Engine Bay dress up

[sideways]

I wanted to spruce up my engine bay a bit. I have painted my heat shield, and i plan to do the valve cover. I was wondering what other things you might suggest? And what kind of materials i would need and how hard it would be?

Thanks!

-Sideways!

[steelbluesleepR]

Cleaning is the single best way of making your bay look better. Spend as many hours as your hands will let you scrubbing with simple green.

After everything is spotless, you can try deleting or relocating things. If your a/c doesn't work, gut it. That gets rid of a bunch of ugliness from the driver's side of the bay. Relocating the battery to the trunk not only looks way better for the passenger side, it also improves the weight distribution of the whole car. However far you want to go with deleting stuff is up to you. You can get rid of power steering (loop the lines and keep a reservoir in the loop), cruise control, air-boost valve, etc.

As far as painting things goes, my suggestion is to keep it tasteful and not overdo it with the color. Flat black goes a long way to making things look professional and clean.

How clean you want to go with a clean bay is all up to your imagination and your attention to detail. I'm personally going further than anyone I've seen go with any accord, but I'm kinda crazy haha. My car has been down for 3 years while I got everything shaved including the firewall, relocated the fusebox, full wire tuck and mil-spec wire harness, etc. I'll have a full DIY writeup on making the engine look better, with different levels of clean, when I finally get mine back on the road.

[CB7REBUILD]

ditch the heat cover! it will still look like shit after its painted. small things you can do is clean the bay, paint the VC, and anything other then that is just a waste of money IMO. also you can tuck some of the wires if you handy enough this will help clean up the bay a bunch. also aftermarket goodies can add to the "dress up" of the bay.

[sideways]

Alright then thanks guys!

[tabaccord19]

Also if you are going to keep the headers which you probably have the 4-1 headers I would just get the heat wrap and do that. that will contain some of the heat coming off and keep the engine bay a bit cooler. That is just my opinion though. Also keep in mind when painting if your car is say green don't use green for engine bay paint. Pick an accent color. That is my opinion.

(I have a white coupe with blue interior so I painted the valve cover black with a blue spacle going. Came out better than I was expecting. Also the intake pipe is flat black)

This is an old picture. right after I did it. It now looks a bit better now from the heat working on it a lot.

[steelbluesleepR]

Also if you are going to keep the headers which you probably have the 4-1 headers I would just get the heat wrap and do that. that will contain some of the heat coming off and keep the engine bay a bit cooler. That is just my opinion though.

That's not an opinion. Also, header wrap doesn't work for stock exhaust manifolds, it just makes the manifold rust and crack.

[tabaccord19]

That's not an opinion. Also, header wrap doesn't work for stock exhaust manifolds, it just makes the manifold rust and crack.

Do you know why header wrap does that to stock headers?

[nine_deuce]

I've heard it makes them "sweat" and corrodes the welds. Someone correct me if I'm wrong... which I probably am.

[tabaccord19]

I've heard it makes them "sweat" and corrodes the welds. Someone correct me if I'm wrong... which I probably am.

That makes sense. I am just not too thrilled from going from a 4-1 to a 4-2-1 style header.

[keepinitclean]

Clean with simple green, polish parts, paint valve cover, polish some more and maybe a steel braided hose kit!

[sideways]

the thing i hate the most are my damn vacuum lines. there so raggedy and be a to hell but they work great and apparently are extremely hard to replace. so yeah :/

[sideways]

Also , on the getting rid of the heat shield wouldn't that be pretty bad to do considering the radiator and the vacuum lines and everything is so close. i mean it may look cooler but don't you think it would be a bad idea.

[crazymikey]

Painting the heat shield makes the bay look 100x better. Coloured spark plug wires, coloured oil cap, resevoir cozies, coloured wire loom,braided hoses, polished pieces....there's so much you can do with a little imagination.

In my case, I'm only in the beginning stages of doing up my bay, and I'm going for a bright, flashy engine bay, which is the complete opposite of how subtle the rest of my car is.

I've painted the heat shield, VC, battery tie down and fuse panel cover. I've started to relocate wire harnesses. I've pressure washed, shampooed and Simple Green'd the underside of the hood and the entire bay.

It still needs cleaning though.

I've gotten mixed reviews on the look I'm going with for my engine bay, but personally I think it's different, yet still tasteful and the purple and blue accent the white exterior/engine bay.

[Cb_JoeyG]

I personally prefer to dress mine up with performance parts

[crazymikey]

That's always the best way, but those get expensive.