Paint engine before or after assembly?

[Mark B]

For best originality, should I paint my inline six before or after reassembly? Its about to come apart to get new gaskets and take a peak inside.
thanks
Mark (with friend Dayce in picture)

[pockets]

i made the mistake of thinking afterward. Then with the block having oil dribbled all over it from assembly I realized that was a bad idea

I ended up having to take it apart anyway, so I rewashed it and painted it before putting it back together.

[raisethedead]

Take it apart, degreese it, let it dry and give it a couple coats of paint. You are going to scratch it up a lil putting it back together. You can touch it up when its all done. Its much easier when its all apart!

[pockets]

i got somewhat lucky with mine. I didn't scratch anything on the block. Only one little nick on the pan. I think I dinged my brackets more than anything else, but they are easy enough to recoat.

[ray_mcavoy]

Hi Mark,

To copy the way it was done at the factory, you'd want to paint the engine after assembly.

But I agree with the above posts ... you can get better results if you paint the individual parts before assembly and just do some touch-up painting afterward. This method also allows you to get good coverage in areas that weren't always well coated from the factory.

As a general rule of thumb, the bolts used to attach engine color parts (like the oil pan, valve cover, and such) would have been painted engine color from the factory. To duplicate that look, I punch holes in a piece of cardboard, stick the bolts in the holes, and spray paint the bolt heads. The paint sometimes gets chipped off a little when tightening the bolts but that's easy to touch-up.