i am going to have my engine apart and figure why not paint it....but is it worth it? i haven't seen one 3.8 with a painted motor...whats the original color? would the old school orange look nice? would nice chrome valve covers look good?

 

The engine was painted black and the valve covers were grey. The intakes were left bare aluminum as were the front cover and accessory brackets.

Massey

 

GM use to paint all its motors black so it is hard to see oil seepage. They have done that since the mid 80s. Paint it to protect it but I would not spend a lot of time painting it. You see very little of the motor once it’s in. Focus on the intake throttle body and valve covers if you want to make it look nice. Click on the link in my sig to see my motor before it was installed. After it was installed you can see very little of my work.

 

Orange no, its more of a sbc thing. Black and Chrome sounds good.

 

orange is so played out...
im going to paint mine all silver
or maybe the block/heads/water pump/pan/timing cover red to match the body colour... i also hate chrome engine parts.. im more of a polished aluminum guy (i know it has nothing to do with this post)

 

i would paint it green to match the color of the car but i don't want it to look like a clown. so i'm either going to stick with a original color or black. those two you can't go wrong

 

Here is what I did to my engine. I still need to paint the alternator but I am going to wait till I get a new one before I do that.



I painted only the upper intake and valve covers. The lower intake can hardly be seen so I didnt figure it was worth it. The block and heads are black already. After I painted the intake I filed the 3800 Series II lettering to make it look machined.

Massey