Vintage Engine Bay Detailing

1 Your engine bay might look a little worse for wear, just like this '66 coupe. But with a good cleaning, some paint, and the right selection of new parts, you can make your engine bay a winner. It's hard to believe that our lead photo is the same engine bay, huh?

2 While it might make you nervous, it's really best to remove your hood for this kind of work. You can much more easily get to the firewall for cleaning and painting. Mark the hinge location with some tape, protect your fender and cowl area with fender covers or blankets, and then unbolt your hood. Store it safely where it will not get damaged.

3 Our '66 had a rusty chrome export brace that we'll be replacing. First, the shocks are unbolted and then the shock mounting brackets are removed from the shock towers.

4 With the shock brackets removed, the export brace can be unbolted from the cowl. Note that this export brace was installed incorrectly under the cowl edge. Export braces should be mounted to the top side of the cowl edge as you'll see later in our project.

5 The majority of the Mustang's engine bay wiring can simply be unplugged and removed. If you're not familiar with the stock wiring, be sure to take notes or photos of what plugs in where. To remove the headlight harness, you'll need to remove your headlights for access to the headlight and turn signal connections.

6 You certainly want to get your radiator out of the way for a project like this. Not only will you get better paint coverage of the core support area, but with the radiator safely set aside, you reduce the risk of damaging the radiator core with other parts or tools.

7 Moving on to the engine itself, the more you can remove or disassemble, the better the cleaning and detailing success you will have. Removing things like headers/manifolds, accessories and brackets, and so forth will really help. The power steering pump is one item you might want to simply wire out of the way so you don't have to deal with hoses and the potential of fluid leaks.

8 The car owner had recently upgraded to an HEI-style distributor and, due to the larger footprint of the unit, we felt removing it from the engine would be beneficial. Mark the rotor/shaft location in relation to the distributor body with a permanent marker, as seen here, then remove the distributor from the engine. As long as the engine is not rotated, you can drop the distributor back into place by aligning the marks.

9 Since we'll be cleaning the engine and engine bay, we didn't want any chemicals to stain or etch the finish on the Edelbrock carburetor. Plus we're planning to paint the intake manifold so removing the carb will help us produce a better finish on the intake.

10 Any wiring or hardware that you can't remove easily can be wrapped with painters tape to prevent overspray. The neutral safety switch/backup light wiring harness is shown here. It was taped up and then pushed back through the firewall.

11 Our '66's engine bay is stripped down as far as we plan to take it. You might opt to remove your battery tray, master cylinder, and a few other items, but the battery tray mounting hardware looked like it didn't want to be messed with and we didn't want to deal with bleeding the brakes (our plan was to make this a weekend project with a couple of club members).

12 This might look scary to some, but as long as your engine is sealed (we used tape on the intake openings, rubber plugs in the spark plug holes, and a thick shop rag in the distributor opening), you shouldn't have anything to worry about. A solid cleaning of all areas to be painted is critical. Paint will not stick to grease, dirt, or oil.

13 With the engine bay degreased and dried, the amount of sanding/prep needed to prepare the surfaces for paint is entirely dependent upon the layers of paint and any damage that needs to be repaired. This '66 had a good two or three layers of engine bay paint to sand off, but be prepared to possibly do some light bodywork if your engine bay has errant screw holes, rust, or cracks.

14 Once you've prepped the engine bay to your satisfaction, grab some more painters tape and something to mask the fenders and cowl, such as newspaper or craft paper. Pay special attention to the edges of the fenders.

15 Normally we'd be concerned with getting just the right sheen of black for the engine bay, but since this is a modified car and we're detailing it as such, the type of black paint used is a lot more open. Of course, you can paint the engine bay body color too if you like that look. The owner of this '66 opted to keep the engine bay black, but wanted more of a semi-gloss sheen than the satin-like look of the original.