used a belt sander and 36 grit sandpaper to grind off the lettering. You can see that this revealed some casting defects.

 

 

I used an xacto knife to cut out the paper thin aluminum.

 

 

I then taped a shop towel to it and flipped it over and used the xacto knife as a mini putty knife to apply the JB weld to the inside of the valve cover. After it set I ripped off the towel and sanded down the excess.

 

 

I had to fill in a depression by the oil cap with more JB weld to make it smooth.

 

 

The other areas also got some extra JB weld to help get them smooth.

 

 

Then I sanded it down all over with 120 grit, then 240 grit and was ready for primer.

 

 

Primed. After priming I noticed tiny pin holes in the JB weld. I sanded these down, cleaned out the pinholes, and smeared a tiny bit of JB weld in there as filler. It really makes you appreciate Bondo... Every time you apply JB weld you have to wait 24 hours for it to cure.

 

 

Sanding and re-filling with JB Weld:

 

 

The primer was pretty smooth and it filled in most of the imperfections on the metal. I sanded it again with some 1000 grit (I didn't have anything between 1000 and 240) and painted it white.

 

 

I then sanded the white down with 1000 grit. This looked cool, but was probably a waste of time and if I was doing this again I wouldn't bother.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

Now the fun part! The original Japanese rising sun has 16 rays, but I thought that they would look too thin, so I decided to go with 12. First I traced a circle on the cover with pencil. This scratched the paint and I couldn't erase it. I ended up having to repaint the cover white and sand it again to get rid of the marks. Next I tried a dry erase marker. I taped it to the end of a compass and traced my circle. I then used a green marker (the red was busy being taped to the compass) to measure tic marks along the circle. I took the circumference of the circle and divided it by 24, then measured with a ruler. This is not quite exact, but it won't matter since I was about to majorly distort the rays of the sun to curve around the bulges in the valve cover.

I used 3M blue painter's tape to mask off the white areas. I first cut the tape into little rectangles then laid them along the tic marks in vees. 

 

 

Then I traced over the circle again with my compass. Then I lifted the tape up and cut along the line I'd just drawn. My girlfriend helped a lot with this part and the rest of the taping too.

 

 

All masked off:

 

 

Now I sprayed it with red paint. This was another mistake... The red paint bled under parts of the tape onto the white. Worse still was that the red paint turns out to be mostly transparent, so I could see the green tic marks through it. The only thing I could think of was to just put on more coats of red paint. This kind of worked, but made big ridges against the masking tape. If I was going to do this again, I would use a red marker for the tic marks, and first spray another coat of white paint so that it would "seal" the tape and prevent the red from leaking underneath it.

 

 

I touched up the runs with a tiny paintbrush and used the same spraypaint I'd sprayed in a little puddle on some masking tape so the color would match.

 

 

At this point it was never going to be perfect, and trying to sand the ridges smooth made the red paint smear onto the white. I just called it a day and sprayed on 4 coats of clear. I could do it better if I did it again, but I think it looks pretty good.

 

 

FYI I used VHT high temp paint for primer, white, red, and clear. If I had to do this again, I would sand it down and cut out the casting defects. Then have it sandblasted and the holes welded up. This would have saved me about a week of work.

[OldAndyAndTheSea]

Excellent work!

 

I had always thought about making a shaved valve cover. It's nice to see it executed.

 

Also, I'd look into hydro dipping it if you ever wanted to go super complicated on the graphics.

[osirus9]

Thanks!

 

I actually did think about hydro dipping it, but the main problems with that were expense, and the fact that a flat picture does not map to a curved valve cover. If I had made the rays straight they would have made weird angles around the curves and actually intersected in the front.

[Six_Shooter]

Hmm, I like the smoothed valve cover.

 

I'm not a fan of the Rising Sun motif, don't get me wrong it looks good, I just see it too often. 

 

I still have my stock cam cover, maybe I'll smooth it out... Hmmm...

 

You should see if you can get a red oil cap, maybe an anodized aluminium one.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Six_Shooter

[rturbo 930]

I like it!

[osirus9]

Thanks guys!

 

TBH The actual shaving was the easy part. It only took like an hour to sand off all the lettering. The hard and extremely time consuming parts were applying and sanding the JB weld multiple times to the holes revealed by sanding. If you could weld aluminum I think that would be a much better way to go.

 

I agree with the oil cap being out of place... I don't think I can paint the stock cap since it is made of this rubbery plastic material. But what about some cheap ebay oil cap like this? Will this thing fit?

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-Nismo-Oil-Fuel-Filler-Cap-For-Nissan-Skyline-240SX-180SX-GTR-R35-S13-S14-/140943459482?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&fits=Model%3A280Z&hash=item20d0e2849a&vxp=mtr

 

If it is actually made of aluminum I could paint it like the rest of the cover... 

Edited April 10, 2014 by osirus9

[texis30O]

If you have the patience you should pinstripe the red/white transitions to help with your tape lines and to give it a little pop.  clear coat it and you are good.

[osirus9]

Hmm, I think I'm done messing with it tbh. But just for the lolz, how would you go about pinstriping it?

[Six_Shooter]

Thanks guys!

 

TBH The actual shaving was the easy part. It only took like an hour to sand off all the lettering. The hard and extremely time consuming parts were applying and sanding the JB weld multiple times to the holes revealed by sanding. If you could weld aluminum I think that would be a much better way to go.

 

I agree with the oil cap being out of place... I don't think I can paint the stock cap since it is made of this rubbery plastic material. But what about some cheap ebay oil cap like this? Will this thing fit?

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-Nismo-Oil-Fuel-Filler-Cap-For-Nissan-Skyline-240SX-180SX-GTR-R35-S13-S14-/140943459482?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&fits=Model%3A280Z&hash=item20d0e2849a&vxp=mtr

 

If it is actually made of aluminum I could paint it like the rest of the cover... 

 

That looks to me like the type that just slips into place and is not threaded, so I would keep looking.

[Leon]

Nicely done!

[osirus9]

Installed pics:

 

 

 

This is with the Datsun Spirit spark plug wire kit.

So far the paint is holding up fine, and I've got no vacuum leaks!

[76Fairlady]

If you could weld aluminum I think that would be a much better way to go.

 

You CAN weld aluminum! It isn't that bad.

 

And I'm in the process of smoothing my valve cover as well. I took a slightly different approach and cleaned the valve cover really well, then filled in the letters and valleys with JB weld first. Now I've set it up on the mill and machined it perfectly flat that way. Now the original meat of the valve cover is still there with just a little bit of jb weld on top. That way, if I lean over to work in the engine bay and accidentally set my hand on it, I won't go through the paper thin valve cover lol... I'll post pics of mine when finished.