Painting engine bay with the engine still in.

[richp]

Now I know this is far, far from ideal but I want to give the engine bay on the 309 a bit of a tidy up but I do not have the time/skill/space to remove the engine and get it sprayed properly.

I am considering removing any brackets and clips etc and then giving it a clean and rub down and then painting the visible areas with something like Rustoelum or similar.

I was wondering if anyone else had attempted to do the same and I wondered what the results were like?

[cobblers]

I've seen a few attempts. If you are going to keep it the same colour, you'll just about get away with it on most cars.

Take the engine loom off the engine and coil it up in a bag, put a bin liner over the engine, take all the various clips off the metalwork and jet wash it with plenty of TFR, then sort the surface and paint as normal.

If you want to change the colour, there will be a few areas you just can't get in to paint very well, and it'll show. That said, if you matt black it, you can just spray that absolutely everywhere with no masking and it looks alright at a glance.

[akku]

I did the Ventora engine bay with the motor still in, this involved bagging all the bits which were hard to remove and masking such things as fuel and brake lines... fiddly. very fiddly.