Powdercoating Small Parts - Ultimate Racing

7 A look at two finished strut supports in different colors. Once the part is cool to the touch, it's ready to be installed on your race car.

8 You can also use heat-resistant masking tape and plain old aluminum foil to mask off areas you don't want coated. There's no reason you would ever want to coat half of a valvecover in real life, but in this example I wanted to try Eastwood's two-stage chrome coating and masked off half the valvecover so that you can see a before and after.

9 The first coat is a chrome-before it is baked the powder looks anything but.

10 Here's how it looks after curing.

11 The second layer is a clearcoat powder. Again, looks before curing can be deceiving. By the way, you don't want to over-bake clear powders, the instructions recommen375 degrees for 20 minutes after the powder flows out.

12 The finished product. Not only does it look worlds better than before, but it should stay looking that way despite engine heat and racing abuse.

13 There will also be instances when you want to keep the powder from building up in bolt holes and other areas. You can use either aluminum foil or high-temperture silicone plugs as you see here for this pulley.

14 Here, you can see the results of masking off the areas you don't want coated as well as a mistake on my part. You can see the rough patch on the pulley where I didn't completely prep the metal beforehand. Because it goes on thicker than paint, powdercoat will hide some blemishes that paint won't, but it also won't work miracles and cover shoddy prep work like you see here.