Painted my intake, how to re-assemble?

[olympic]

(updated with pics)Painted my intake, how to re-assemble?

I completely disassembled my intake manifold and spent countless hours prepping and painting the snakes, plenums, brackets, butterflies, etc. Now my question is, how do I "intertwine" the 2 sets of snakes without scratching the paint? It's a tight squeeze between the primaries and I'm having a tough time visualizing how to do it. Any tips would be great.


EDIT: pics added here http://shoforum.com/showpost.php?p=325218&postcount=16

 

[Venom SHO s7]

I did the same, and will be re assembling tomorrow...
Im not sure, but maybe you can put some masking tape on the runners where they would contact eachother.. that way it wont scratch the paint.
did you mask off the gasket contact areas?
any pics?

 

[92sho16]

Just be very careful when sliding the snakes back together, go slowly and you should have no problem, theres a way you can slide them together quite easily you just have to sit there and play with the runners for a bit.

 

[Camarok]

Same way it came off... just backwards!
J/K, yeah the meshing of the snakes is kinda tricky, but other than that it's not too bad.

 

[K-Dawg]

Pics?

 

[PROPHET]

I had a rough time as well, I wasn't going for show quality so I just repainted the little nicks that occured when I got the intake together.

 

[SHOfun 93]

The best way I found is to take the 2 sides of the snakes and angle them in a triangle shape and then drop them down and they should slide together after some cuss words and retries. Good Luck!

 

[AREA 91]

That's the right idea! I had some thin shop rags that I used so I wouldn't scratch the new finish!

 

[yamahaSHO]

Grinding off the castings helps with putting them back together.

 

[olympic]

Ok thanks! I guess I'l just protect everything with tape/cloth and be patient with it.

I used Duplicolor gloss black on the plenums and TB, anodized blue on the snakes and DIS, and aluminum on the brackets and BBB's. I'm going to paint the valve covers blue and the alternator and timing covers black as well.

Everything got 9-10 coats of paint. 3 base/primer, 3-4 color and 3 clear. It looks sweet! 1000X better than the stained and scuffed factory finish. I'll post some pics once I get it back together and out in some descent daylight.

Grinding off the castings helps with putting them back together.

I gound all the seams off the snakes. What a tedious, pain in the butt job that was!

 

[platoribs]

With all those coats of paint it may never go back together again. LOL
Seems like a little angling and shuffling dit it for me when I was testing/packing for the EH shippment. Good luck!

 

[olympic]

I got them back together with only one tiny scratch. I put the first set of runners on a table, then layed a chamois cloth over it, then slowly worked the second set into position, then pulled the cloth out afterwards. It went pretty quick but I had to maneuver the second set of runners with one hand while spreading the tubes on the other set with my other hand.

I was almost done assembling the intake when my screwdriver slipped and put a huge gouge in the rear plenum. I tried to touch it up and the clear coat just blistered like crazy. So tomorrow I need to buy some paint stripper and repaint it.

The Dupli-color Metalcast Anodized finish paints are awesome! It leaves a finish unlike anything I've ever seen. The color coat is slightly transparent so you can see a bit of the silver metallic ground coat. Sort of like a "candy" paint. I bet it'll look sweet out in direct sunlight.

 

[SHO-93-ATX]

post some pics sir.

 

[olympic]

It's all back together and looks incredible! I'm working all night but If I can drag my a$$ out of bed during daylight hours tomorrow I'll post some pics.

 

[Venom SHO s7]

Hey... I used that same anodized blue for my valve covers and intake runners.
Here's a pic of the red anodized paint.. almost done..

i wanna see what your color combo looks like.. I was gonna do black too, but I didnt know if it was going to be glossy enough.

 

[olympic]

Yeah I was eyeing up that anodized red on the shelf too(the Chromalusion stuff even crossed my mind..hehe). I like that color and yours looks great! But I decided I had better stick with black/blue since that's the exterior/interior colors on my car. I put many coats of clear on the black plenums so they are plenty glossy. Here are the pics I promised. The runners look sorta blue/green on my screen but they are very blue in real life. The sun was pretty low when I took the pictures so they arn't very great. But in the close-ups you can see the metallic sparkle of the blue. I'll leave them linked so I don't have to shrink them.

www.tempo-topaz-performance.com/misc/intake1.jpg
www.tempo-topaz-performance.com/misc/intake2.jpg
www.tempo-topaz-performance.com/misc/intake3.jpg
www.tempo-topaz-performance.com/misc/intake4.jpg

 

[n8rsk8r]

Great looking intake Olympic Man that looks good! Hey what kind of anodized paint are you guys using?

 

[olympic]

Dupli-color Metalcast, got it at Wal-Mart. There's 2 stages to it: first a metallic silver ground coat and then the color. It's tough to get even coverage with the color coats, especially on something as curvy as the snakes. Take your time and do 3-4 light coats. It also helps to have good lighting from all angles.

I followed the directions on the can and it went something like this:

-3 ground coats 10 minutes apart.
-Wait 30 minutes
-3-4 color coats 10 minutes apart
-wait 10 minutes
-3 clear coats 10 minutes apart
-Let it dry overnight.

 

[PROPHET]

The intake looks great.

 

[n8rsk8r]

Dupli-color Metalcast, got it at Wal-Mart. There's 2 stages to it: first a metallic silver ground coat and then the color. It's tough to get even coverage with the color coats, especially on something as curvy as the snakes. Take your time and do 3-4 light coats. It also helps to have good lighting from all angles.

I followed the directions on the can and it went something like this:

-3 ground coats 10 minutes apart.
-Wait 30 minutes
-3-4 color coats 10 minutes apart
-wait 10 minutes
-3 clear coats 10 minutes apart
-Let it dry overnight.

I was wondering about that! I have seen that kit before! good looking out man! Need to shoot us a pic once done!

EDIT: I mean once you install them in the car!